By Lemmy Ughegbe, Ph.D
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has asked the National Assembly to amend the Constitution to create state police. The proposal comes at a moment of national exhaustion. Nigerians are tired of funerals. Tired of mass abductions.
Tired of headlines that sound like war dispatches from within their own country. The real question is no longer whether insecurity is intolerable. The question is whether decentralising policing will strengthen security or enable abuse.
Nigeria is bleeding at a scale that statistics struggle to capture. Security trackers indicate that more than 8,000 Nigerians were killed in violent incidents in 2024 alone. Preliminary figures for 2025 suggest at least 6,000 additional deaths from banditry, insurgency, communal clashes, and kidnappings.
Thousands have been abducted. Entire communities across Zamfara, Niger, Plateau, Benue, Kaduna and parts of the South East have been displaced. In some local governments, the state has receded into symbolism.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Police Force operates with fewer than 400,000 officers for a population exceeding 220 million. That places Nigeria well below the United Nations benchmark of one officer to 450 citizens. In reality, once VIP deployments and non-operational postings are removed, the ratio deteriorates further. This is not merely under policing. It is a structural weakness.
Governors are described as the Chief Security Officers of their states. Yet they cannot command the police hierarchy within their jurisdictions. Commissioners of Police answer to the Inspector General. The Inspector General answers to the President.
When violence erupts, governors issue statements. When intelligence is ignored, they plead. When tragedy strikes, they explain. Responsibility without authority is not federalism. It is institutional theatre. It is this contradiction that fuels the call for state police.
But here lies the tension that must not be romanticised. Nigeria’s history reminds us that decentralised policing can be weaponised. During the First Republic, regional police forces were deployed as partisan tools. The Yan Doka era was not folklore. It was a lived experience.
More troubling is the present institutional reality. In many states today, governors have reduced state legislatures to fragile appendages. Speakers who assert independence often face immediate impeachment. Lawmakers who question executive conduct risk political isolation. Separation of powers at the state level is frequently aspirational rather than actual.
This is where the fear becomes legitimate. If a governor can dominate the legislature and operate with limited oversight, what prevents that same governor from converting a state police force into an instrument of political enforcement? This concern cannot be dismissed as paranoia. It is grounded in observable institutional weakness.
Yet preserving centralised policing has not delivered safety either. Central command has not prevented abuse. It has not guaranteed neutrality. It has not delivered a rapid response. Instead, it has produced a security architecture that is overstretched, distant from communities, and slow to adapt to local intelligence.
The choice, therefore, is not between perfection and peril. It is between reforming a failing structure and entrenching it out of fear. Comparative experience offers perspective. Kenya, after the post election violence of 2007 and 2008 that claimed over 1,000 lives, restructured aspects of its policing and oversight mechanisms to improve local accountability and intelligence responsiveness.
Reform did not eliminate crime, but it acknowledged that over-centralisation had contributed to institutional failure. South Africa operates a nationally structured police service, but allows provincial oversight and metropolitan policing in major cities. Crime challenges remain serious, yet decentralised oversight enhances local agility and accountability.
Nigeria remains among the most centralised federal policing systems in the world. The argument that decentralisation equals fragmentation is simplistic. Casualty data contradict the argument that centralisation equals unity.
But decentralisation without guardrails would be reckless. If state police are to be created, constitutional design must be meticulous. Section 214 must be amended with jurisdictional precision.
Federal police must retain authority over terrorism, organised crime, interstate offences, and constitutional matters. State police should focus on internal law enforcement and community security.
Section 308 immunity must be revisited. No governor should exercise armed coercive power while shielded from criminal liability for its abuse. Where a governor deploys a state police force for unlawful, partisan, or oppressive purposes, investigation and, where warranted, prosecution must be immediate rather than deferred until the governor’s term expires.
To safeguard this framework, independent State Police Commissions must be constitutionally entrenched and structurally insulated from executive interference. Clear federal oversight triggers must be defined, permitting intervention when abuse, rights violations, or a breakdown of the constitutional order occur. Judicial review must be swift, accessible, and credible, ensuring that the rule of law, not political convenience, remains the final arbiter.
Fiscal capacity must be mandatory. A state unable to pay teachers consistently cannot responsibly manage an armed police force. Armed officers owed months of salary are not a governance inconvenience. They are a security risk. Recruitment standards, training doctrine, and ethical codes must remain nationally regulated. A decentralised command structure must not create fragmented standards.
The deeper truth is uncomfortable. Nigeria’s insecurity is not just operational. It is structural. The centre is overstretched. The states are constrained. Communities feel abandoned. Vigilante groups proliferate because citizens are improvising security in the absence of trust. That trajectory is unsustainable.
President Tinubu’s proposal forces a national reckoning. It challenges Nigeria to decide whether it prefers managed dysfunction or disciplined reform. But reform must not be driven solely by desperation. It must be anchored in accountability.
The debate is not state police versus no state police. The question is whether Nigeria is institutionally mature enough to decentralise power without also decentralising impunity. More than 14,000 violent deaths in two years is not an argument for preserving the status quo. Yet empowering governors without strengthening institutions would merely relocate the danger.
If Nigeria chooses state police, it must simultaneously choose stronger legislatures, narrower immunity, independent oversight, fiscal discipline, and constitutional clarity. Otherwise, we will not decentralise security. We will decentralise fear.
Dr Lemmy Ughegbe, FIMC, CMC
Email: lemmyughegbeofficial@gmail.com
WhatsApp ONLY: +2348069716645
