I agree to the notion that 'it is the man behind the desk that matters, not the name of the office'. Regarding the issue of state police within the Nigerian polity, I strongly feel it is an issue that needs careful consideration; in fact the only thing needed more than the careful considerations are more careful reconsiderations. Democracy is expensive, freedom is not free, agreed; but do we as a nation have what it takes to embark on such herculean gestures such as the monumental task of establishing states police? I have read some excellent pieces from a number of outstanding minds of great erudition, one of such ingenious essays was by Mobolaji Aluko PhD. what he did was put the concept of states police in Nigeria into perspective, he opines that that is the next and appropriate line of action in the ever so elusive task of securing security of at least lives and with more luck, property, excellent mode of social analysis, I must even confess that to a large extent, I agree with him, just as a summary to what he said, imagine in our present day Nigeria, the government of the past 20 years does next to nothing for the citizenry. Households have to provide security for themselves, mayguards and mopos are the orders of the day. For these households that employ personal security is in straight terms protecting themselves aren’t they? If it was a hotel with a higher need of security, aren’t they providing their own policing? If it was now a case of many houses say for instance a mesh of say 5 street within a housing estate, wouldn’t that be private security? It is if you ask me. Well let’s now put it into a wider perspective, if it was to cover the whole of Festac estate, say the tenants form a vigilante group that monitors security activities in the area, does that mean that the area is forming its own police? Still, I will say it is something like that. To that extent the government of the federal republic of Nigeria would not have a problem with sectional policing, but when it comes to all of Lagosians saying they want to be able to protect themselves, the government of the day would not want to hear a word of it.
They (the FGN) to me have their own basis for the rejection, one of which is that there would be too much power in the hands of the incumbent governor of the state and so it will be difficult to change power fairly. Excellent point. Another issue is the matter of funding, where would the states get their funds from, as it stands, some states are still struggling to pay their basic workforce, if they add police to their budget, it will be unbearable.
From my own point of view, the whole of Nigeria is very volatile at the moment; there is no state that can boast of a standard level of any basic human need, so any states that can achieve close to bearable level of minimum requirements will reap massive investment drive towards itself. If a state is judged as the safest in the country, that state will reap the benefits of that even inward investments wise. Why can’t we be allowed to provide security for ourselves, let the governors appoint their own commissioners of police, that to me will be the full democracy, why would the governor of Ogun have to have a Warri man on his cabinet as commissioner for police? In that case, every other commissioner has state agenda, but the police commissioner would be on federal agenda. If a state recruits and manages its police, the local residents will have more voice in the stakes in the state, the locals will know who their chief police officer is, his or past achievements and record will speak for him or her and posterity will remember them in a different kind of way. Firstly, I don’t think a state police chief will be able to steal as much as N19 Billion and get just 6 months in jail for it, also I don’t think my friend’s uncle who happen to be from my home town will be so confident to collect N20 from me as a taxi driver just because I am driving my car on government road. The police will be more accountable to the people, because of their relatively smaller sizes; it will be much easier for them to be monitored and managed. The performing states will be named so is the least performing states. In that way, there will be a sense of benchmarking between all the states in the federation, lives will at least be safer, pressure will be put on the governors to make every move to drive down the crime figures in their states. A good example will the UK government, every now and again, the department for communities and local government (former office of the deputy prime minister) publishes the crime figures and so everyone know the no go areas of the nation. Community policing like any other kinds of policing is not cheap but at least it has been proven to be effective. This does not in any way mean that I propose an undermining of the federal police idea, what I believe in is that there should still be some of the much needed mobile police squad (although, I keep thinking that is there a kind of police that shouldn’t be mobile) and some other elite squads as needed. At least these elite squads will cut across state boundaries and they will serve as the binding force between all the state police sections in the country. Without the elite squads, it will be impractical to manage the state squads, I can only imagine a situation whereby a gang of robbers escapes a chase from ogun state police force into lagos, in that scenario, the ogun police will have to retreat because they haven’t got jurisdiction to enter into lagos and even if they manage to radio the force in lagos, they wouldn’t really be obliged to continue the pursuit because it is not so much of their immediate problem… more to come
1 comment:
Good one again. I have always been saying something very similar, on this issue of state police. I think on a general note, the closer the government is to the people, the better. When all activities in my home state can be blamed on my state Governor (and not the President), my Governor sits up. Knowing fully well of course that the people know him, expect all from him, know his family and he has no where to go. Same with the police, as you said, it's not very convenient for your friend's uncle to collect money from you on the road for a flimsy or coked up offence. Presently, you see cases of an Hausa cop in Benin, and Idoma cop in Ado, and Itsekiri cop in Potiskum, what does he know with that terrain, the language, culture, etc? These are things that affect crime and even effective policing. You need to understand the people you are policing, the jokes they make, the things they are likely to do, how they will likely react during chaos, etc.
State policing can be effectively managed. The FG would say, they(state police) would be used to rig elections in favour of the incumbent Governor, but isn't the federal police used for same, (well, maybe in favour of whomever the FG wants).
It comes to same thing, if managed properly both can be successful, if not, the otherwise. But even then, when managed properly, state policing would be more successful.
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