A note on state police

FOR the first time since the military truncated the First Republic in January 1966, Nigeria is marching steadily towards a decentralised policing architecture. For a country ravaged by violent communal conflicts, Islamic insurgency, banditry and herdsmen’s violence, this is a vital step forward. The parliament, the executive and state governments must seize the moment and conclude the process without further delay.

Indeed, state police is moving from agitation to reality. At the latest count, 28 states have passed the constitutional amendment.

But an important question remains: what kind of state police do Nigerians want?

The contributions of two political figures are instructive.

In a recent review, Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu and Chairman of the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill, appealed to the private sector to support state governments in funding their police forces.

While the Lagos State Security Trust Fund provides a useful example of such intervention, it is naïve to make private-sector funding a pillar of state policing. Such dependence could produce captive police forces, for he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Undoubtedly, funding state police is a constitutional responsibility of state governments. The role of private-sector contributors must therefore be clearly defined and circumscribed to prevent undue influence or outright hijacking of police operations.

In his own contribution, Mudashiru Obasa, Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, raised the equally critical question of federal control. Speaking during the passage of the police bill in Alausa, Obasa observed that the proposed legislation still concentrates too much power at the centre.

This runs contrary to the very spirit of state police. Beyond setting national standards and defining jurisdictional boundaries, federal control should be minimal.

Under the existing federal policing arrangement, governors have repeatedly complained that they are chief security officers of their states in name only, while Commissioners of Police take instructions from Abuja rather than the state governments. This emasculates the authority of governors and compromises their ability to respond swiftly to security threats within their jurisdictions.

State police forces must therefore enjoy genuine operational autonomy from the centre. This is the practice in federal countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada and Germany. Even the United Kingdom, a unitary state, operates 45 territorial police forces and three special national police forces with considerable independence from one another.

During the First Republic (1960-1966), Nigeria practised genuine federalism, with the regions maintaining their own police forces. The country has since grown considerably in population and complexity, making a return to decentralised policing even more imperative.

For decades, the military and the Constitution stood as formidable obstacles to state police. The military vacated the political stage in 1999, but successive civilian administrations, despite worsening insecurity, lacked the political will to dismantle the centralised policing structure.

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The latest initiative could finally consign the stubborn legal obstacle, Item 45 of the Exclusive Legislative List in the Second Schedule of the 1999 Constitution, to history. This is welcome.

That provision empowers only the Federal Government to operate a single police force, the Nigeria Police Force, for the entire country. The consequences of this overcentralisation have been disastrous.

With about 370,000 officers policing a population of 242.4 million, Nigeria’s security architecture is grossly overstretched. Since 2009, the country has been engulfed by multiple and increasingly complex security crises.

According to Vice-President Kashim Shettima, Boko Haram has slaughtered 100,000 people. Under Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year administration (2015-2023), more than 50,000 citizens were brutally killed. Oil militants in the Niger Delta, separatist agitators in the South-East and kidnapping gangs across the country have further tightened their grip on national security.

The bloodletting has continued under Tinubu. Virtually no part of Nigeria is immune, with Plateau, Benue, Zamfara, Borno, Sokoto, Kaduna, Katsina, Kwara and Kebbi among the states repeatedly ravaged by violent attacks.

The single federal police force is weak, underfunded and severely understaffed. Worse, a substantial proportion of its personnel is diverted to VIP protection, leaving ordinary citizens, vulnerable communities and highways dangerously exposed. A police force that spends so much of its manpower protecting the privileged cannot adequately protect the population.

Nigeria must move beyond the perennial fear that governors will abuse state police for political ends. The existing federal police force is hardly immune to political manipulation and abuse of power. The possibility of abuse is no argument for preserving an obviously dysfunctional system. Rather, it underscores the need for robust safeguards, independent oversight and accountability mechanisms.

The DAWN-backed Amotekun Corps, established in 2020, offers a useful template. Operating across the South-West states, the corps has helped strengthen community-level security and demonstrated the potential of decentralised policing. State governments should build on this experience while ensuring that their forces operate within clear legal and professional boundaries.

Funding, however, remains a critical challenge. To address this, Nigeria must revisit its revenue-sharing formula. The Federal Government currently receives 52.68 per cent of federally collected revenue, against 26.72 per cent for the 36 states and 20.60 per cent for local governments.

This arrangement leaves states with enormous responsibilities but inadequate resources. A reworked formula should allocate a greater share of national revenue to state governments, which will bear the primary financial burden of operating state police.

Ultimately, decentralised policing must be part of a broader return to genuine federalism, anchored on fiscal autonomy and resource control. The present 13 per cent derivation paid to oil-producing states is hardly an adequate substitute for meaningful control over resources. States must have greater authority over their economic resources and the revenue they generate.

State police must not become another political trophy or an instrument for settling scores. Nor should it merely reproduce the weaknesses of the existing federal force at the state level. Nigeria needs professionally trained, adequately funded and accountable police services that are responsive to local security realities.

The objective is not simply to create 36 additional police forces. It is to make policing more effective, bring security closer to the people and end the dangerous fiction that a single, overstretched command in Abuja can adequately police a country as vast and diverse as Nigeria.