Need For State Police

The opposition to the creation of state police is getting strident by the day. But those who do not want it have no cogent reason to offer except the fear that it will be hijacked by state governors. A few days after the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, and other top police officers said Nigeria is not yet ripe for state police, the Northern Governors’ Forum has also added its voice to the call to jettison the idea. Chairman of the forum, Governor Babangida Aliyu, said after their meeting that what is needed is that the police should be reformed and better equipped and that a state commissioner of police should take orders from the state governor instead of the present situation whereby a commissioner takes orders from the Inspector General of Police. Going by his argument, what is the difference between having a state police and a police commissioner taking orders directly from a state governor?

We wonder why the Northern Governors’ Forum is toeing a different path from that of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, which they are also a part of. At a forum in Delta State recently, Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi said the governors were in support of state police. So, why the volte face by the northern governors and what are they afraid of?

The Senate Committee on Constitution Review listed formation of state police as one of the 16 critical items that would be looked into in the course of reviewing the 1999 Constitution and from what a member of the committee,  Senator Victor Ndoma Egba, said they are disposed to granting the request of the majority of Nigerians who want it.

State police is ideal for a vast country such as Nigeria with a huge population, which is also a federation. The fear that the federating state governors would use the police against political opponents is misplaced. Can’t we rise above such mundane thinking and experiment with state police and reap the benefits therefrom? The inability of the existing structure to cope with the rising cases of terrorism, armed robbery, kidnapping and other violent crimes makes it expedient to have state police. The number of officers and men in the Nigeria Police Force is grossly inadequate to cope with a population of about 157 million people. That is why policing the country has been such a herculean task.

Let us take a cue from a country such as the United States of America which operates a federal system of government with efficient state police formations. Even counties in America have their own local police and we see how prompt they respond to crime situations because of that closeness to the grassroots. So why can’t we have state police here? Nigeria is too vast to have one central police command at the centre. It is this huge baggage that has weighed down the force that it cannot effectively police the country with the attendant security challenges threatening to annihilate the country.