State police and attendant political distractions

June 30, 2026 12:02 am

Ademola Oni

Building optimism on the revival and speedy development of Nigeria is a daunting task that has gone beyond the ordinary. You can hardly blame a majority of our kinsmen, mostly in the Diaspora, who have concluded that it might be almost impossible for Nigeria to make headway out of its self-inflicted hindrances to joining the league of advancement in the contemporary and rapidly changing world. Why? It is clear that Nigeria, as a country, is a complicated project.

I had thought, at least until now, that Nigerians have all agreed that the escalation of terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and other allied evils, especially in the second quarter of this year, requires an urgent and intentional approach to curtail. This assumption appears to have been basically pedestrian; most of us didn’t take into consideration the political nomenclature currently pervading the land.

That politicians say one thing for a veiled motive but basically never believe what they say, let alone expect another person to believe them, is a statement that best describes our current situation about state police and the much-fabled one-party state. The voices of the opposition political parties and some ethnic jingoists have been very strident against the creation of state police based on weak arguments.

Among the personalities who have risen up lately in strong opposition to the initiative of the Federal Government to introduce state police are our so-called leaders who have at one time or another cried that state police would solve the intolerable level of insecurity in the country. So, may we ask some of these leaders what might have changed in the security equation they once bandied about as one of the solutions to this hydra-headed problem? I may need to disappoint you a bit. I don’t have a cogent answer to help you out; we are likely to be in the same boat of confusion.

A controversial instance in a South-South state during the regime of former President Muhammadu Buhari (of blessed memory) may help us to understand why the argument of governors using state police as a weapon of political witch-hunts is both untenable and pedestrian, to say the least. A few judges were fingered for selling cases in their courts (if you know, you know). A crack team of the Directorate of State Service and operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was detailed to catch a federal judge ‘in the very act’. He was alleged to have gone offshore to receive the proceeds of the sale of his product. You know by now that I don’t answer JAMB questions! So, don’t ask.

Having been successfully tracked to his base, where his loot was kept in a haven, the security team struck in the dead of the night to get the judge and the incontrovertible evidence hidden in his abode.

A few minutes after the arrival of the uninvited guests, albeit in a commando style, a police team from the Government House equally stormed the residence to confront the official invaders, ably backed by the state governor.

Of course, the governor-backed forces won the battle while the Abuja troops went back empty-handed, and the judge slept in peace, or so it seemed.

I have narrated this live story that looked like a scene from an action movie to tell you that the police team and the agencies involved in the judge’s residence saga were not state agencies but federal. In other words, before the establishment of the proposed state police, the excesses of governors and other individuals have always been with us. Let me disappoint you, the excesses of the police are also not a Nigerian problem; it’s global.

I felt more confused when I heard the comment of one of our presidential candidates, the highly respected Mr Peter Obi, who said state police should be introduced after the 2027 general elections. Up until this moment, I don’t seem to understand what informed the timetable set by the former Anambra State governor. Is Obi, as a two-term governor, aware that after the executive bill would have been passed and assented to, so many bureaucratic hurdles would have to be crossed before this initiative becomes a reality?

Is the highly calculative politician saying the complicated level of crime in the country should continue unabated because the ruling party would turn this security arrangement into a political advantage? Has he equally considered that the earliest time state police may take off in the states may be up to two months after President Bola Tinubu would have assented to this bill? I believe most of us, the ordinary Nigerians, who sleep these days believing God for His abundant protection, know too well that deranged traducers of our society do not observe public holidays or grant themselves off days. They don’t even recognise the electoral timetable like our dear Obi has set out.

I’m sure you must have been wondering too why some folks started crying for “wider consultations” after the state police bill was sent to the National Assembly for consideration. I didn’t, nor was I amused. I know too well that in our clime, we usually do not take action against a threat until it transforms into a monster.

Boko Haram started as a threat. It festered and became a mega monster, it has become today, giving birth to other splinter mushrooming terror cells. Kidnapping was a threat. It has become a multi-billion-naira industry. Corruption was a side-hustle before it became a way of life for not only our leaders, who are professionals by the way, but also the led. I believe you are not among Nigerians who believe that only the leaders, especially the politicians, are corrupt. The level of corruption among the led, who complain the most, comfortably dwarfs the monumental graft among political leaders both in and outside the government.

It is amusing, though not surprising, that some so-called security experts and tribal champions, who have serially failed to proffer solutions to the multi-level shortcomings they always outline in all policies, have continued to ask their customary distracting questions instead of generating inputs that will strengthen the state police documents. They have continued to postulate how the structure of the state police should be like freshly refined gold. Let me disappoint you: You won’t have such a document.

You have constitutional amendments all over the world because such documents are not perfect at the outset. When a law comes into effect, all the grey areas are addressed and amended. The National Assembly and state assemblies will carry out their responsibility when there is a need for amendments. How sensible is it for citizens to be slaughtered daily while some experts, who hide in their gated estates, continue to shout on their secure rooftops about finesse, while lunatics overrun the nation and continue their journey of no return to the Atlantic Ocean?

Nigerians, who do not have to subsume reasoning in the mud of political or tribal logic, know too well that it would be an almost impossible task for a foreign or local bandit, no matter how bold, to attempt to create a haven in the forest of Ebonyi State in the face of an equally well-equipped state police force. Terrorists and killer herdsmen won’t have any sanctuary in Plateau and Benue states in their ambition to dispossess locals of their God-given land under the guise of freedom of grazing.

Amotekun, civilian JTF, vigilantes, and hunters have done their best for the people with their limited capacity. It is obligatory that the police, statutorily saddled with the responsibility of maintaining internal security in the country, be constitutionally mandated to perform their duty and root out all enemies of peace in the land.

It is, therefore, shamefully disappointing that some of our leaders still subject all logic and reasoning to political considerations. It is more shameful that opposition politicians take delight in criticising the sitting government’s policies and laugh at the nation’s challenges without offering any workable solutions to the challenges, as if the sitting President or the party will be the ultimate beneficiaries of a workable country.

You will recall that the incumbent All Progressives Congress equally played the ostrich when it was in the opposition, blaming the now comatose Peoples Democratic Party, the then ruling party, as being clueless without offering any tangible, practical solutions. The wheel has now turned full circle.

Do the opposing voices, now crying foul about state police, desire that the nation go under because they want a particular person or party out of Aso Villa? Can someone remind me if state police, when operational, will work for Tinubu or Vice-President Kashim Shettima alone?

The unspoken fear of so many politicians, I’m tempted to believe, is that state police will be partly a precursor to the political restructuring of the country. And so? Without any equivocation, it is safe to say that Nigeria will experience unmatched growth and advancement when it is restructured to empower the regional components to develop at their own pace and encourage healthy competition among the regional governments, as the country witnessed in the First Republic before power-hungry soldiers took over the leadership by the barrels of the guns.

Enough of unnecessary distractions; let this positive beat continue its fast rhythm.

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