With the widespread security problems currently plaguing the country as scarily characterised by incessant kidnappings, mindless bloodletting and genocidal massacres perpetrated by seemingly uncontrollable bandits, anarchists and assortment of delinquent bands operating across the country, there has arisen very loud calls for the immediate re-examination of the role, structure and operational utility of the country’s security architecture with a view to enhancing their effectiveness in securing the nation from the well-calibrated siege on Nigeria by these malevolent forces.
Any serious effort to reverse the country’s current security deficiencies must begin with the urgent expansion of the territorial reach and overall operational effectiveness of the nation’s policing processes and that would be through the establishment of State and other localised police services systems.
Today, we are once again repeating our numerous earlier pleas to the government of the federation for serious re-consideration of the lingering question of introducing State Police to the country because the present arrangement in which we rely on a single police establishment lately being heavily supplemented by the military is not working because the role of the military on internal security is not exactly the same with that of the Police because such assignments fall within the professional competence of the police. The question now is, how is the police system structured to reflect the variegated nature of the very large Nigerian territory?
Criminals are having a field day in their bloodletting enterprise because the current police system which is supposed to track and resolve them wherever they might be is still taking orders from far away Abuja. Most of these heinous crimes take place in remote villages and distant settlements deep in the hinterlands, it is therefore no brainer that we should immediately devolve police powers down to the states and local governments where these blood-thirsty marauders normally operate.
At the top of our federal structure is the federal government of Nigeria (FGN). It makes its law through the National Assembly and those laws are enforced by the Nigeria Police Force nationwide. To the extent that the various state governments within the Federation are also constitutionally empowered to make laws for the good governance of their various domains, it is therefore conceptually imperative that they also have their respective police forces with the operational powers to enforce the laws of their various states.
“In fact, the various Local Governments across the nation are also within the logic of a functional federalism, entitled to have their individual police services. This is what is universally practiced in those federal systems from where we copied the presidential constitutional system. It is indeed preposterous for us to be claiming to run a federal government with several layers of governmental powers and responsibilities shared amongst the various tiers and still be insisting on a single police formation.
“It does not make sense for one level of government to be making laws with the expectation that another level or other levels of government would enforce them. It is simply not going to work and, so far, it has not been working for Nigeria because the power to make laws ought to be organically related with the means to enforce them. Federal laws with national application should be left to the federal law enforcement agencies while state laws with limited territorial application should be left to state police forces to deal with. The resulting jurisdictional specialisation in that kind of arrangement will necessarily bring about remarkable levels of efficiency and effectiveness in policing.”
Misguided “federalists” would argue that it is dangerous to allow the states to have their own police services because they will misuse them by turning them into instruments for the oppression of their political enemies instead of using them to promote genuine law enforcement. Such an argument would have made sense only if we were not already seeing abuses of police powers by the present monopolistic federal authorities.
The sensible thing to say, in the circumstance, is that a multi-level police system would provide the necessary checks for those possible abuses in the present one-sided arrangement. In any case, it is actually the duty of the citizens to push their police forces on the path of legality and discipline by pulling the requisite political and community levers of checks and balances. That is why the current Police Act provides for a robust Police community relationship.
“The calls for states police are not being predicated on the need to attain systemic efficiency alone but also as a fulfilment of a strong doctrinal requirement concerning federalism, as each section of the country ought to be constitutionally empowered to redress the law enforcement challenges that are peculiar to their environments. We are simply deceiving ourselves by pretending to operate a federal system when, in fact, we are actively running a unitary system of government in all material particular.
Every day we hear of bandits raiding communities without immediate police response because the nearest police post is located far away and it is always the case that the bandits would have already killed and maimed unarmed and defenseless innocent inhabitants before the security operatives arrive. That certainly could not have been the case if those communities had resident security personnel amongst them.
The commonsensical principle here is that whoever makes laws should be able to enforce them because he alone knows the ills that the legislations were fashioned to cure in the first place and also the best way to go about it. That is why even university campuses in federal societies that are chartered to make Statutes for their domestic governance through their respective campus Senates are licensed to operate their own internal police services. A very city has its own police services that are managed by city authorities.
Fortunately, President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, as a social activists and pro-democracy campaigner and later, Governor of Lagos State, was quite prominent, strident and consistent in his support for State Police. Now that he is the apex boss, the time has come to assess his sincerity and principled stand on the vexed matter of State Police as imperative for functional federalism.
Mr. President should therefore lead the charge to ensure that Nigeria’s federalism is re-energised and invigorated by making the calls for a functional state police system a reality in Nigeria because it is an integral part of his party’s (APC) manifesto upon which his mandate was secured. That single demand is at the core of the nationwide popular clamour for “true federalism” and the related theme of “restructure” and it is a sure cure for the rising insecurity in the land.
By Prof. Mike Ikhariale
