Magodo Saga: Why Nigeria needs state policing

The refusal last Tuesday by a police officer to obey Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State sparked outrage, exposing the deficiencies of the 1999 Constitution, which does not allow for the state police. The constitution invested the control of the police force on the Federal Government, contrary to what normally obtains in federal systems, where the police is placed under the concurrent list.   

Because of this saga, the  Inspector-General of Police (IGP) ,Usman Baba and the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami (SAN) came under fire over the deployment of policemen in Magodo Phase II Estate, Lagos.Their alleged involvement drew criticisms  from the South-West Governors Forum, lawyers and lawmakers as well as other well-meaning Nigerians.

The police officer in charge of the team, Bimbola Oyewole, a Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP), had told the governor that he was acting on instruction and therefore would not obey the Governor Sanwo-Olu. “I ‘am here on the instruction of the IGP through the AGF,” he told the governor.

When Sanwo-Olu and members of the Executive Council visited the estate, he met CSP Oyewole, who told him his team had been sent from Abuja to execute the Supreme Court judgment.

After the police team lead could not provide a copy of the judgment as demanded, the governor ordered the policemen to deactivate their operation and leave Lagos in the interest of peace.But the officer refused, saying he was acting on the orders of the AGF and IGP.The governor then told him to call his superior and those who gave him instruction, saying the matter was between the Lagos State Government and the judgment creditor.

A situation in which a junior police had the temerity to disobey a governor popularly elected by the people of a state, is an insult to the Nigerian federalism and democracy. It made a mockery of the  so-called Chief Security Officers appellation often ascribed to the state governors. How can a governor be called a Chief Security Officer when he or she does not have control over the state security apparatus? This does not happen even in a unitary system of government as exemplified by the practice in United Kingom.

This saga, once again, brings to the front burner the need for state police. A former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, had  recently made a case for the decentralisation of policing in the country. With insecurity increasingly intractable, pervasive, and mutating, Obasanjo  said in Lagos, “I have said it before, and I will say it again. Nigeria should have state police (in all the states) so that they can adequately tackle insecurity.” This is the blunt, authoritative prescription to diminish the insecurity siege upon the country. This recommendation ought to take centre stage in national affairs.

Ordinarily, the responsibility for law and order and consequently, the operational control, management, and superintendence of the police should be a concurrent responsibility of the federal, state, and local governments. Like other advocates of a decentralised policing system, Obasanjo anchored his advocacy on the need to review the deficiencies associated with the current system (1999 Constitution), which is wholly an ineffective centralised structure. His logic gets support from political convention, and the pragmatism of contemporary society.

But surprisingly, in his interview with Channels Television on Wednesday, President Muhammadu Buhari flatly ruled out the state police as an option, in the search for solutions to the confounding security challenges of the country, which span terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and other extreme violent crimes. He similarly chided advocates of restructuring for allegedly being amorphous in their agitations, while insisting on the resuscitation of old cattle routes as a way of solving the recurring herders-farmers conflicts across the country.

 The United States has the federal police, 50 state police agencies, sheriffs’ departments in counties, police forces in 1,000 cities and 20,000 townships in New England towns, and police forces in 15,000 villages, boroughs, and incorporated towns. “To this list must be added special categories, such as the police of the District of Columbia; various forces attached to authorities governing bridges, tunnels, and parks; university, or ‘campus,’ police forces; and some units that police special districts formed for fire protection, soil conservation, and other diverse purposes,” the Britannica says. Canada, Australia, Germany, and Switzerland operate on similar structures.

Pragmatically, the United Kingdom, though a unitary polity, operates 48 civilian police forces: 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, a national police force in both Scotland and Northern Ireland, and three specialist police forces (the British Transport Police, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, and the Ministry of Defence Police).

For some times now there have been calls  for  return to “True” Federalism in Nigeria as practised  before 1966. Federalism is a system of government in which  both the central and unit governments draw their powers from the constitution. In other words, federalism in Nigeria refers to the devolution of self-governance by Nigeria to its federated states, which share sovereignty with the Federal Government.

Federalism as defined K.C. Wheare,  is a system of government in which the same territory is controlled by two levels of government. Generally, an overarching national government is responsible for broader governance of larger territorial areas, while the smaller subdivisions, states, and cities govern the issues of local concern. Both the national government and the smaller political subdivisions have the power to make laws and both have a certain level of autonomy from each other.

In Nigeria , the first Federal Constitution was  the Lyttleton Constitution, named for Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos and enacted in 1954. This constitution firmly established the federal principle and paved the way for independence. This was followed by the 1960 Federal Constitution and 1963 Republican Constitution, which came into force on October 1, 1963.  All the three constitutions allowed the regional governments to share power with the Federal Government until 1966 when the military seized the government and sacked elected civilians.

The problem of the Nigerian federalism started with 1979 Constitution, when the military, may be because of the command nature of its structure , deviated from the true principles of federalism and wielded more power to the central government. Twenty years after, 1999 Constitution perpetuated the same structure to the central government.

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999 as amended) places the responsibility of policing the entire country in the hands of the Federal Government and its agencies. According to Section 214 of the Constitution, the Nigeria Police Force shall be under the full and exclusive control of the Federal Government. Furthermore, Section 215 subsection 2 of the same Constitution states that “the Nigeria Police force shall be under the command of the Inspector-General of Police and any contingent of the Nigeria Police Force stationed in a state shall, subject to the authority of the Inspector-General of Police, be under the command of Commissioner of Police of that State”.

As stated in the foregone paragraphs , the  background to Nigeria’s centrally controlled police arrangement is in the long years of military incursion in the nation’s politics and governance, which dates back to 1966 when the democratic order was first forcibly overthrown by soldiers. The ensuing twenty-eight years of unitary rule by the military was enough for the centralised command architecture of the nation’s police to concretise.

Advocates of state police are calling for a return to what obtained during the colonial era and the first six years of Nigeria’s independence, when the second and third tiers of government, just like the Federal Government, had their own regional and native authority policing systems.

 Therefore, Nigeria is living in a fool’s paradise by delaying the decentralisation of its police system. Although the country is bleeding from insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, and the Fulani herdsmen onslaught, successive federal administrations and the National Assembly have flatly rejected the state police concept. The two organs of government hide behind the 1999 Constitution that imprudently vests policing in the centre.

Presidential control over the police is a thorny issue in contemporary Nigeria. The much touted police reforms have not yielded the desired result in terms of protection of lives and property; rather the police force seems to be weakening in the face of ethno-religious insurgencies, terrorism and organised crime.

The states have resorted to forming vigilante groups to augment what little security the police provide. The state has also supported the police financially in order to make up the poor budget on which the force operates.

Decentralisation of the federal police by establishing state police can improve the security situation in Nigeria. This would automatically whittle down the influence of the president over the police and make them operationally independent to deliver their mandate efficiently.