By Olukayode SENBANJO, Esq
A significant outcome of the most recent meeting between the President and the 36 State Governors is the welcome announcement that Nigeria is now on the road to federalising its Police establishment.
This is a significant milestone that should be heartily cheered by all true lovers of the corporate existence of Nigeria. The new push to actualize the need for the establishment of sub-national police outfits for a country of Nigeria’s size and its sprawling population now put at well over 200 million is wholeheartedly welcome, again and again!
The reasons for the solid and well-considered arguments that state policing is an idea whose time has arrived is very far and beyond over-centralisation, under-resourcing and ill-equipment of the current centralised and unitary set up at Nigeria’s federal centre
As at today, Nigeria is yet to resile from the embarrassment that no one can put an exact figure to the number of police officers in Nigeria – always a guesstimate of about 400,000.
Further complicating this shame is the sore fact that a handsome percentage of this guessed number is permanently deployed to duties other than core policing assignments – from Aso Villa in Abuja to offices and homes of chairmen and counsellors of local government areas.
Officials of government at all levels and tiers – federal, state and local – “showcase” police officers as their sentries! What this translates to, over the years, is abuse and misuse of police officers whose number is grossly inadequate, in the first place.
It is beyond controversy that the police establishment, as it stands and operates today, is OVER-BURDENED. The need for its UNBUNDLING has been over flogged. It must be attended to.
The Nigeria Police Act 2020 is a vast improvement on the old and outdated law it replaced. However, this new law is still a far cry from the ideal in meeting the *UN Minimum Standard Rules on Law Enforcement.*
One major service truism our police high echelon keep running away from is that the Police core assignment, everywhere in the world, is providing internal and domestic security and safety, as a SERVICE, not a FORCE.
Police officers MUST wean themselves from the colonial setting and mentality that gave rise to the old West Africa Frontier Force – a brutal, oppressive and repressive machinery of colonialists against their serfs.
*This Police system must get moderated into a Police Service.* For example in the United States of America (which we are familiar with), it operates as a Service under the government department of internal security.
Not too sure we’ve exhausted all the challenges of today’s federal (sole) police establishment – I have avoided its opaque recruitment procedure/process, poor wages and personal emoluments, demotivation, poor morale, poor work ethics, corruption, vertical and horizontal structural fault-lines – we should quickly dwell on the contrived “controversy” woven against the inevitability of having sub-national police and policing in Nigeria.
The main challenge being harped and hyped is ABUSE by state political actors. Let us state, most unmistakably, that the greatest ABUSE, actually, is the centralisation of policing in a Federation of about 300 linguistic and ethnic nationalities!
The fears of sub-nationals’ abuse and misuse of their police officers is cheap hypocrisy. Is the centralised police establishment not being abused and misused, as we write? It is trite that *the cure to headache is not cutting away the head!*
The security challenges of today have consigned such fears into the dustbin of history. In fact, Nigeria now needs much more than State Police. Now, there is also the need for Local Government Security Service!
What has been done the world over is the crafting of a Robust Legal Infrastructure that will define Terms and Boundaries, providing for the over-riding authority of the Federation in specific and legally defined circumstances.*
Nigeria can learn from countries which have succeeded in federalising, as distinct from decentralising, their police establishment – Sweden, United Kingdom, United States of America, Canada, among others.
Finally, we like to recommend the Rotimi Akeredolu well thought-out steps which led to the establishment of AMOTEKUN in SW Nigeria where a single legal framework was drafted and agreed upon by all the SW attorneys-general before forwarding same to their respective Houses of Assembly which passed and sent it for their governors’ assent.
No doubt, getting such assignment done at a larger federal level can be very daunting but it is well within our means to achieve, once the political will is there, at all levels, and well sustained. The need for the rather complex Constitutional alteration to accommodate this is not lost on us at all.
Civil Society Organisations must come out to identify with this most welcome historical shift. We should rise up, at national and sub-national levels, help Nigeria achieve this goal which will answer to well over 75% of our security challenges today.
Nevertheless, this wholesale national effort must be painstaking, thorough and apolitical.*
Meticulous care must be taken to address all the failures and challenges of police and policing as we know them today; doing so will help Nigeria move as close as possible to the *UN Minimum Standards on Law Enforcement*
*Olukayode SENBANJO, Esq.*
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