I don’t understand all this fuss about state police. Of what use does any state in need of the police, and the state lacks access to the police? I don’t know.
Each of the states of this Federation has its own police command, the Commissioner of which is answerable to the governor. In fact, these days, one finds that in most cases, it is the governors that lobby the IGP for the CP of their choice to be posted to their states. So, access to police services by governors is unfettered and unrestricted by any circumstance. The constitutional provision that empowers the CPs to decently disobey any unlawful order of their governor by referring them to the IGP, is a paper tiger that lacks any utility value, because hardly has any CP ever invoked that provision against his governor in this country, at least to my knowledge. The CP command is an accredited member of the states executive and security councils.
Most states, if not all, maintain their police command with the provision of tools of operation and logistics facilities, even more than the federal government does. In Lagos state, there is a security what is it called, from where resources are drawn to maintain the police. So are some other states across the nation.
So, everything considered, what exactly do governors want or need a police formation of their own for, which they can’t get from NPF as presently constituted? I don’t know.
The demerits of creating state police, far outweigh its merits, if any. As rightly observed by our reverred prince up there, giving some of these governors the authority to control police forces of their own can truncate our democracy and cause anarchy in this country. These desperate politicians need federal police to provide a check to their excesses. These people who would stop at nothing in their desperate bid to grab power and also desperate about fielding their choice stooges to succeed them in office, will certainly set their police against their opposing candidates and cause mayhem in the land.
When it comes to pursuit of power, politicians are as destructive as peevish children. They are so irascible and mean. Such characters should not be trusted with excessive power of regulated or conventional force under their control. Said Awo, the sage…..
*”A sharp knife is a useful household instrument in the hands of a sane adult. But the same knife can become a lethal weapon in the hands of an imbecile, a child, or a crazy fellow. “*
Police authority is like the sharp knife of that Awo’s philosophical proposition. And because obsession for power and pursuit of inordinate ambition have always taken the best part of them and rob them of rationality, most of these politicians are like the imbeciles, children, and crazy fellows in that sagely saying of Awo. Therefore, for the sanity of the rest of us in this polity, these voracious provincial politicians shouldn’t be trusted with police powers. It is dangerous for the country.
If the current security situation is what is responsible for this clamoring for state police, it is because the federal government has failed to heed and respond to the clarion calls of successive heads of NPF to improve the conditions of service of the force by providing the personnel with the quality trainings, tools of operation and proper logistic facilities needed to function to optimum capacity, coupled with the welfare provisions to boost the morale of the workforce and spur them into action as the situation demands. It is because successive federal governments have failed to geometrically increase the staff strength of the police personnel and enlarge its establishments at all levels to cover the nation’s field and manage its burgeoning population, in compliance with the UN standard.
All these are no faults of the NPF, but that of the leaders of the nation. Instead of giving us a formidable and worthwhile police force to manage the internal security of this country, they keep wasting our lean reasources on creating other outfits and parallel bodies to ridicule and supplant the nation’s police force, thereby rendering it prostrate and ineffectual. How is this the fault of the NPF? I don’t know.
The masses who are in desperate need of sound security to enable them to function productively and live safely in the country, are very confused. Their confusion is evidenced by their desperate demand for the creation of state police, in their erroneous and misguided belief that it is state police that’ll provide solution to the worsening security challenges. Instead of joining the authorities of NPF to pressurize the nation’s handlers to heed the deafening clarion calls of the force for an improved police with the features detailed above, they are calling for state police which would even worsen the situation for them the more. For if with the enormity of resources at its disposal, the federal government could fail in its sacred responsibility to provide the nation with a fit and proper police force to secure the nation, is it the begarly state governments with almost zero IGR, almost half of whose resources the governors are looting to massage their insatiable greed and avarice, that’ll will be able to fund a reliable police force? I just wonder.
Some have argued that the federal government is also culpable for misusing the police. I do not dispute it. But then, even these isolated cases of the federal government’s alleged misuse of the police are worrisome enough. Should we then add 37 more cases of such abuses to it with the creation of state police? That’ll be adding salt to our festering injury, with a risk of fatal consequence. I must warn.
Successive Nigerian leaders have been killing the NPF by numbers. And now, they are moving the nation towards the perilous option of state police, as if beheading is the proper therapy for a headache. Let’s see where this dangerous tango would lead us. May God spare our lives. Amen.
My name remains Dauda Adesina Joki-Lasisi esq.
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