In what sounds like a note of finality on state police, President Muhammadu Buhari has said that his administration would not have anything to do with the idea, despite its popular clamour and possibility of being more effective than the present federal arrangement. He lauded Governor Akinwunmi Ambode for setting up a quasi security outfit in the Lagos State Neighbourhood Corps, to strengthen surveillance. Seeing it as “a good initiative,” against the backdrop of his unwavering rejection of state police is a laughable paradox.
He said, “Do you just give him uniform (policeman) and a gun but can’t pay him salaries for six months? It is going to be a problem and I don’t want to be part of it.” Other pessimists have argued that state police would be a veritable tool of vendetta in the hands of vile politicians, especially the governors, who would statutorily be in charge of them as the chief security officers of their states, in line with the 1999 Constitution as amended.
These are mere gut feelings. To rely on them undermines the survival of the country as a federation and helps to worsen insecurity. Policing is an item in the Exclusive Legislative List. Once devolved, it will be imperative to review the present revenue sharing formula so as to provide more revenues for the states to shoulder the new responsibility. Under the extant formula, the Federal Government collects 52.68 per cent; states 26.72 per cent and Local Government Areas 20.60 per cent.
Alternatively, it could be made optional. The chairman, Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Abdullaziz Yari, emphasised this point in February 2018, when he revealed governors’ insistence on state police. He added, “It is not all the states that are supposed to have state police,” as only those that could afford it, would embrace it. As vast as Zamfara State is, he lamented that it had less than 5,000 policemen.
Besides, the contributions of governors to funding the federal police in their domains through the purchase of hundreds of operational vehicles, communication gadgets, motorcycles and the provision of office accommodation, as well as the almost N2 billion each governor appropriates as security votes, are enormous resources states can use to create the size of police force each can maintain. According to the NGF, in the 10 years to 2018, governors funded the police to the tune of N2 trillion.
It is highly duplicitous that after expressing his displeasure about the abysmal performance of the police in his recent ThisDay interview, which has made the military to combine their own functions with those of the police, the President is still averse to the restructuring of the system for effective policing. It is a perverse incentive to criminals to continue to run riot all over the country.
Antagonists of state police are reminded of multiple police structures in the United States and other federations that work seamlessly with strict legislative checks and balances. In the US, state police are circumscribed to highway and interstate highway traffic enforcements. They coexist with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which focuses on more than 200 classes of offences. Just as 12,236 municipal police formations exist, so are those of universities and colleges. Apparently, there is no way the FBI, even with its high level of efficiency, can alone perform the job of these rafts of law enforcement agencies.
This is the crux of the matter here. Policing has completely collapsed in the country. The admission of the police hierarchy that more than 100,000 police personnel are attached to public office holders, organisations and influential members of the society, who can afford to pay for their services at the expense of the larger society, compounds the problem. Nigeria is vast and diverse with an estimated population of 200 million. Therefore, it will be foolhardy to continue to use the existing police structure as an answer to the country’s mounting security challenges.
With banditry – robbery, kidnapping, herdsmen killings, cattle rustling and cult-violence at epidemic levels, the President should listen to his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, who has repeatedly observed that “…policing is a local function; you simply cannot effectively police Nigeria from Abuja.” This incongruity is worsened by the fact that many police personnel, being not locals, do not master the environment or communities in which they operate. Such deficit negates intelligence gathering, which is critical to effective policing.
Rural communities bear the brunt of most of these shortcomings, especially in the North. Scores of villagers in Zamfara, Katsina, Taraba, Benue and Plateau states are routinely massacred and the assailants flee before security personnel that might be 100 kilometres away could get to the scenes of crime.
In Sokoto State, attacks on three villages in Rabah Local Government Area, a fortnight ago, left 25 people dead and hundreds of survivors homeless. The morbid situation forced Governor Aminu Tambuwal to postpone his campaign rally in Goronyo town. The assailants were reportedly bandits that spilled over from Zamfara State, where recurring deployments of the military in the area since 2017 have not stemmed the cocktail of bloodbath there.
While most states in the North are in this hell-hole, their counterparts in the South are engulfed by kidnapping and armed robbery. No matter Buhari’s whims and caprices, federalism dictates that state policing is non-negotiable.
