On State Police And Nigeria’s Polity

There are esoteric reasons in the current prolonged agitations for state police, or otherwise.  That is, beyond the known reasons given by different individuals and groups. A critical scrutiny of all the views expressed so far reveals unanimity in several areas regarding the importance of state police.

For one, the agitations, no matter the stand, have revealed that more Nigerians have become interested in governance. What this means is that more people are becoming more knowledgeable in the affairs of government to the point of making their own contributions. Whether such contribution is inconsequential is talk for another day.

But the truth is Nigerians have become more familiar with the intricacies of democracy after years of military dictatorship. The question thus is how prepared are the privileged few in governance to making the same adjustments as the majority of Nigerians?

Another area of agreement among all contributors to the state police saga is that the Federal Police has failed irrevocably in its responsibility to protect the lives and properties of Nigerians. Hence, the most pressing need for a way forward.

It is based on this agreement that the Governor’s Forum, which has become a very important arm of government, deemed it necessary to come up with the idea of a state police that would be under the direct control of governors, who are the chief security officers of the 36 federating states.

This agreement, ironically, turned out to be the point of disagreement, first among the governors, and later the rest of the schooled Nigerian public.

While governors in the southern part of the country are for the establishment of state police, because they believe it is the solution to the worsening security situation in the country, their colleagues from the north think differently.

To them, Nigeria is not ripe for a state police. They thus align with the Presidency, which has minced no words in its stand that the country still has a long way to go before it can effectively contain regional policing. Both of them have allies in former Inspectors-General of Police (IGPs), who in a recent meeting with the Presidency said state police would amount to “an invitation for anarchy”.

In the words of a human rights activist, Shehu Sani, the reason behind the opposition of the northern state governors to state police are numerous. Among them are the fear of a repeat of the brutality it used against the opposition during the colonial era in the north, and the possibility of some governors using it to enhance their secessionist tendencies.

“During the colonial time, the local police were directly under the emirate system referred to as Native Authority. At that time, they were brutally used against members of the opposition”, Sani said.

He continued that “They arrested people like late Hijiya Gambo Sawaba, then woman leader of late Aminu Kano’s party, Northern Element Progressive Union (NEPU) for no other reason than being a member of the opposition…

“If you look at what the Sharia police (Hisbah) are doing today at Kano and Zamfara, it is similar to what the Native Police did in the First Republic. Even though the Hisbah set up by the state governments claim to be enforcing Sharia law, they are used against people who criticize governors and their policies. Governors also use Hisbah to rig local government elections.”

The second key reason, according to Sani is that the North’s opposition “has to do with the event that led to the build up to the civil war. There is very strong fear that if the state police are allowed, some states’ secessionist ambition could arm the state police through the back door with weapons, which could lead to the breakup of the country.”

One of the former IGPs, Mike Okiro, made the same anti-decentralisation argument during a recent meeting of the South-South Peoples’ Assembly held in Delta State. According to him, “State police cannot help the country. We have tried it before in this country under the regional governments and it did not work.

“It is clear that state governors will misuse it if we go back to state police. They will use it against their political opponents, and I think in a democracy, people should be given the freedom to exercise their rights.”  This stand has obviously been a common feature of the anti-state police perspective.

As elder Statesman and leader of Ijaw nation, Chief Edwin Clark puts it, “I don’t believe in state police, even though it is an essential ingredient of democracy. Nigeria as of today is not developed democratically to the extent of having a state police.

“The way the state governors behave has not made it necessary to have a state police. Some of the governors behave like dictators and there is this fear that they will use the state police for their political interests such as political thuggery,

“The governors are the chief security officers of their respective states and with state police, they will acquire the powers of life and death, where they will use it at their beck and call   to intimidate and cajole their political enemies.

“At the right time, when the democratic practice is matured, state police can be introduced, but certainly not now. I will rather advocate the reformation of the Nigeria Police,” he explained.

Clark further argued that it was curious that some states that are yet to pay the minimum wage of #18,000.00 are among the advocates of the creation of the state police. He reasoned that if they are unable to pay the minimum wage of #18, 000.00 in a situation where the least paid police man earns about #30,000.00, where would they get the money to fund the police?

The implication of this leitmotif stand of the anti-state police is that the Federal Government is more mature and hence more capable to use the police for the good of all than the state governors.

However, former Lagos State Police Commissioner, Mr. Young Arebamen (rtd), disagrees with this perspective. He says the security challenges have grown beyond the competence of a centralised police and advised the Fedral Government not to politicise the issue.

“I can’t understand why some people are afraid of state police, if we have done something for 50 years and we still have problem of insecurity in the system, it is high time we began to think differently… if you eat eba that contained poison in the 60s, will you because of that stop taking eba? The answer is no. all you need to do is to avoid poison”, he said.

How to do this in the present state police saga, he explained, is to institute a control mechanism: “control measure should be spelt out in the constitution to avoid abuse of state police by state governors. We should learn lessons from history and proffer solutions for today and tomorrow”

In buttressing his position further, Arebamen noted that even in the present status quo, the state governments “are mostly responsible for the material and financial needs of the Federal Police”.

He said the governors as chief security officers of the states provide the police with patrol vehicles, maintain and fuel the vehicles, in addition to providing bullet proof vests, arms and ammunition, telecommunication gadgets, and also pay special allowances to those serving in the anti-crime squads.

“We should take politics out of security problems and face the reality of the time”, he concluded.

Unfortunately, this is where Shehu Sani totally disagrees when he noted that “The (governors) have bastardised the local government system, pocketed the states legislature and consistently manipulated elections to their favour, and at the same time looting the state treasury.

“If they have proved incapable, dubious and dishonest in handling those institutions, is self destruction for anyone to think that they can perform magic with state police”.

Even he, however, agrees that state police is necessary, “but the advocates should (first) come out with measures that will make it impossible for state authorities to manipulate”.

One way to do this, he said, is not just “creating layers of security and multiplicity of state apparatus, but ensuring that social justice and economic opportunities are abound for all Nigerians”.

This, obviously, is an unequivocal challenge for government to not only come up with a dispassionate constitution at all levels of governance, but also ensure that such constitution is followed to the letter in terms of application.