State Police: Let Us Get It Right This Time -By Adebayo Sodade

As Nigeria retraces its steps towards decentralised policing, the challenge is not merely to bring policing closer to the people, but to build a system that is professional, accountable, properly funded and insulated from political abuse.

Nigeria is on the threshold of a major departure from the highly centralised policing structure that has defined the country for almost six decades.

The irony is that, in contemplating decentralised policing today, Nigeria is not venturing into completely uncharted territory. Before the military intervention of 1966, policing was considerably more decentralised. The Nigeria Police Force operated alongside Native Authority and Local Government police formations, particularly in the Northern and Western regions. The First Republic’s constitutional arrangements permitted local policing within defined jurisdictions.

The military dismantled that arrangement along with fiscal federalism and progressively established a single, centrally controlled police system.

The historical reasons for the change cannot simply be dismissed. The old local police formations had serious weaknesses. They suffered from inadequate training, poor professionalism, insufficient funding and, most seriously, the use of police formations as instruments of political and partisan control. The Police Service Commission’s historical review records these concerns, including the use of local police by political and traditional authorities.

That history contains important lessons we must revisit and mainstream into today’s reform. We should also look at the experiences of other countries like Canada, India and the United States of America with decentralised policing

The attraction of sub-national policing is understandable. A police officer who knows the terrain, understands the community’s language and culture, knows its criminal networks, and has direct access to local intelligence can potentially respond more quickly and effectively than an officer transferred into the area from thousands of kilometres away.

This is particularly relevant in a country as geographically vast and socially diverse as Nigeria.

Multilevel Policing, One Security Architecture

The Constitution and enabling legislation must clearly distinguish federal offences from state offences and establish procedures for cases that cross state boundaries. The system must also provide for seamless cooperation, joint operations, intelligence sharing, and mutual assistance.

The Federal Government, working with the states and appropriate professional institutions, would need to establish minimum standards for recruitment, training, weapons handling, investigation, forensic evidence, human-rights compliance, use of force, detention and interrogation, intelligence gathering, communications, police records, and continuing professional development.

State police should be locally accountable but nationally professional. A single security architecture is needed, even with multiple policing authorities.

Checks and Balances

Citizens yearn for a state police that reflects community involvement, not a police state. The prevailing policing arrangement suffers from a serious trust deficit.

Every state police organisation should be subject to multiple layers of oversight.

These should include the State House of Assembly, an independent complaints mechanism, judicial review, human-rights institutions, professional disciplinary structures, a provincial ombudsman and community policing advisory bodies.

Citizens must have a credible place to complain when police officers abuse their authority, and, more importantly, complaints must lead to investigation and, where appropriate, sanctions.

Funding

It is impossible to establish effective state police without confronting Nigeria’s distorted fiscal structure.

Policing requires tremendous resources. Money is needed to recruit officers, provide training, buy vehicles, maintain communications, run forensic laboratories, build intelligence systems, build police stations, and provide accommodation and pensions.

If states are given the constitutional responsibility to police their territories without adequate fiscal capacity, state police will become uneven, underfunded and vulnerable to political manipulation.

Some states will have sophisticated police services, while others will struggle to maintain basic patrol vehicles. That cannot be the future.

The decentralisation of policing must therefore go hand in hand with a serious conversation about fiscal federalism.

At the state level, police funding must not only be prioritised but also be accountable and transparent. The legislature should appropriate police budgets, provide mechanisms to audit them, and subject them to public accountability. There should be no opaque security vote masquerading as a police budget.

Police Checkpoints

After the Rose Revolution in the Republic of Georgia in 2003, the newly elected regime under Mikheil Saakashvili carried out extensive public sector reforms, including in the Police. Before the reforms, the police had no support from the citizenry. The Road Police, widely regarded as the most corrupt branch of the police, was scrapped and replaced with a Patrolling Division. Nigeria needs a drastic step like this.

Police checkpoints, used for surveillance and crime prevention, are prevalent in Nigeria. The conventional Nigerian checkpoint has several weaknesses:

• It is largely reactive rather than intelligence-led. Officers wait for suspects to come through rather than identifying where, when and how crime is occurring.
• It can become a routine revenue/opportunity point rather than a crime-control instrument.
• It inconveniences legitimate movement and commerce.
• Criminals can simply bypass known checkpoints or alter their routes.
• It concentrates police resources on stopping vehicles rather than investigating criminal networks.
• It can undermine police-community trust, particularly when motorists experience arbitrary searches, delays or harassment.

Nigeria should decentralise policing, but it should not decentralise the checkpoint. The purpose of state police is to bring intelligence, responsiveness and accountability closer to the citizen-not to reproduce at the state level the roadside policing culture that Nigerians have experienced for decades.

The real test of the reform will therefore not be how many checkpoints each state establishes, but how quickly its police can learn about a crime, locate the perpetrators, respond, and bring a properly investigated case to court.

Modern alternatives to police roadblocks include: intelligence-led mobile patrols, automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), CCTV and strategically positioned cameras, rapid-response policing, digital incident reporting, community intelligence networks, and the use of drones for difficult terrain.

Sodade is a retired Permanent Secretary and a former Special Adviser to the Governor of Lagos State on Economic Planning and Budget