Nigeria’s Police Boss, Speaker, Governors, others Opposing State Policing

Nigeria’s IGP Kayode Egbetokun didn’t just oppose state policing flat out in the national dialogue that saw most Nigerian leaders expressed support for it. His reasons only surprised many.

Those Nigerians wonder how such came from a force groaning under the burden of internal security challenges. So bad the military have been stepping in now and then to keep the nation in one piece.

But Egbetokun only spoke out. Many governors and lawmakers haven’t seen the possibility of a state running its own police yet. And they just shut up—or speak from both sides of the mouth.

Nigeria currently boasts of 371000 cops policing over 223 million citizens. And the UN recommends one officer to 100,000 citizens. That means Nigeria needs 2.5 million police officers to secure the nation.

For that to happen, Egbetokun said Nigeria will have to  recruit about 30,000 officers yearly.

Meantime, long response time to crime, and distance between the police and the citizens continue to weaken current police force. There are training and motivation challeneges, too.

But Egbetokun and the police ignored how devolution of such power to the states can help. Ethnicity and abuse in the hands of governors became their bugbears.

“It is the submission of the leadership of the Nigeria Police Force that Nigeria is yet to mature for the establishment of state-controlled police,” Egbetokun said.

According to him, the states don’t have the kind of war chest they need to fund state policing. 

The federal police, Cardinal John Onayeikan said, faces poor funding even as it stands now.  Instead of establishing a state police force, the government, the Catholic bishop said, should tackle corruption. It appears the only thing he sees undermining police budgeting and capabilities.

Apart from Onayekan who took sides with the police boss, others kept their opposition bottled in. 

Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, whose office organised the dialogue, hasn’t decided yet. The House of Reps he leads stands in the middle ground for now.

Again of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, only 20 states have submitted proposals.