A report that President Muhammadu Buhari had approved establishment of state police caused a media buzz recently, but the excitement generated did not last long. Online news platforms, which had hurriedly broken the news, soon took down the report, when a rebuttal was issued by the Presidency.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, in the rebuttal, denied that the president had approved state and local government police, which formed part of the recommendations of the Presidential Panel on the Reform of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad.
Shehu stated that while receiving the panel’s report, President Buhari had only requested that it be studied and a White Paper produced within three months.
He added that the report of the White Paper Committee would form the basis for the decisions of the government on the recommendations, including the setting up of state and local government police, made by the panel headed by the Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Mr. Tony Ojukwu.
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Meanwhile, while waiting for the Presidency’s crucial decision on the issue, the nation continues to reel under the excruciating atrocities of criminal herdsmen, cattle rustlers, bandits, cultists and kidnappers. The armed forces are overstretched, defending the nation against internal security breaches where the police, which traditionally is saddled with the responsibility, has been overwhelmed.
The debate over the desirability of establishing state police in the country seems unending. Week in, week out, there are arguments in favour or against state police in the media. State governors, who are the major stakeholders in the reform that would decentralise policing in the country are also divided on the issue.
Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum and Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, told State House correspondents after a meeting between President Buhari and the 36 state governors on June 7 that, although state police featured in the discussions, a united position was not taken.
Meanwhile, the South-west governors in their separate remarks at a security summit in Ibadan, Oyo State, last week endorsed the creation of state police, as a measure to successfully secure lives and property.
We ask: How many more debates are needed to consider an option that is crucial to curbing our intractable insecurity?
Shortly before taking the reins of power in 2015 from erstwhile president Goodluck Jonathan, Buhari had been presented with a report of the 2014 constitutional conference, which included state police as one of the means of devolving powers to the federating units to enhance governance.
President Buhari was silent on the report until a year after his assumption of office, when he said the document would remain on the shelf because the national conference was a misplacement of priority.
With the persistence of concerned members of the public on the issue of restructuring, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), which manifesto also included a promise to ensure devolution of powers, eventually set up a committee in 2017, headed by the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, to consider the possibilities of restructuring the country.
The el-Rufai committee made 12 recommendations on power devolution, including the establishment of state police.
However, President Buhari has also been silent on the el-Rufai committee report, while the only public statement on it was by his aide, Mallam Shehu, who said the party’s top echelon was yet to take a decision on the issue.
Meanwhile, on his part, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo had been unequivocal on the desirability of state police. At a security summit organised by the Senate in Abuja on February 8, last year, Osinbajo had told the participants that, “We cannot realistically police a country the size of Nigeria centrally from Abuja. State police and other community policing methods are clearly the way to go.”
He added: “For a country our size, meeting the one policeman to 400 persons ratio prescribed by the UN would require us to triple our current police force, far more funding of the police force and far more funding of our military and other security agencies.”
We are for state police and cannot agree less with the position of the vice president on the issue.
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With a police staff strength of less than 500,000 in a country of about 200 million people, it is not surprising crime and insecurity are on the rise. The inadequacy of the police is not just about the strength of the institution, but structure and funding.
The Nigeria Police Force is poorly funded by the Federal Government. It lacks the basic tools and equipment to function optimally and until this anomaly is redressed, effective crime prevention and control will remain unattainable.
It needs be noted that state police is not alien to Nigeria. As native authority police, it was an effective tool, which the colonial government had used to fight criminality and maintain peace and order. The system subsisted and functioned alongside the Nigeria Police Force until the military government scrapped it and maintained the unitary force in place today.
Although there are arguments against the creation of state police, the opponents overlook the fact that the advance democracies, which ours is modelled after, have multi-layer policing system for effective crime control.
A more progressive and productive way of approaching the issue is to implement the system in the manner that it had worked well in other climes and to factor in control measures that would ensure state police does not become a tool for witch-hunt of political opponents.
Rather than continue with a single police command structure, which has proved to be inadequate and inefficient, we urge Nigerians to put pressure on the Buhari administration to make allowance for state police an early priority in its second and final term.
