Recently, President Bola Tinubu unceremoniously sacked Kayode Egbetokun as Nigeria’s 22nd Inspector-General of Police, IGP, reportedly for expressing strong reservations about the creation of state police.
Tinubu swiftly named Tunji Disu as the new IGP. Disu immediately declared that “state police has come to stay” and set up a panel to develop a framework for establishing it. So, one senior police officer lost his job as the nation’s top cop because of his principled opposition to state police; another clinched the prestigious job by enthusiastically embracing the idea and showing willingness to give the president what he wants.
Of course, President Tinubu is pursuing a “legacy” project: he wants to be the president who gives Nigerians the “long-yearned-for” state police. So, he will brook no resistance, regardless of the ineluctable logic behind it. With his party controlling more than two-thirds of the supine National Assembly and now having 32 of Nigeria’s 36 state governors in its fold, thanks to the strange alchemy of defections, Tinubu might just have his way, even before his re-election bid next year.
But caution is in order: reason must prevail over passion. Unlike the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy, the scrapping of the currency peg and the changing of the national anthem, all stroke of the pen actions that Tinubu pushed through without proper consideration of repercussions, the creation of state police is too serious a matter to be treated as a hobby horse by the president or capriciously by the National Assembly. The far-reaching and potentially adverse consequences call for a hardnosed analysis of the issue rather than a sentimental and blinkered attachment to the idea.
Now, let me say categorically that the status quo is not sustainable. I am too much of a dye-in-the-wool federalist to support the current centralisation of policing, with a unitary police force purporting to “police” Nigeria through orders from Abuja. Section 214(1) of the 1999 Constitution states that “there shall be a police force for Nigeria and … no other police force shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof.” That provision puts the lie to the notion that Nigeria is a federation. Yet, while a unitary police force is antithetical to true federalism, the mushrooming of state police forces will be counterproductive and produce serious unintended effects.
Let me start with the contrasting but fascinating interventions, late last year, by two respected lawyers. In a piece titled “Police State or State Police”, Dr Chidi Odinkalu, a prominent human rights lawyer and public commentator, articulated the widely held fear that state police would be an instrument of oppression, victimisation and abuse in the hands of state governors, pointing out that the Parry Osayande Presidential Committee on Police Reform had, in 2012, strongly recommended against it. But responding, in a piece titled “Why State Police is Nigeria’s imperative lifeline”, Dr Kayode Ajulo, SAN, the Attorney-General of Ondo State, was at pains to showcase Amotekun, the South-West’s security outfit, and the Ondo State governor, Lucky Ayedatiwa, as perfect models and exemplars of effective yet unabused state police. Ajulo argued that Governor Ayedatiwa “embodies the very model of ‘decentralised accountability’ that scholars insist is needed for state police to flourish.” Essentially, he was inviting Nigerians to believe that other state governors could emulate Governor Ayedatiwa’s “responsible leadership” and make state police work.
But as Professors Paul Collier and Tim Besley argue in their seminal report on state fragility, serious countries don’t put their hope in the “good” behaviour of leaders, they create strong institutions to ensure “routine behaviour, guided by rules”. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, where politics is a high-stakes, do-or-die, opportunistic affair, no constitutional safeguards can stop state governors from abusing state police any more than the Constitution has stopped them from hijacking the State Independent Electoral Commission to capture virtually all elective offices in their state’s local governments.
According to the draft State Police Bill, the Federal Government can suspend or take over a state police force where there’s evidence of human rights abuse or political interference. But what’s the point of having a state police force if the Federal Government can disband it? The US Federal Government cannot disband any of the country’s state police forces. Yet in a country where a president can capriciously declare a state of emergency and remove an elected state governor from office, expect politically-motivated suspensions and proscriptions of state police forces. So, state police won’t only spread state terror across Nigeria as governors abuse them but would also fuel political tension between federal and state governments, especially of different parties.
Beyond the politicisation and abuse of state police, there are questions of funding and operational effectiveness. Truth is, establishing a professional and effective police force is expensive and capital intensive. Few states can fund a proper police force. Yet an under-resourced, badly trained and poorly-remunerated police force is a danger to society. Funding challenges apart, state police, as envisaged in the draft bill, will have limited powers, covering mainly community policing, neighbourhood patrols and rural security operations. They won’t have the operational capability to tackle complex and serious crimes like insurgency and banditry, the kind ravaging Nigeria.
All of which brings me to regional police, that is, police forces organised along geopolitical zones and jointly funded and run by states in each zone. There are three major advantages. First, regional police will be less prone to abuse because no state governor can hijack it without the consent or acquiescence of other governors in the region. Second, by pooling their resources, coordinating their efforts and achieving economies of scale, states within each region can create a sophisticated, well-resourced and powerful regional police force with devolved commands and extensive reach across the region. Third, insecurity in Nigeria is not contained within a state; it’s inter-state and regional in nature. Given the significant inter-jurisdictional externalities, insecurity in Nigeria can’t be tackled through siloed state-level policing; it requires supra-regional police forces.
Indeed, that’s the trend globally. For instance, the UK has 43 police forces. But the government proposes to reduce the number significantly by merging existing forces into larger regional police forces. Nigeria, too, needs powerful regional police forces. If the Constitution can be amended to create state police, it can be amended to create regional police. Furthermore, given the de facto recognition of the six geopolitical zones, each with a statutory regional development commission, there’s no obstacle to regional police except lack of political will. But Tinubu must not foist state police on Nigeria; it poses too great a risk!