Why exclude state police from Constitution?

An Editorial of the Guardian

Earlier this month, the national Assembly had voted on 68 bills that sought to alter the Nigerian Constitution 1999. Some of the bills which sought to promote more opportunities for women in political parties, create state police, and good governance were rejected. Ignorant of the provision that seats in the House of Representatives and state assemblies are allocated according to population a bill sought to allocate a number of seats to women and 35 percent of appointive political positions such as ministers, commissioners and board members to women. For the moment, the decision to exclude state police is most regrettable. This is because of the gravity of the insecurity pervading the country. Only recently, the Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor said 80 percent of the Nigerian Armed Forces personnel were deployed across the 36 states of the federation performing police duties. General Irabor spoke in Abuja at the Twenty First Century Chronicle Roundtable themed ‘Going for Broke: Fighting Insecurity in Nigeria.’ Irabor, who spoke on the topic: ‘Armed Forces and the War Against Insecurity In Nigeria,’ called for more resources for defence and security to meet our needs. In the same vein, the new national resolve to tame insecurity is best approached through the creation of another police force other than one federally controlled. Community policing was introduced to Camden, New Jersey, United States in 2014. But that was done by New Jersey State Police Command; not the federally controlled Federal Bureau of Investigation. Actually, what Nigerians want is another tier of security force not controlled by the Federal Government. The issues involved in state police include federalism, domination and democracy. Nations are among other things, a collective agreement, partly coerced to affirm a common history as the basis for a shared future. Those opposing state police are hiding under the fact that the states of Nigeria are too weak, small and poor to be recognized as federating units. Which was why a regional police force like the Amotekun was tolerated and accepted. Since our governors are despotic in governance, we cannot increase their despotism by handing over the control of police to the states. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete,” Buckminster Fuller. The Nigerian nation state arose from empires like Oyo, the Sokoto Caliphate, Borno-Kanem and kingdoms like Kano, Kworafa, Benin, they explained themselves by telling stories of their origins, stories are meant to unite us as autonomous entities with a common ancestry in a federation. These entities abhor domination from any one or group. Since the Local Government police force in the West and the Alkali native authority police in Northern Nigeria failed, we should build a new model, neither controlled by the state governor nor by the President. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results,” Albert Einstein. Therefore, let us adopt regional police forces like the Amotekun: Western Nigeria Security Network. Let us amend the Constitution along that line, giving each of the six geopolitical zones its police service commissions whose members shall be indigenous to the zones. Incidentally, it is inconceivable that the National Assembly rejected the amendment allowing state or regional police. This is because we already have the Amotekun in the Southwest; the Ebube Agu in the Southeast; the Hisbah in the Northwest and the Civilian Joint Task Force in the war torn Northeast. All of these outfits are armed, they arrest and prosecute people. Besides, the Federal Government has the Civil Defence Corps; it empowered other agencies such as prisons, the EFCC, the ICPC, Customs to carry arms. In the case of Alhaji Abubakar versus the Attorney General of the Federation; the Supreme Court pointed out that the Nigeria Police Force shall be neutral because it a federal agency, not an agent of the Federal Government. Similarly with Segun Agagu versus Segun Mimiko, the court agreed that the Independent National Electoral Commission and the State Security Service are federal agencies not agents of any government. Thus, they are to protect interests of Nigerians, not the Federal Government. So, the SSS should desist from calling itself the Department of State Security in the Presidency. The law setting it up called it SSS. These issues have been settled in law; but Parliament pretends ignorance of it in order to retain impunity, executive lawlessness and legislative rascality; which is what our democratic culture is teaching. In 2014, government went to court to stop amendments after Parliament had spent huge sums of money on Constitutional review. The courts are already providing virtual hearing without Constitutional provisions. Many things don’t require enactments into the Constitution, so the establishment of regional police is already recognized by the law, It is the timidity and lack of political will of the zones to establish their own police forces that is at play. It is up to the zones to establish police forces with police service commissions comprising indigenes of member states of the zones or be swamped by banditry. Therefore, Nigerian law already recognizes regional policing only the states are too ignorant to implement it.