State police is not the answer, restructuring Nigeria is. This is the central argument of a public memorandum by Obiageli 'Oby' Ezekwesili addressed to President Bola Tinubu, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Governors Forum, and the people of Nigeria.
The Push for State Police
The Tinubu administration's renewed push for state police has reopened a consequential public policy debate. The proposal gains momentum because it addresses a painful reality: Nigeria's security architecture is failing. Terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, violent extremism, communal conflicts, and organized criminality have overwhelmed a centrally controlled police force in a country of over 230 million people. For many, state police seems an obvious and long-overdue solution.
Recent Afrobarometer findings show that 79 percent of Nigerians consider kidnapping a serious national problem; 33 percent personally know someone kidnapped in the last five years; and 63 percent say they or a family member felt unsafe at home or in their neighborhood during the previous year. These are indicators of a profound crisis of state effectiveness and citizen confidence.
Why State Police Is Not Enough
Ezekwesili argues that while state police may be necessary, it is not sufficient. Nigeria risks mistaking a symptom for the disease. The security crisis is not fundamentally a policing crisis but a manifestation of a deeper constitutional, governance, and political economy crisis that has eroded state capacity, weakened accountability, and undermined public institutions.
The central question should not be whether governors should control police forces, but whether the constitutional architecture governing the Nigerian federation remains fit for purpose. Insecurity is inseparable from Nigeria's dysfunctional federal arrangement.
The Problem of Over-Centralization
At the heart of the problem lies a constitutional order that concentrates excessive authority, fiscal resources, and political power at the center. Although Nigeria describes itself as a federation, many institutional arrangements bear the characteristics of a highly centralized state. The 1999 Constitution's Exclusive Legislative List contains sixty-eight items reserved solely for the federal government, while the Concurrent List contains only a limited number of shared subjects.
Police is just one of sixty-eight subjects constitutionally monopolized by the federal government. The same Exclusive List centralizes authority over prisons, mines, railways, arms, and numerous other functions. Removing policing alone without addressing the wider architecture would treat a symptom while leaving the underlying condition untouched.
The Historical Context
This arrangement is neither accidental nor historically inevitable. Scholars of Nigerian federalism have documented how the concentration of powers accelerated during decades of military rule. Functions previously exercised by regions or shared among different levels of government were progressively transferred to the center. The 1999 Constitution largely preserved that military-era command structure. What Nigerians often describe as federalism is, in many respects, a unitary system wearing federal clothing.
The consequences are evident across every major sector: insecurity, economic underperformance, and weak public service delivery. The same constitutional structure that produces a distant security architecture also generates fiscal dependency, weakens subnational initiative, discourages productivity, and reduces institutional accountability. Nigeria's security and economic crises are products of the same constitutional dysfunction.
The Need for Comprehensive Restructuring
The geographical spread of insecurity demonstrates this reality. What was once concentrated in the North-East and North-West has expanded across virtually every geopolitical zone, with kidnapping networks increasingly penetrating parts of the South-West. The challenge is systemic, not regional.
Therefore, the proper national conversation is not 'State Police or no State Police' but whether Nigeria is prepared to redesign a constitutional order that has concentrated too much power at the center, weakened subnational initiative, undermined accountability, and constrained development. State police will be necessary, but necessity does not make it the solution to a dysfunctional Nigeria.
Nigeria needs a comprehensive restructuring agenda anchored in a new constitutional settlement—one that rebalances the Exclusive, Concurrent, and Residual Lists; devolves powers to the lowest effective level of government; strengthens fiscal federalism; guarantees equal citizenship; promotes productivity and competitiveness; and restores sovereignty to the people through a Citizens-led Sovereign National Conference and a referendum on a new constitution.
That is the true restructuring agenda. Restructuring the dysfunctional territory and system that Nigeria has become is the bold conversation and action that Nigerians can no longer afford to postpone. There are no other viable alternatives left. In her next public memo, Ezekwesili will make a case for immediate steps toward the restructuring and constitutional processes. She urges immediate action on the restructuring agenda through a brand-new citizens-led constitutional process to save the beleaguered country and people, with no more tragically costly delays.
Ezekwesili is founder of SPPG – School of Politics, Policy and Governance.
