By Tonnie Iredia
The clamour for the introduction of state police in Nigeria took a brighter turn last week when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu called on the national assembly to give the clamour a legal backing. In a chat with federal legislators last Wednesday, Tinubu said, “what I am asking for tonight is for you to start thinking how best to amend the constitution to incorporate the state police for us to secure our country, take over our forests from marauders and free our children from fear.” When this succinct demand of the president is added to the fact that a large number of citizens and groups had in the last two decades been making the same call, it becomes quite clear that the establishment of a policing system at state level has for long been a popular wish of the people of Nigeria.
The only reason it has taken so long to be acted upon can be attributed to the fact that Nigerian law-makers are not quite good at fulfilling the wishes of the people they claim to represent. In fact, they don’t appear to hear the people. Now that President Tinubu has openly re-echoed the call, it is likely to be fulfilled shortly as part of the desire of our legislators to demonstrate their inexplicable loyalty to the president. Indeed, the senate has already assured Nigerians that the national assembly would treat the amendment with urgency and conclude the process before political campaigns begin ahead of the next general election. In the words of senator Yemi Adaramodu, the spokesperson of the senate, “we are going to expeditiously treat the matter; we are giving our assurance that before the end of this year, the amendment will be done so that we can have the state police.”
The argument that there are some Nigerians who object to the introduction of state police is a weak one because there is really no one directly opposed to the idea. The few objections that have been raised are neither credible nor are they against the state police itself. Instead, they are against the likely abuse of the idea. We are however not unaware of stories in history where the local police were used by some privileged leaders to oppress the people. We also know that many Nigerian leaders are prone to using their offices to torment real and perceived opponents. Such abuses should not stop us from utilizing the state police to meet positive and desired goals. The way forward is to set up the noble idea along with structures, strategies and other frameworks that would prevent any envisaged abuse. In addition, huge sanctions beyond fines must be designed to instantly curb any breach.
The point to be made is that state police as a policy is not a problem on its own because it can be used positively to attain the public good. The real problem in Nigeria is lack of accountability where people are not held to answer for their misdeeds. In a system where there are no consequences for actions or omissions, the idea of abuse would be the order of the day. Put differently, police can be abused at any level, be it local, state or federal if those managing the system are allowed to operate above the law. It would therefore be unwise to kill the idea of state police because it can be abused while the federal police that is constantly misused is allowed to exist only because it is called federal. Examples abound in our clime where the rich and the powerful use the federal police to oppress the poor and get away with it.
To have only the federal police in a federation makes little sense because it gives opportunity to the federal government to cow a state government. Some critics actually believe this is what is happening in Osun state now. In such a situation, the system of government is not federalism but a unitary system where the central government holds all the power unlike the shared power structure in a federation. With federal, state and local laws in a federation, there is no basis for asking the federal police to maintain state or local laws. In fact, one of the weak points in our constitutional directive for the welfare and security of the citizenry to be the primary purpose of government lies in the fact that whereas we have 3 governments, law enforcement is assigned to only one of them; leaving the other two to be either frustrated or largely unaccountable.
The misuse of state police is not restricted to relations between ruling parties and their political opponents. There are also allegations of state governors in Nigeria who use the federal police to torment their political opponents but pretend to be powerless when it comes to using the same federal police to curb serious crimes. Such an excuse of lack of cooperation by the federal police would be unavailable as soon as state police is introduced. Besides, governors would have to account for unending insecurity in their states while their security votes are allegedly increasing by the day. State police authorities would similarly be personally on the hot seat concerning the subject.
But Nigerians must stop highlighting the weak points of the state police as if the system has no known strong points. One the positive points of state police is its capacity to increase community participation in governance. State police would ordinarily engender a feeling among the people of community ownership of laws and their enforcement. The police would be indigenes like other members of the same community; the norms and cultural values would similarly be same. They all know one another and can easily deter any of their own from untoward behaviour; just as different families would be obliged to maintaining a good name. This situation greatly enhances intelligence gathering thereby simplifying the work of the police. But more importantly, it strengthens relationships between the police and the people.
One factor which has heightened insecurity in Nigeria has been the tendency for security operatives to focus on urban areas such as state capitals to the detriment of the rural communities. It seems to actually explain why many attacks and kidnappings take place in the rural areas. By the time the police in the urban areas get to locations where criminals had operated, so much havoc would have been done. With the introduction of the state police, the situation is likely to change as many operatives would be assigned to areas which hitherto had no police presence. What this suggests is that there would be more attention to crimes in several localities. As Olohundare Jimoh the current Lagos state Police Commissioner correctly argues ‘if properly designed and implemented, state policing could provide significant benefits by deepening local knowledge of security dynamics and enabling quicker responses to crimes.’
A foremost observable implication of the introduction of state police would be an increase in employment opportunities. This would lift the spirit of many citizens who had remained unemployed for long. It would also improve the living standards of the citizens just as it would reduce crime which many unemployed citizens were hitherto encouraged to patronize. This is likely to alter the obvious lack of capacity to manage rural communities in Nigeria. If the state police experiment succeeds, other subjects such as the conduct of elections, population census and other matters of societal development will begin to take shape especially now that efforts are being made to get local government to earn and utilize their own resources for the benefit of their societies
Nigeria cannot operate differently from global realities. If developed nations have county, school and state police, where did we get our option of having only the federal police? In truth, one of the greatest gains that can accrue to states and local governments in Nigeria from the right to have their own police is an end to the docility of civil society groups. Impunity by holders of public offices have persisted over the years and would continue to be so if no one challenges wrong doings by those in government. What makes democracy the government of the people, by the people and for the people if the same people are unable to protest what they deprecate? The plan to introduce state police if successfully done will reinvigorate the old impetus whereby Nigerians served as architect of their own destiny by fighting against such evils as colonial and military rule.
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