The issue of security is on the lips of nearly everyone. The deaf is being made to hear and the blind made to sense its waves sweeping through the land. Insecurity is advancing untrammeled to reach the doorstep of nearly every home in Kaduna and Zamfara in the North West and Niger in North Central. The three states constitute the epicentre. North East is a different kettle of fish which the new messiahs thought was going to be a walkover. There are flashpoints in the South West. A theatre of skirmishes is fast building up in the South East. Gunmen wreak havoc, destroying whatever may represent the face of authority, men and property. No one can claim to be living on Mars at the moment. The roar of gun brings everyone in slumber to a rude awakening, and the shooters, hooded or not, disappear into thin air. The accustomed official retort is that investigations have been launched into the attacks and the security forces are on the trail of the perpetrators! They must be arrested and brought to book. There it ends most times.
The insecurity is headed for a breaking point. And some governors no longer subscribe to the doctrine of political correctness. They say it as it is. Some Senators do the same. The Governor of Niger State, Sani Bello, could not hide his worries; he said without mincing words that about 3,000 people had been displaced from their communities in Munya and Shiroro areas of his state. Hear him: “The situation is critical and terrible. I am confirming that now…Boko Haram elements have installed their flags in Kaure. While Sambisa is hundreds of kilometres from Abuja, Kaure is only about two hours drive. Nobody is safe anymore. Not even Abuja is safe. We have been saying this for long.”
Speaking in the same vein while sponsoring a motion on the invasion of bandits and Boko Haram in some Local Governments of the state, Senator Sani Mohammed Musa (APC) alerted the Senate and the nation at large of heavily armed Boko Haram terrorists unleashing horror on innocent citizens. In his words: “Niger East Senatorial District of Niger State has come under constant and sustained multiple deadly attacks by heartless, venomous and hydra-headed Boko Haram terrorists who are always heavily armed with assorted sophisticated and dangerous weapons unleashing horror on our innocent citizens. About 42 communities across the two local government areas of Shiroro and Munya have so far fallen under the Boko Haram control with about 5,000 villagers already displaced in the last three days. They have kidnapped many and their wives seized from them and forcefully attached to Boko Haram members. I can authoritatively confirm that the Boko Haram terrorists have mounted flags in many of the villages they have captured such as Kaure, Alawa and Magami.”
Primary schools in the areas affected have been turned into centres for Internally Displaced People, the IDPs. This incident came only weeks after similar attacks on some other communities in which 46 people were killed. Indeed, these areas have lost no fewer than 475 persons within a year. Another senator, this time from Niger South, Mohammed Bima Enagi (APC) said the situation in some areas of Niger State is such that women can go neither to the market nor the river to fetch water. Men cannot go to their farms and children cannot go to school. Senator Ike Ekweremadu reported the same scenario in the South East. He spoke about the killing of policemen, and even soldiers, and that police stations were destroyed. People are being killed and kidnapped on a daily basis. “Same goes for South West, North Central, North West and other parts of the country.”
Pains and disappointment were written all over the Governor of Benue State, Sam Ortom, on Tuesday, seeing bodies of his people who died in fresh attacks in the state. He said the dead were about 70.
Accusing fingers are pointed at Buhari’s Administration, indeed pointedly now at President Muhammadu Buhari. We do not know how his mind works; he does not talk and pronouncements by his aides who are deft in the art of reading his mind are not reassuring. It is always said that you cannot do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. Well meaning Nigerians have suggested a re-ordering of our policing architecture. Tones of ink have been expended writing editorials on the imperative of a different policing arrangement, but Buhari is obstinate and set in his ways, and we can all see what it is causing the nation. We do not require any star gazer to foretell the direction the country is headed. The country of beautiful people is disintegrating before our very eyes. His shift would appear to be the heeding of Prof. Wole Soyinka’s call on him to seek help. The President is reported to have asked the United States for interventionist assistance which is likely to come through AFRICOM, one of United States’ combatant commands. He impressed it on the US Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, that should things get out of hand, many African countries would be affected. He urged that AFRICOM based in Stuttgart be relocated to Africa, and near the theatre of operation. It is said AFRICOM gets involved in fighting regional conflicts. Wikipedia says it is one of the Africa commands of the United States Armed Forces. Its area of responsibility covers no fewer than 30 African countries.
Even when we receive help to stabilize we will still need our own internal mechanism going forward. Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has reiterated his observation that it is difficult policing Nigeria with its size from Abuja. When he first made the remarks about three years ago, he said it was difficult because Nigeria had failed to meet the United Nations requirement of one policeman to 400 people. Governor Henry Dickson now a Senator, corroborating what Prof. Osinbajo said at the time, went on to argue that the prevailing security situation and the need for an effective response to the challenge had made the establishment of state police mandatory. His conviction was borne out of the fact that the personnel would be drawn from the localities that make up the state. Such personnel would be able to access valuable information required to track crime and criminals. He went on to state that the current federally controlled police had become overstretched owing to the wide ratio of the police to the rapid increase in population.
The position of this column is that the problem of insecurity cannot be solved without the establishment of state police. This is the fourth time I am addressing the subject on this page. Those who are opposed to the establishment of state police conveniently cite the abuse to which governors have subjected the state electoral commission in their domain. The party in power in the states, it is argued, wins all local government elections. On the surface, true. As I once argued, the reason for that lies in the present structure of the country. It is such that not many people place much count on local government elections. How many are interested or are even aware of when the polls take place how much more participate in them? The councils for now hardly deliver, and the strong perception is that they are there to share monthly allocations. How many even know their councillors how much more their chairmen? A great many regard the local councils as at now constituted as a joke, let’s face it. Many, therefore, distance themselves from local council elections — waiting until the country is restructured and the states decide the nature of local councils they would have and the number. In the United States, to an average American, his Mayor is more important and relevant to his life than the President. After the Mayor comes the Governor in his reckoning and experience. That is where the Mayor delivers. In such a situation why would the contestation not be keen, and attract participation by all in the borough? But can anyone distance himself from the issue of security? This means to argue that having state police and state electoral commission are the same and comparable, subject to manipulation by governors, is an argument that is tantamount to comparing apple with oranges. The face of government you encounter in any community is the police, and there is the feeling of an assurance that all is well, that you are secure.
The constitution says the governor is the chief security officer of his state. What this says to us is that there is a nexus between the police and the governor whose face the policeman symbolizes and by whose name he swears. One sometimes wonders: Where are the lawyers of old that think outside the box who would seek to expand the spirit of the constitutional provisions in the court. For example, if a state governor is chief security officer of his state it is inherent in his powers that he can set up a security mechanism to ensure the security and safety of his people. And you cannot secure without arming the outfit and its personnel with instruments of coercion. I can see an Attorney-General Yemi Osinbajo of Lagos State and a defiant Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu seeking proper interpretation and pressing for a declaratory pronouncement, thus putting a Candide Ademola Johnson or Conrad Idowu Taylor in their elements! I can see either of them giving governors the go-ahead to set up their own police. I can see the severe Jurist Idowu Taylor saying, is it not common-sensical in the face of intractable insecurity that threatens to sink everyone for the governors to set up their own police in their states. Besides, we are a Federal Republic! And that says it all! Anything that runs counter to its letter and spirit is null and void!
A centralized police system is antithesis to the letter and spirit of federalism. There is hardly any federal state with diverse peoples that operates a centralized police system. There is no way it will not lead to acrimony and hostilities. If we have elected a federal republic, it means we have chosen what we think is good for us as a country of over 500 nationalities as discovered by the 2014 National Conference, peoples with different cultures, aspirations, ways of life and worldviews. Policing is a veritable instrument of federalism for the federating units to run their affairs. Former Governor Jonah Jang once reminded us: “We cannot be calling ourselves a Federation and be running a unitary system of government. The two don’t work together. If we want to run a Federal system of government, we should run it properly.” He said to The Sun newspaper: “It is unfortunate that during the military of which I was a part, we believed in a unitary system and when we were trying to give the nation a constitution, we ended up giving the nation a unitary constitution to be operated in a federal system of government, that is why nothing is working. So if we want to progress as a nation we must restructure the country.”
The 2014 National Conference Report supports the establishment of state police. So did the El-Rufai Committee set up by the ruling party of President Buhari. The Governors Forum from when Governor Abdulaziz Yari was the chair pressed for state police. Beleaguered Governor Nasir El-Rufai has personally advocated it. But the calls have been ignored and the governors are helpless, and the citizens have been exposed to an unprecedented existential danger. It has been the same superficial argument of the governors misusing the state police that has also stalled the establishment of state police. Former President Ibrahim Babangida contributing to the debate in 2017 said the fear of misuse is unfounded, and indeed exaggerated. He should know. Joseph Daodu, former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, in the heat of the debate, put it in all striking simplicity that state police is for law and order.
It is amazing that given the all pervasive insecurity and criminality in the land, we can still afford to delude ourselves into believing that the problem of insecurity would go away without the establishment of state police. It is astonishing that any group can claim not to see how compelling and urgent the setting up of police at the state level is — even in the face of self-evident predicaments into which the country has been plunged by those who can be said to be ignorant, deliberately callous or enlightened but are of impure motives. Just look at the figures of the IDPs, in the North East and North Central. As of 13 February 2018, the number was estimated to be 2.3 million. The figure has gone up steeply in the present time such that Nigeria is said to be host to the largest IDP population in the world. It is said in Katsina State, the figure has climbed up by 62%. Today, In North East alone the figure has risen to 2.9 million; about 684,000 IDPs in Cameroon, Chad and Niger 304,000 refugees, making a total of 3.2 million people in the Lake Chad Basin area. How much misuse of the police by a governor would have landed us a harvest of 3.2 million, aside from those in Benue, Taraba, Niger, Kaduna and Katsina States? Displacement Tracking Matrix says as of 22 July, 2019, that an estimated 238,102 persons had been displaced. Several governors have resorted to clever security engineering to protect their states and people. They equip police in their domain with vehicles, equipment and augment their allowances, indicating they are roaring to go!
In the United States, any university with a student population of 5,000 is expected to have its own police. In the Western World in general, not only are there local council police, but city police, metropolitan police, state police and national police. It is important to stress that the establishment of state police will not be tantamount to the abolition of the federal police. They will as it obtains everywhere else work collaboratively under guidelines on the distribution of responsibilities and duties.
Of course, the waves of chaos and confusion sweeping through our land have spiritual underpinnings as well, indeed bearing the bulk of the causative factors. This is why it is imperative and urgent that all mankind must avail ourselves of the higher knowledge spreading on earth today. The knowledge in reference answers all questions of life and existence. Doom stares all nations in the face without the knowledge of it and the right adjustment to its revelations and guidance accordingly.
In the words of Babangida who I have quoted before: “Added to this desire is the need to commence the process of having state police across the states of the federation…the initial fears that the governors will misuse the officers and men of the state police have become increasingly eliminated with renewed vigour in citizens’ participation in and confidence to interrogate power. We cannot be detained by those fears and allow civilization to leave us behind. We must as a people with one destiny and common agenda take decisions for the sake of posterity in our shared commitment to launch our country on the path of development and growth. Policing has become so sophisticated that we cannot continue to operate our old methods and expect different results.”
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The OPINION / COLUMN is authored by independent contributors to the National Accord Newspaper. While contributors adhere to our editorial guidelines, they are not employed by the National Accord Newspaper. The perspectives and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of the National Accord Newspaper or its staff.
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