By AISHA AGBEREBI
Should the federal government allow states to police themselves? It is one of the oldest arguments in Nigeria’s constitutional history and one of the most urgent. At its simplest, state policing is territorial policing: a model common in federal systems, in which state governments raise, fund, and direct their own officers, separate from a federal force. Governors, security experts, and ordinary citizens have made this case for decades while watching kidnappers, bandits, and insurgents operate with impunity. Nigeria’s deteriorating security situation lends real weight to the argument. The scale of insecurity makes a compelling case on its own. The Nigeria Police Force, founded in 1930, now serves roughly 2 The failure is already clear in the rise of abductions, terrorism, banditry, vigilante groups, community self-defense networks, and private security measures nationwide.
While it remains uncertain whether state police can fully resolve Nigeria’s security issues, it’s a valid concern. Considering the country’s widespread insecurity, uneven federal funding, and a constitutional setup where many governors claim responsibility for security without actual authority, the idea of allowing states to police themselves is a notion Nigeria can no longer ignore. About 250 million people with only about 325,000 police personnel, well short of the United Nations’ recommended ratio of one officer per 400 citizens, a shortfall that critics say is worsened by entrenched nepotism and an overly centralised command structure. State governments are estimated to cover around 70 percent of the force’s costs, yet have no say over how officers are deployed. The Lagos State Security Trust Fund channelled 4.765 billion naira into police vehicles and equipment in April 2016 alone, while a former Plateau State police commissioner says his command went eighteen months without a single federal vehicle or litre of fuel, relying entirely on the state. Federal budgets tell the same story: in 2015, the police received 5 billion naira against a request of 71 billion naira for recurrent costs.
