Several influential voices have recently backed calls for local communities threatened by insurgents to “defend themselves.” Borne of desperation at the failure of the Federal Government and its security agencies to protect Nigerians from Boko Haram and other marauders, stakeholders are coming to the inescapable realisation that policing in a federal polity can be effective only when local authorities and communities are involved. Nigeria must act fast to adopt the principle of local and state policing before the terrorists carving up the country succeed in permanently dismembering the federation.
Time is running out. Not only are terrorists, bandits and mass murderers tagged, “Fulani herdsmen,” laying waste to the northern states, increasingly, the beleaguered communities are rising to their own defence as the security forces inexplicably falter and President Goodluck Jonathan dithers. Meanwhile, the Executive, the federal and state parliaments as well as influential elite groups, despite the existential threat to the nation’s security, still prefer to live in denial of the abject failure of centralised policing to back the military. Violence and insurgency have patently demonstrated the futility of not having the locals leading the fight.
This short-sighted stance may, however be changing, but still lacks the urgency needed for immediate change. The Emir of Kano, Mohammed Sanusi II, certainly hit the nail squarely when he called on Muslims to defend themselves against terrorists. Boko Haram promptly replied with simultaneous suicide bomb and rifle attacks at a crowded Jumat service just days later, killing 120. The call then gathered support from the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, and the influential Jama’atu Nasril Islam, which also asked adherents to take “defensive measures within the law to protect themselves since the government has clearly failed to do so.” Wole Soyinka, a Nobel laureate, was typically more expressive, commending the heroic exploits of the young men and women, who armed only with rudimentary weapons, are standing up to the terrorists in the North-East zone, the epicentre of the Islamist rebellion.
Nigerians have continued to pay a heavy price for our reliance on centralised policing. Estimates of the number of persons killed in Boko Haram-inspired violence alone over the last four years range between 15,000 and 25,000, while those displaced fall between 600,000 and two million persons, with refugees dispersed in Niger Republic, Chad and Cameroon. Insurgents are holding on to territory in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states whose capitals are being menaced and economic and social life disrupted. This horrific reality naturally makes the restructuring of our policing system so urgent and inevitable.
A recent report in The Economist of London, citing Western intelligence sources, says intelligence is hard to come by as most of the security personnel deployed in the battle zone are from other parts of the country. In contrast, Boko Haram, which draws the bulk of its ranks from locals, has often demonstrated precise intelligence of troop movements and staged devastating ambushes on patrols and reinforcing troops.
The government needs to do more to formalise and integrate local volunteer vigilance groups into its security activities. The activities of the Civilian Joint Task Forces in the North-East have been crucial and were the game-changer in driving terrorists out of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital and other towns until the military lost their stomach for a fight. You cannot defeat insurgents in an asymmetrical war without the locals and this has been proved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Government should stop the pretence and allow states to run local police forces as befitting of a true federation. We should not forget that unregulated, self-defence groups have morphed into lawless militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Libya and Syria. But in the United States, law enforcement is devolved among federal, state, county, municipal and community authorities. India, divided by sectarian and ethnic diversities, also has a three-tiered system and specialised federal and state law enforcement agencies. Brazil primarily has federal and state police forces as well as municipal “civil police” for large cities.
Our hypocrisy is underlined by the fact that the 12 states illegally implementing criminal aspects of Sharia have in the Hisbah, a virtual police force. Many states have armed vigilance and neighbourhood watch groups, while their traffic management agencies and task forces that enforce laws and impose fines, are actually police forces “by other names,” according to senior Nigerian Police officers who often complain of interference in their work.
Going forward, Jonathan and the National Assembly should fast-track the amendment of the 1999 Constitution to allow states that so desire as recommended by the National Conference, set up their own police forces. We strongly recommend the Canadian model, where in furtherance of their constitutional rights to self-policing, seven of the 10 provinces contract their police functions to the vaunted Royal Canadian Mounted Police, complemented by local police units in some cities. As in Australia, India and Malaysia, federal and state police forces should be complemented by specialised national law enforcement agencies for drug law regulation, railways, maritime, currency and other specialised offences. Some of these already exist in Nigeria.
With sincerity of purpose, we can do the right thing. Training should be standardised in national police academies as we have with the law school; minimum standards should be set for qualifications, equipment and funding and an independent national regulatory body, jointly funded by the three tiers of government, should moderate policing within Nigeria and act as Ombudsman to allay real fears that some governors unchecked, could abuse their powers as successive presidents have done with the Nigeria Police.
The amendments to the basic law must therefore remove the exclusive control of the police from the executive to allow the independent regulator and the federal and state parliaments effective oversight over police agencies.
