Insecurity: Nigeria Needs Regional Police, Not State Police

 By Olu Fasan

Recently, faced with escalating violence across Nigeria, the president, Bola Tinubu, reportedly agreed with state governors to establish state police. The news excited those calling for state police in Nigeria. But the agitation for state police is misguided; it is based on shallow reasoning, not on a rational, hard-nosed analysis of the potential consequences. 

To be sure, Nigeria cannot continue to have a unitary police force that purports to “police” the entire country with orders from Abuja. Equally, however, Nigeria cannot have a mushrooming of ramshackle state “police forces”. What Nigeria needs is formidable regional police with extensive reach across a region. Truth is, in the Nigerian context, the advantages of regional police far outweigh those of state police.

Somebody may remind me that each of America’s 50 states has a police force. Well, consider the facts: the US is the world’s richest country, and even the smallest American state, Rhode Island (population: 1.096 million), with a GDP of $55.6bn, is richer than each of Nigeria’s 36 states, except Lagos. The GDP of Lagos State is N41trn ($102bn). Rivers State has the second highest GDP: N7.96trn ($19.72bn). Compare that with Rhode Island’s. By now, Nigerians must accept that it was a fatal error to have adopted the very costly American presidential system, and the idea that Nigeria must do what America does is nothing but bunkum.

Last week, the presidency described Nigeria as a “very poor” country, saying Nigeria’s “wealth is overestimated”. So, why is a poor Third World country running a very expensive US-style presidential system, with a behemothic Federal Government and 36 state governments, each with extensive and expensive administrative structures? Truth is, the 36-state structure fosters duplications and wastefulness. 

For instance, while a region could have had two or three fantastic universities, there are now five or six bog-standard “universities” because the region has five or six states. While a region could have had two functional airports, there are five or six underused and resource-draining airports. Last November, the National Civil Aviation Authority said that 15 airports built by state governments were underperforming and not sustainable because of very low passenger traffic. 

So, the first problem with state police in Nigeria is that no state, except Lagos, can properly fund and run it. Most of the states cannot survive without the monthly allocation from the Federation Account, and even with the allocation they are borrowing heavily to cover their recurrent expenses. So, how would they fund a police force? Would the Federal Government change the revenue-sharing formula so that states get at least 37 per cent, instead of the current 26.7 per cent? Well, despite Tinubu’s knee-jerk promise to create state police, he won’t agree to change the formula and give states enough money to run their police forces.

However, instead of creating five, six or seven separate police forces in a region, the states in each region can pull resources together and establish a strong and powerful regional police force. State governments already support vigilante groups with little positive impact on violence. Leaving states, most of them unviable and technically bankrupt, to create “police forces” would merely result in the proliferation of glorified vigilante groups, not proper police forces. Put simply, state police would be under-resourced, badly trained and poorly remunerated. It’s a disaster Nigeria must avoid.   

Which brings us to the second problem. State police will be wholly politicised and abused. No constitutional safeguards will stop state governors from hijacking state police for political ends. Think about it: have state governors not hijacked the State Independent Electoral Commission, SIECs, such that no local government election is ever free and fair in Nigeria? Have they not crippled local governments, hijacking their Federation Account allocations paid into the so-called State Joint Local Government Account? One of the key findings in the Uwais Report is that the Executive arm of government, both at the federal and state levels, has always controlled and manipulated the electoral bodies and security agencies to gain electoral advantage. State police will destroy local democracy in Nigeria.

In their well-researched book entitled Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know, John Campbell and Matthew Page wrote that “militancy flourished (in Rivers State) as politicians armed and employed militants to rig elections and threaten their opponents.” They added: “In Rivers State, the ruling party armed and funded vigilante groups as a tool for rigging elections.” Now, tell me, is state police safe in the hands of Rivers State politicians? Rivers State is just one example. In a country where politics is a high-stakes, do-or-die, winner-takes-all affair, nothing will stop state governors from hijacking state police during elections.

By contrast, regional police will be less easy to manipulate. Why? Because each region’s police force will be jointly run by the states in the region. Given that each geopolitical zone is likely to be controlled by more than one political party, the possibility of a region’s police force being commandeered by one state governor is remote. For instance, it’s hard to imagine the two PDP governors in the South-West acquiescing to their APC counterparts using the region’s police force to rig elections. In the UK, ministers have oversight over the territorial police forces, but the police are operationally independent from government. This will be more likely under regional police than under state police in Nigeria. Regional police will have in-built checks and balances that can be strengthened constitutionally.

Finally, violence in Nigeria is not contained within a state; it spreads within a region. The economist Charles Tiebout argues that where there are possibilities of significant inter-jurisdictional externalities or spillovers, it’s better to pull resources together and create institutions with inter-jurisdictional or inter-territorial reach. Thus, strong and powerful regional police, with a region-wide presence, is better able to deal with the intra-regional nature of violence in Nigeria, including intelligence gathering, than siloed state police. 

So, how can regional police be created? Well, if the Constitution can be amended to create state police, it can certainly be amended to recognise the current six geopolitical zones and create six regional police forces. The six geopolitical zones are already a de facto structure for allocating political and developmental resources in Nigeria. Furthermore, governors in each geopolitical zone are already working together for their region. So, nothing stops them from creating a regional police force. The only obstacle is a selfish desire to hoard power!

*Dr. Fasan is a commentator on public issues