Police State Or State Police?

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

On 26 November 2025, Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, announced in a statement personally signed by him that he had “decided to declare a nationwide security emergency” to be accompanied by some measures, including the recruitment by the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and the Armed Forces of 20,000 and 50,000 new personnel respectively.

In the fortnight preceding the announcement, a flurry of frightening terror incidents had created among populations and communities around the country a heightened state of fear. It also reinforced the perception of a normalization of insecurity and of the traumas associated with it.

Bola Tinubu Has A Police Palaver

 By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

When Olusegun Obasanjo returned as the president of Nigeria in May 1999, according to Mohammed Dikko (MD) Yusuf, a former Inspector-General of Police, (IGP) he “inherited a Police Force that was poorly equipped, decimated in numerical strength, deprived of necessary logistics, and lacking, as it were, moral and public support necessary for effective performance and the enhancement of the security of the nation.”

*Tinubu with the IGP

Former IGP, MD Yusuf said these in the report he submitted in 2008 to President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as the Chair of the second Presidential Commission on Police Reform to report in as many years. Headed by former Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG), Muhammadu Danmadami, he first submitted its report in May 2006 to President Yar’Adua’s predecessor and benefactor, President Olusegun Obasanjo.