Insecurity: Mr President, Don’t Ignore Call For State Police

 By Ray Ekpu

In the last one year I must have written up to a dozen articles on the intractable problem of insecurity in the country. How can I stop when insecurity has not stopped harassing us. It has become a daily nightmare because nowhere is safe today, neither the road nor your house.

Six sisters and their father from the Al-Kadriya family who lived in the Bwari area of Abuja were kidnapped from their residence. They killed the most senior girl when there was a delay in paying the ransom. Then a benevolent Nigerian volunteered to pay the ransom which led to the release of the five girls.

On the road there is no certainty that you will get home without being kidnapped and taken into a forest. Recently, six school children, three teachers and a driver were kidnapped in their school bus along Emure Eporo Road in Ekiti State. No one has said how much was paid as ransom but the pupils and their teachers have now been freed while the driver had been killed before help came to them. From the above scenario you can say that whether you are a kid or kindergarten or an old man that is bent double by age, you remain a target for kidnapping. Their thirst for money, big money, has drained them of human sympathy for those who ordinarily deserve to be protected and pampered.

Even traditional rulers who have for centuries remained the bastion of the people’s culture, tradition and respect have not remained untainted by the new apostles of nihilism. In Ekiti two traditional rulers, the Onimojo of Imojo-Ekiti, Oba Olatunde Olusola and the Elesun of Esun-Ekiti, Oba Babatunde Ogunsakin were killed recently in an ambush by armed men. Recently, the traditional ruler of Orodo Autonomous Community in Mbaitoli Local Government Area of Imo State was abducted. There are alarming confirmation signs that no institution or individual whether highly or lowly placed is sacred, sacrosanct and untouchable any longer.

Recently, 48 Civil Society Organisations in Nigeria under the auspices of the Civil Society Joint Action Group gave figures of killings and kidnappings in the last four years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. From 2019 to 2023, 24, 816 persons were killed while 15, 597 were kidnapped. From the pool of those kidnapped one of two things must have happened to them (a) their loved ones must have paid ransom and they were freed or (b) no ransom was paid so they must have been killed. Neither option can be said to be the best option for Nigerians. But Buhari betrayed the trust that Nigerians had in him when they voted for him. During the campaign in 2015 Buhari was packaged as the general with the midas touch, the problem solver, the game changer and the messiah.

At that time the packaging looked real because he was a general who fought in Nigeria’s civil war and was also a tough talking former military Head of State. Buhari won the election, was sworn in and he turned into jelly, a lily-livered ex-general who was afraid to tackle frontally the problem Nigeria faced in the security sector. He seemed to be more interested in enjoying the overflowing condiments of the Nigerian presidency than in bringing new ideas to utilize in problem solving.

He was imperious to new ideas. He resisted the idea of State Police by offering as excuses some archaic and revoltingly primitive ideas. I have said it before and I am ready to repeat it one million times that no Nigerian leader will be able to solve the problem of insecurity that we face today without State Police. This country is too large for a single police system whose operational commander is based in Abuja. At present Governors are Chief Security Officers only in name. They have no powers over Commissioners of Police posted to their States. 

The Commissioners of Police take instructions from the Inspector General of Police only, not from the Governors. This is inspite of the fact that all Governors in all States fund the activities of the Commissioners of Police posted to their States. If President Tinubu wants to succeed in managing successfully the country’s security problem he must go for State Police. If he ignores the idea of State Police as his predecessors did, he will fail as they did. Many people believe that as a federalist Tinubu will understand that a multiple policing system is good for the country. That system will also put the responsibility of maintaining security in their states squarely on the plate of the Governor.

I know how many Nigerian leaders behave. If any idea comes from an opposition party good or bad, they reject it outright. The PDP Governors Forum has just suggested that we need State Police as a solution to the current upsurge in criminal activities. But my advice to Tinubu is “don’t reject the idea just because it is coming from the PDP.” All the State Governors had voiced the idea in the past. All the Northern Governors and Traditional Rulers have supported the idea. All the Southern Governors had also said “yes” to the idea. The APC under Buhari had set up a Committee to explore the idea of true federalism. They travelled to all the six geo-political zones and interacted with the people and received memoranda and had verbal exchanges with people in all the geo-political zones.

The Committee headed by Nasir El Rufai, then Governor of Kaduna State, came out with a report that stated that the people wanted State Police. If the people wanted state police why should one man stop it by ignoring the decision of people who voted for him. What sort of democracy is that? That is what Buhari did. I hope that Tinubu does not walk along that path because the figures of the killings and kidnappings in the last eight months of his administration are alarming. So far at least 2, 423 people have been killed while 1, 872 persons have been abducted. There have also been 230 incidents of abduction and all of them are multiple abduction cases. These happened in the first two weeks of January 2024. There are a number of ambushes of travellers by road. Thirty passengers were kidnapped near Katari along Kaduna-Abuja highway. There was also the kidnapping of 45 passengers in Orokamo in the Benue-Enugu route. 

To tackle these security problems almost every state now has one security outfit or the other. Some communities have also set up ethnic militias or vigilante groups, a form of self-help since the governments are unable to help them. This is not the best solution to the problem because these militias are using illegal arms. So why don’t we set up state police, recruit people and train them on how to use arms. If most states of the federation have established their own security outfits does that not amount to State Police even though they are limited in terms of quality of arms they are legally permitted to carry?

Under Buhari about 400 persons were identified as sponsors of terrorism. We ask President Tinubu to revisit the matter and get them to face the law. There are two principal sources of funds from terrorists, namely sponsors and ransom from abductees. If money is no longer getting to them from sponsors they will only expect to be funded by ransom from abductees relations. That is a very dicey source of funding because of the poor state of the economy.

And the President may wish to direct its security personnel to fish out and punish those who misappropriated the $460 million earmarked for the provision of CCTV camera in the Federal Capital Territory.

While the government pays attention to the proper equipment of the security agencies, it must also realize that part of the reason for the upsurge in crime is poverty and unemployment. These twin factors have caused an escalation in the level of crime. The longer the criminals are allowed to remain in the business of making money through ransom the more difficult it will be to uproot them from the forests and bring them back to sanity. There must be programmes designed by the Federal and State Governments to deal with poverty and unemployment. In the long run that will be the solution to the huge insecurity problem that we face today. Last word: President Tinubu please work on State Police. Your predecessor ignored it and left the country perilously insecure. History has remained unkind to him.

*Ekpu is a commentator on public issues