There is a peculiar irony sitting at the heart of Nigeria's latest constitutional reform. Having amended the constitution to permit the establishment of state police, the country is now engaged in a noisy, high-profile debate about how such forces should look, who should control them, and when they should arrive. What is missing from that debate is any serious reckoning with why Nigeria's existing police force is broken in the first place, and who broke it.

Nigeria stands at a constitutional turning point. With the Senate having passed the State Police Bill, the long debate over the decentralisation of policing is at last, close to…

The 36 states of the Federation have yet to ratify the establishment of a State Police force under their responsibility. For several decades, Nigeria has been struggling to…