Another missed opportunity on state police

It may not have gone unnoticed that Nigeria and indeed Nigerians missed yet again another opportunity at arresting and perhaps concretizing efforts at obliterating the monster in the nation’s existence which is insecurity when the National Economic Council (NEC) refused to discuss the issue of state police in preference to such distractions as state creation recently.

This oversight on the part of the governors of 36 states and the Vice President Kashim Shettima who constitute the NEC is another affirmation that Nigerians do not matter to our leaders when it comes to issues of priority and proximate consequences.

The National Economic Council which is presumed to be the highest economic advisory organ of government considering its diverse composition literally betrayed the emotions, sensibilities and trust of the populace by choosing to downgrade the issue of state policing in its agenda at its last meeting in the face of increasing acts of banditry, terrorism, killings and decimation of our communities but rather indulged in Afganistanism, a scenario which allows leaders to ignore matters of proximate and immediate consequences in chase of frivolities.

We are still dumbfounded that the issue of state police, as it relates to finding lasting solutions to insecurity in the land did not occupy the front burner, an indication that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration is obviously not on the same page with the masses. Simply put, state actors are far away from feeling the pains and the hopelessness of the ordinary Nigerian.

We are in no way insinuating that the NEC is the body to enact laws establishing state police but rather drawing attention to the fact that this eminent group of persons has a pattern of setting agenda for the rest of state actors to the extent that whatever it instigates can precipitates actions and reactions at the highest level of government.

Debates on state policing, its pros and cons have been very enlightening now more than ever before. The debates so far have been constructive and forceful in the bid to ensure security and justice for all Nigerians. There is no gain saying that the present debilitating effects of insecurity across the country has further increased the clamour for the creation of state police.

Indeed, the merits and demerits of a state police in Nigeria are as convincing, so much so that, one is left in utter bewilderment and in a state of helplessness likened to being between the devil and the deep blue sea. Nigerians are therefore, left in a difficult situation where they have to choose between a state police formation or the present status quo of the central federal police command structure as provided in Section 214 (2)(a) and 215(2) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and Section 6 of the Police Act, 1990 laws which provide that the “the Force shall be commanded by the Inspector-General of Police”.

It is consequent upon our full realization of the tortuous legislative and administrative processes and procedures for arriving at the resolutions for the establishment of state police that we had expected the political leaders of the nation who make up the NEC to have had an opinion on the matter to the extent that those entrusted with instigating, propping and supervising the legal framework would accept the challenge of fast tracking the process in the same manner that the National Assembly, without let and hindrance altered the national anthem in a matter of hours even when it was obvious that there was nothing either urgent nor significant in trading the then subsisting anthem to a previous one.

Nigeria cannot continue to grope in the dark where it is assumed that the level of insecurity in the country does not warrant the decentralization and devolution of national security architecture to the point of empowering governments at the state and local levels to supervise the enforcement of laws and the deployment of security agencies to areas of needs within the shortest possible time and with proper understanding of issues at stake.

London’s Metropolitan Police and America’s system of deployment of police to grassroots’ units are all semblances of community policing. No new resident moves into any apartment in Europe or America without the local security agencies taking special notice of such addition all with the view to monitoring possible security breaches. Officers recruited and trained locally are expected to have a deeper understanding of the specific issues and needs of their immediate environment,t hence the importance of state policing.

We will not be mincing words when we insist that the possible benefits of state police include increased accountability where state governments would be directly responsible for police performance, potentially leading to greater responsiveness and oversight. Enhanced community policing makes for closer ties between communities and their police force, which could foster trust and cooperation, improving crime prevention and detection. It also reduces the burden on federal resources, considering that distributing policing responsibilities could free up federal resources for other national security concerns.

We are confident that the fear of a possible lack of national coordination in the face of state police regarding how to maintain national security and co-ordination in the absence of a united federal police force is a low level risk that would be contained within the realm of professionalism and respect for law and territorial integrity.

The continuous killings nationwide amidst allegations of the infiltration of foreign criminal elements, the frightening rate of transmitting citizens into displaced persons in their own communities, the spate of kidnappings now been deconstructed into business empire, the establishment of large ungoverned and rent seeking spaces which denies indigenes access to farmlands and the eventual entrenchment of food insecurity in the country all culminate in our praying for expedited processes and programmes which will translate to the 0verhauling of the nation’s security architecture as to accommodate any political restructuring which will be capable of accommodating state police as a possible panacea to insecurity in the land. NEC has a role to play in this.