State Police
Jibrin Ibrahim
The Dangers of Introducing State Police Today
Jibrin Ibrahim, Deepening Democracy, Daily Trust, 16th February, 2024
The Federal Government alongside the governments of the 36 states are considering the creation of state police. This followed an emergency meeting between President Bola Tinubu and state governors at the Aso Rock Villa yesterday. According to reports, Thursday’s meeting follows the recent hike in food prices, economic hardship, and rising insecurity all over the country. In other words, there is fear of widespread insurrection. Addressing State House correspondents after the meeting, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, explained that the process is still in its infancy and would only take shape after more deliberations between stakeholders.
As a student of and believer in federalism, I fully support the principle that federal political systems should have police forces controlled by the federating units - States, and in the past, I have strongly campaigned for State Police. Today, I am very frightened of the idea because the evidence that it would be abused is massive. Nonetheless, widespread insecurity in the country has pushed many Nigerians into supporting the idea of a State police based on the justification that States are closer to local dynamics of insecurity and might be more effective in combating it. The reasoning is that members of the police being local and therefore knowledgeable about the community would be more effective in fighting crime, terrorism, civil unrest and insurgency. The key idea, therefore, is that they would know or be able to easily find out the bad boys and girls and deal with them. In my view, that is where the trouble begins; who will define the bad boys and girls.
State police would be established by State Houses of Assembly and that means the enabling laws defining their mandates, structure and control would be determined by State governors because as we all know, State Houses of Assembly are essentially puppets of their governors and they do as they are instructed. For State governors, the bad boys are clear and fall into two categories. The first category comprises politicians who want to contest state power with the governors or their chosen successors, for those in their second term. The second category consists of all persons who dare to criticise the governors or question their misdeeds. Over the years, many critics, including journalists and civil society activists, have been placed in arbitrary detention for daring to speak the truth about their governors. The governors cajole law enforcement offices to “deal” with their perceived enemies, without having a police force totally under their control. I am convinced that most (not all) governors would jail all their “enemies” if they have police forces they can control totally.
When in 2018, there was a summit to consider establishment of State police, there was a counter argument by the late Abubakar Tsav, retired police commissioner that the “establishment of state police will signal the beginning of the disintegration of the country”, as governors use the institution “against their perceived political opponents.” State and Federal police commands are also likely to work at cross-purposes, he added.
My additional reasons for concern are that we have very serious ethnic and religious divides in the country at this time and many governors believe that if they have their own police, they can deal with the other. For example, the pastoralists and farmers conflicts have been intensifying in many States and some governors have clear proclivities of seeking to expel or protect pastoralists in their States opening the doors to a new dimension of identity conflicts that would deepen the crisis facing the Nigerian State today. As Commissioner Tsav argued in 2018: “Our politicians are not civilised enough and tolerant of opposing views and cannot preside over a competent and impartial police force.”
I have heard people argue that currently, the Nigerian Police Force are direct puppets of the president and they do exactly what they are told to do in dealing with the president’s enemies, so State Police could be a counter weight to presidential control of the Nigeria Police Force. I think it’s uncharitable to argue that the Nigeria Police are completely partisan in their actions. Federal institutions are, in general, much more capable of handling issues in an even-handed manner, relative to State-level institutions. The more effective separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary at the federal level, in relation to the State level means that there are more effective control measures. The National Assembly, for example, can call the Inspector General of Police to order in a way that no State House of Assembly can’t do with any institution obeying the State governor.
I know that the structure of the police is defective, as a significant slice of the police budget is consumed at the headquarters and very limited resources go to State Commands where most police operations actually take place. State Police Commands then become dependent on State governors, who give them some money and in return get the Command to do their bidding. It is however easier to address this problem compared to a fully State police force.
The problem we have is that the police are not as effective as they should be and the way forward is to improve their efficacy. One of the core problems is that about 150,000 thousand of the 350,000 of the Nation’s police force are engaged in VIP protection rather than routine policing. Every Police I-G has promised to stop renting out police officers to those who can pay for their services but failed to do so. Successive presidential directives that police personnel attached to unauthorised persons and VIPs in the country be withdrawn and deployed to confront the security challenges in the nation have been disregarded. The police are ineffective because too many of them are not available to do core police work, they spend their time in the service of a few privileged Nigerians. President Tinubu should start by addressing this challenge.
segun...@gmail.com
On Feb 16, 2024, at 5:24 AM, Jibrin Ibrahim <jibrinib...@gmail.com> wrote:
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAPWX8rXyg6j1wdrhvxO9OcxvdfC4bsfpkLSC543vZZyOq4wfuQ%40mail.gmail.com.
Victor Okafor
Dear Jibrin Ibrahim:
Nigeria is long overdue for the addition of a modern state police system in each of the thirty-six federating states. Given the general insecurity that pervades parts of the country, its lack of a state police system, I aver, constitutes a void in the national security system that is currently being abused with impunity by individuals with malevolent intents, particularly kidnappers and robbers. Given the size and complexity of the Nigerian landscape, its internal security requires not only a modern, well-educated, well-funded and well-maintained federal police and intelligence network across the 36 states, the country also needs to have a police establishment in each state, a local police department in each local government, and a campus police department in every higher educational institution. I am not naïve, and I do not presume that all this will stamp out criminality and insecurity throughout Nigeria, but I optimistically believe that, given how such an across-the-board policing system has operated to help provide livable levels of security of life and property in certain other massively large and complex nations like Nigeria, it carries the potential to generate life-supporting levels of law and order across the federation. It comes with a potential to support and nourish bare minimum ingredients for an orderly society propelled by the rule of law. A state police system, as a supplemental creation, will concretely strengthen Nigeria’s system of federalism and simultaneously and importantly lower the unitarist concentration of police powers in the hands of the federal arm of a federal structure that also has state and local tiers of governance. It is a desirable step towards federalization of the nation’s instruments of coercion. Only the armed forces of Nigeria—that is, the Army, the Airforce and the Navy need to be under one federal command. The national intelligence agency must also remain under the purview of the commander-in-chief.
If created within Nigeria as a network, the combination of a federal, state, local and university-level police establishments need to be outfitted with constantly maintained state-of-the art technological, communication and mobility tools. By state-of-the-art, I do not necessarily mean imported software and hardware. I believe that given Nigeria's repertoire of technological knowhow, the governments of the day--at the federal, state, and local levels--can tap existing local resources for the equipment, gadgets, and software that their internal security architectures need to be effective in this 21st century. For this to happen, we have to have self-confident leaders who are imbued with a "can-do" spirit, who believe in a Nigerian capacity to do, to achieve, and whose impulse is to look inwards, rather than outwards, for solutions to the domestic challenges of the nation--leaders who believe in Nigerians and in a Nigerian technological capacity to do what is necessary at any given point, with, of course, a secondary recourse, as needed, to external sources of reinforcement and nourishment. In this regard, Nigerian universities, at their best, ought to function as organic sources of applied knowledge by which their surrounding socioeconomic and political entities can derive sustaining and enhancing life support.
In today's world, security--local and external--is easily among the lion shares of a viable national budget. Without security, you cannot have tranquility, you cannot have peace, and you cannot have peace of mind for the contemplative human activity that precedes and generates concrete social changes most popularly known as development. Development itself is a multi-variable concept.
It is also important to specify that whether in Nigeria or elsewhere, no amount or quality of an internal security architecture can exclusively ensure internal equilibrium, stability, and peace. To achieve a dependable level of internal security, leadership must get right both the security architecture and the political economic order. And, getting the political economic order right also requires fidelity to or a striving towards equity, justice, and fairness for all.
Nigeria’s currently inadequate internal security architecture is compounded by massive deficits in its political economy. In this regard, one can think of the reported intent to create a state police system as a major means of curbing Nigeria’s elevated level of youth unemployment. Thus, this measure ought to be approached by all stakeholders with a sense of urgency. It is a practical means of meaningfully addressing Nigeria’s youth bulge challenge. If the country can get its mass population of unemployed youth meaningfully engaged, it would also indirectly help contain its internal security fault lines. A burgeoning population of unemployed and under-employed youth is an angry and discontented population, to say the least. Parents and relatives themselves cannot enjoy true peace of mind if they are surrounded by unemployed, angry adult children who cannot find jobs or be enabled to be self-employed. No nation, no state, and no local government area can experience true internal security, internal peace, and tranquility in the face of a restless youthful population.
In advocating for an across-the-board policing network for Nigeria’s three tiers of governance, I am not insensitive to Jibrin Ibrahim's caution that a state police would be subject to abuse by some state political authorities. The question is: does the advantage of adding a state police network outweigh the disadvantages accruable from its susceptibility to political abuse? Does anyone believe that the current federal police system in Nigeria has not had its own share of political abuses and political interferences? Should we then, on that score, advocate for the abolishment of the federal police system?
It must also be borne in mind that there is no human-made system that cannot be abused by both leaders and followers. The political ruling class owes it as a duty to ferment and promote a political culture that would dissuade and minimize institutional and social systems' vulnerabilities to abuse. In this regard, it is important that desirable national steps towards beefing up Nigeria’s internal security architecture are accompanied by a reinvigoration of efforts to discourage, detect, and penalize bureaucratic corruption at all levels of governance. Is it not common knowledge that bureaucratic corruption tends to run like cancer through the whole gamut of the federal, state, and local governance structures of the country? But this does not mean that every federal, state and local government employee is necessarily corrupt. If bureaucratic corruption is not checkmated, a state police network, if created, will fall victim to it, just as it has undermined the existing security bureaucracies.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAPWX8rXyg6j1wdrhvxO9OcxvdfC4bsfpkLSC543vZZyOq4wfuQ%40mail.gmail.com.
--
“In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” -- Matthew (7:12).
cornelius...@gmail.com
“The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion” ( Mishlei / Proverbs 28
Re - “the recent hike in food prices, economic hardship, and rising insecurity all over the country. In other words, there is fear of widespread insurrection.”
In other words, conditions are ripe for revolution.
Cost of living get so high
Rich and poor, they start to cry
Now the weak must get strong
They say, "Oh! What a tribulation" ( Them Belly full ( but we hungry)
Them fear “widespread insurrection”, but them noh fear widespread resurrection, wise men rising from the grave, mass resurrection to fight them once again. Fighting for their rights, fighting on arrival, fighting for survival.
INSURRECTION is a very strong word, as a mass movement, wahala for the status quo, the chief-of-staff & the ogas in authority - it could be the first stage of spontaneous combustion leading to that dreaded word, REVOLUTION
You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn't get much higher
The time for hesitation is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now, we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre
Choir : Come on baby, light my fire
Re - " The reasons for having state police are more cogent than not having it." (Philosophy Professor Segun Ogungbemi)
Understandably them want some law and order, them want to protect life, the loot, and the private property. What them want is not exactly just some special constabulary, some hungry, downtrodden, underpaid Nigerian bobbies on the beat, them want to have some special military police - a kind of standing army of iron-fisted mobile police to mash the people down again…