The politics of state police creation is as deep as the ethno-religious fissures that characterise Nigeria itself. And its depth forms the core of the conservative persuasion that favours the retention of Sections 214-216 of the 1999 Constitution.
This persuasion simply implies a centrally controlled police order in which the Federal Government retains the absolute power of providing security and ensuring internal stability. In the main, its proponents believe mere investments in training police officers, prioritising their welfare, recruiting more operatives and upscaling their operational capacity, among others, will guarantee public order and internal stability.
The proposal to adopt or establish state police has viciously come under sustained attacks for different explanations. First, the conservatives have argued that the governors will use it as an instrument of oppression against their perceived political enemies if the Federal Government shares policing powers with sub-national governments.
This fear is indisputably tenable given the highhandedness of some governors. However, does this really suggest that we should throw away the baby with bath water?
Second, other critics frequently cited the partisanship of the district, provincial and regional police in the First Republic to justify their opposition to the adoption of state police.
They explained how the political elite deployed the police operatives under their control against their perceived and potent political foes. For them, creation of state police can further deepen the subsisting regime of vicious impunity at the state level. Though it might have failed before now, does it mean the state police model cannot succeed in this contemporary time, especially with the increasingly cascading response capacity of the Nigeria Police?
These explanations are not obviously convincing enough to disapprove the proposal for state police outright. And this can mainly be understood from different socio-economic and political dimensions. In the first instance, whether in principle or practice, Nigeria is a federation of 36 states, six geo-political zones and one FCT. Ordinarily, the realities of Nigeria’s governance structure should define its national security architecture. This simply suggests that a centrally controlled police system can hardly be responsive enough in a federal context with unitarist foundation and pillars. Accordingly, a police system that will respond decisively to our internal challenges ought to reflect the intrinsic characters of our federation.
Globally, also, demography often determines the size, strategy and structure of the police system a federation will adopt. This singular attribute largely defines the way most emerging democracies protect their citizens; secure their collective assets and create an environment for a functional economy. Nigeria, as one of the world’s fastest growing populations, cannot continue operating unitarist security architecture despite its strong federal tendencies. Such a policing model cannot meaningfully address existential threats to our internal cohesion and stability.
Unlike in 1979 when we had a population of 70.75 million, Nigeria is now a federation of 229 million people, currently the world’s sixth biggest country, as shown in the demographic data of the United Nations. Contrarily, as revealed in the recent presentation of the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Kayode Egbetokun, Nigeria has a police-citizen ratio of 1-650. This ratio is a far cry from a ratio of 1-460, which, according to the United Nations, is a minimum requirement for every sovereign state or territory worldwide. This shortfall further reinforces the dysfunctional state of the centrally controlled model we are currently operating.
Effective policing, therefore, is always a function of understanding the security environment. This evidently requires all operatives to understand the peculiarities of the security context without ambiguity. It also means they understand the culture, history, language and values of the people they are engaged to protect. It entails that they have built, even maintained a network of social capital that can help them function effectively. This suggests that they are familiar with their areas of responsibility, mainly the socio-economic dynamics that often breed internal challenges within the security environment.
As currently constituted, the Nigeria Police does not possess any of these attributes, which I strongly believe, is central to crafting an alternative national security architecture that will guarantee the protection of lives and property. In other words, the dysfunctional state of the current police system directly correlates to the prevalence of criminal incidents in virtually all states of the federation. This further justifies the public demand for an alternative police system that can deepen internal stability and incentivise diverse investors from within and without.
However, the progressives do not in any way share the conviction of the conservatives. Rather, in absolute terms, they propose the need to re-craft Sections 214-216 of the 1999 Constitution to introduce local, state or regional police into the country’s security architecture. This also suggests the exigency of devolving policing powers to other federating units – local and state governments. It is not entirely new to Nigeria’s political system.
Until the promulgation of Decree No. 34 that birthed the unification of Nigeria in 1966, we had practised the decentralised police system under the First Republic. In this dispensation, as established in Section 105(7-8) of the 1963 Constitution, each regional, provincial and district government was statutorily vested with the power to create and operate its own police. But the 1966 coup heralded the military rule that dismantled the decentralised police structure we embraced at independence.
Rather than allow our fissures to determine our collective future, it is important to reassess the interplay of forces – cultural, economic, political, social or technological – that now shape security dynamics globally. As well, it is salient to look at the rationality of our choice, perhaps whether we should continue with a centralised police model as it is now or adopt a truly decentralised police model in the similitude of what we had in the First Republic.
As a federation, however, Nigeria cannot be left out in the matrix of new thinking that glaringly defines the world. In real terms, rationalism should, as a custom, shape the choice of police model we adopt and not what we are or what we are not. Put differently, our current socio-political realities or security dynamics ought to define our collective response. For me, the ongoing review of the 1999 Constitution obviously avails us another opportunity to redefine our governance structure and recalibrate our security architecture as a people of collective purpose. But we must go about it with a clear sense of self-realisation.
We must, first and foremost, realise that the present police system is ailing and dysfunctional. We must also admit that the system can no longer guarantee the dignity of human lives and the security of collective assets, considering our security dynamics in the Fourth Republic. With this admission, it is evident that the option of adopting state police is no doubt inevitable as an antidote to diverse security challenges that threaten us as a federation. Its inevitability is connected to diverse emerging threats, which, according to policy analysts and strategists, are not just the outcome of our national faultlines. Rather, it is designed to respond to the inherently perverse socio-economic realities of the federating units that jolt millions into poverty.
Besides, the deficit of the Nigeria Police has influenced extra-constitutional responses to guarantee the security of assets, investments and lives. One of such responses is the undue deployment of armed forces to manage our internal security crises. It is ostensibly an outright deviation from Section 217 of the 1999 Constitution, which constricts the armed forces to defending our fatherland from external aggression; maintaining its territorial integrity and securing its borders from violation. Due to the dysfunctional state of the Nigeria Police to ensure internal stability, the armed forces have deviated from their constitutionally assigned mandates.
This is not in an attempt to usurp the powers of the Nigeria Police, rather, it is in the spirit of joining forces with the police in the task of ensuring public order within our border. Although this military support is highly critical to our internal stability, its intervention is an absolute deviation from its original mission, and we must embrace state police to significantly reduce the engagement of the armed forces in internal security operations.
This is just one side of the argument. Another side is the regular sight of our military officers on the streets of state capitals, commercial cities and major towns. What does their regular sight tell foreign investors, development partners or donor institutions visiting our fatherland? What does it portend to us as a people?
This does not portray us as one of the world’s fastest evolving democracies with the records of seven successive elections since 1999. It does not suggest that Nigeria, in its 25 years of democracy, can guarantee security of its critical assets. It does not suggest that the Nigeria Police can ensure internal stability that these global actors always look forward to as a condition to bringing in or injecting their capitals into our economy.
This argument does not end with the critical perception of Nigeria by visiting donors, investors and partners. It also dovetails into the economy of security itself.
In principle, political economists, especially those that share Karl Marx’s philosophy of economic determinism, always argue that the economy is the substructure of every society. And in essence, the economy forms the foundation on which socio-political structures are built. As empirical as this time-tested postulation might be, I strongly believe, the working of every society distinctly reflects the symbiosis of all its units – be it culture, economy, law, politics, science or technology. This implies that each of these units mutually functions for the workability of our society. It further suggests that all the units co-exist independently within their spaces to interdependently deliver desired outcomes. This thus depicts that the functionality of an economy depends upon how efficient and effective our national security system is.
To be continued
Bamidele is the Leader of the Senate, Federal Republic of Nigeria.
