After two decades of banditry, terrorism, kidnapping, and communal clashes, Nigerians are desperate for answers. The loudest call today is for state police. Governors demand it, the National Assembly debates it, and citizens, tired of waiting hours for help that never comes, are ready to try anything. But state police will not magically end insecurity. It is not a silver bullet. At best, it is a sharper tool. And a sharper tool in untrained hands cuts the wrong way.
The Case for State Police
The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) centrally controls 370,000 officers but cannot secure 220 million people across 774 Local Government Areas. That translates to one officer for every 595 citizens, against the UN benchmark of 1:450. The NPF system is broken by design. Officers are posted far from home, do not speak local languages, and are unfamiliar with the terrain. Intelligence dries up, and response times stretch from minutes to days. Meanwhile, Abuja must approve operations while villages burn.
State police promises three solutions: numbers, proximity, and accountability. Recruiting locally yields officers who know which bush paths kidnappers use. Governors deploying directly reduces federal bureaucracy. State assemblies controlling the budget creates political pressure to perform.
Concerns and Risks
There are understandable concerns. First, giving a governor a police force without guardrails creates a personal army. Local vigilantes have become political thugs, and state funds have dried up, leaving community enforcement agents unpaid and extorting citizens. Second, criminals do not respect state lines. Bandits fleeing Sokoto will set up in Kebbi if Kebbi's police are weaker. Thirty-six separate police forces without shared databases or joint command is not security reform; it is balkanisation. Third, if each state sets its own training standards, we may have first-class police in Lagos and third-class police in Gombe, with human rights abuses harder to track.
Six Non-Negotiable Conditions
1. Write the Rules Before Creating the Force
Amend the Constitution to specify exclusive, concurrent, and residual responsibilities. Federal police should handle terrorism, cybercrime, interstate kidnapping, and elections. State police should manage community crime, traffic, and first response. Establish a National Policing Standards Commission to enforce a unified training curriculum, firearms policy, and code of conduct nationwide.
2. Ensure Funding Independence
Police salaries and equipment must be a first-line charge on both the Federation Account and state Internally Generated Revenue. The Federal Government should equalise funding so Zamfara's officers are not using sticks while Lagos uses drones. A hungry officer is a corrupt officer.
3. Put Oversight in Citizens' Hands
Each State Police Service Commission must include the Nigerian Bar Association, National Human Rights Commission, civil society, and traditional rulers, not just the governor's loyalists. Body cameras should be standard. The federal Attorney-General must have power to prosecute abusive state officers.
4. Institutionalise Collaboration and Intelligence Sharing
States must talk to each other, and command must be de-politicised. A National Crime Database is mandatory. Joint Operations Centres in each zone should coordinate interstate pursuits.
5. Ensure Merit-Based Recruitment and Tenure
Entrance exams and background checks should be run by an independent national body. State Commissioners of Police need two-thirds State Assembly approval and serve fixed five-year terms. Any use of police for political intimidation means automatic dismissal.
6. Fix What the Police Cannot Fix
Nigeria's insecurity is fuelled by poverty, injustice, and a failing federal system. Police do not create jobs or speed up courts. State police will fail if millions of youths remain unemployed and courts take eight years to convict a kidnapper. Security reform must run alongside judicial reform, youth employment, and arms control.
The Time to Act Is Now
The 1999 Constitution centralises policing because it distrusts the states. That distrust has given us national failure with local casualties. Enacting state police is a structural correction. It admits that proximity governs better than distance. It is not a silver bullet but a scalpel—a small, extremely sharp knife for surgery and precision cutting. Nigeria's security crisis needs surgery, not magic. The National Assembly should pick up the scalpel and write the operating manual into law. The question is not whether we need state police, but whether we are disciplined enough to legislate it correctly. Our body count, displaced villages, and abandoned farmlands say we must try anyway.
Dr. Adenekan, a former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) executive, is the executive director of the Diaspora Center for Economic and Business Development Initiatives, Inc., in Pikesville, Maryland, USA.
