By Ikenna Asomba
OVER the last 10 years, I have been a strong advocate for disbanding or unbundling the over-centralised Nigeria Police Force and decentralising policing system into 774 Local Police Departments, and 36 State Police. In the United States where I live, we got over 12,501 Local Police Departments; 3,063 County Sheriff Departments; 50 States Police, as well as Federal Law Enforcement Agencies like the FBI, CIA, US Marshals, Secret Services, DEA, et al.
To achieve a decentralised policing model in Nigeria, Pres. Bola Tinubu and the Senate President Godswill Akpabio must not be in a hurry to muddle the novel idea of State Policing in Nigeria. Among other things, the current rush to pass the State Police Act in Nigeria is largely unnecessary and smells of 2027 politics without tinkering on pertinent issues such as:
1. Will there be the same Police Act establishing, governing, and regulating the 36 States Police in Nigeria, or will there be 36 different Police Acts establishing, governing, and regulating the 36 States Police?
2. Sources and management of funding for at least four years of the experiment.
3. Personnel and qualifications for becoming a State Police officer across the 36 States of Nigeria.
4. Quality of training in the 36 State Police Academies before an officer is sworn in via an oath of service.
5. Annual cycle training and retraining for already sworn-in officers to keep them abreast of modern and best global policing practices.
6. Annual weapons handling training and annual shooting requalifications for officers sworn in across the 36 State Police.
7. Guardrails to be enforced without fear or favours by the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), with the help of federal law enforcement agencies such as the DSS and a merged EFCC/ICPC/CCB, against the abuse of police powers by State Governors, elected and appointed State officials.
There is an urgent need for millions of Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora to hold these serious intellectual conversational intercourses through public hearings and expert conferences. Failure, we may end up creating 36 States vigilantes, not an effective State Policing System across Nigeria’s 36 States.
We may end up having the problems encountered by regional policing systems across the three (3) regions in Nigeria’s first republic (1960-1966), part of the problems that led to the imminent collapse of that republic within six years of experimentation.
Let’s keep talking…
Ikenna Asomba is a political scientist and journalist. He writes from the State of Illinois, United States.
