At the Third Annual Abiola Ajimobi Roundtable and 71st posthumous birthday of a former governor of Oyo State, Abiola Ajimobi, the contentious issue of state police came to life again. This time, an All Progressives Congress chief, Bola Tinubu, joined the Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, to canvass for the immediate devolution of powers to enable the second tier of government function optimally through the creation of state police to tackle the worsening insecurity in the country.
Really, there is nothing new in all of this, except that both Tinubu and Fayemi are key members of the ruling APC. While Tinubu goes with the title of ‘National Leader,’ Fayemi doubles as the Chairman of the influential Nigeria Governors’ Forum. Before now, some state governors had called for a shift from the country’s reliance on a unitary policing system. The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, recently recalled that the establishment of state police was among the key recommendations of the APC Committee on True Federalism that he chaired and which report was submitted to the ruling party in 2018.
Yet, these major stakeholders in the APC-led Presidency and the APC-controlled National Assembly are busy lamenting the shallowness of their title – chief security officer – while their people are being slaughtered by terrorists and bandits with impunity. It is indeed shocking that governors are content with offering rhetorical excuses for their failure to demonstrate the commitment required of them to push the National Assembly for a constitutional amendment for state policing. And partly, the timidity exhibited by the governors, evident in the way they have carried on despite the overwhelming security challenges, boils down to politics.
Nigeria is in a state of anomie where life is cheap and crimes go unpunished. In a recent security alert, the United States Mission said “crime is endemic throughout Nigeria ranging from petty street crime to carjacking, and crime levels tend to increase during the holidays.” Some governors have unashamedly admitted that large areas within their domains are under the control of bandits. There have been reports of kidnappers going to communities in the North-West with lists of many names, called out with threats that those who do not answer would be killed if found out. In Edo, bandits kidnap on highways and sometimes take their time to profile potential victims to determine the ones likely to attract huge ransoms, all without significant resistance from security agents.
In September, no fewer than 17 vigilantes were reportedly ambushed and killed in Dukku, Niger State. Even governors are not spared as the convoy of the Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum, was attacked three times in three months, leaving many people including soldiers, police officers, and civilian joint task force personnel dead.
In what seemed like a desperate tone, the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, recently lamented the high rate of insecurity in Northern Nigeria. At the fourth quarterly meeting of the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council in Abuja, he noted, “Over 76 persons were killed in a community in Sokoto in a day. People think the North is safe, but that assumption is not true. In fact, it is the worst place to be in this country because bandits go around in the villages, households and markets with their AK 47 and nobody is challenging them. They stop at the market, buy things, pay and collect change (balance), with their weapons openly displayed. These are facts I know because I am at the centre of it. I am not only a traditional ruler; I am also a religious leader. So, I am in a better place to tell the story. I can speak for the North in this regard because I am fully aware of the security challenges there. We have to sincerely and seriously find solutions to the problem; otherwise, we will find ourselves soon, in a situation where we would lose sleep because of insecurity.”
The security challenges have grossly exposed the inadequacies of the current unitary police structure. The UN recommends one police officer to 450 citizens. Nigeria has about 300,000 police personnel for its 206 million people, but about half of them are attached to VIPs.
The time for Nigeria to have multiple police forces is now. In the Federal Republic of Germany, its 16 federal states (called Länder) have the authority to maintain their own police forces within their territory, along with the right to pass legislation and exercise police authority. Its federal police are responsible for border protection, railway policing and aviation security. The US has about 18,000 police agencies, including federal, state, town, county, city and college campus security, while the United Kingdom, a unitary state, has 43 regional forces.
Governors and lawmakers must eschew political grandstanding and understand that the longer they dither over this urgent matter, the more lives are lost. Governors, lawmakers and other stakeholders must work together to seek ways to fast-track the establishment of state police, and the doctrine of necessity should not be ruled out. It is tantamount to an admission of failure for any leader to throw up their hands over the issue, in helpless resignation. They must come together now to act; it should not be delayed. This is the time to say enough is enough before this raging fire consumes us all and brings the country on its knees. Buhari should know by now that the nature of security requirements in rural and urban contexts calls for greater specialisation, professionalisation and coordination. He and the National Assembly should act patriotically now. As Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, rightly said recently, advocates of restructuring should not only put pressure on Buhari to lead the process of restructuring, they should also push the state governors to take advantage of legal openings to deepen Nigerian federalism.
