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Ours has become a country paralyzed by over analysis. Policies can’t be made and implemented because everybody is more concerned about what each group thinks and how they would react to it drawing from their cultural experiences. The consequence is huge and very costly. We circumvent or side-step the real solutions. Rather than hitting the hammer on the target we choose to dwell on circumlocution,
Recall that we have been dealing with whether sub-nationals should form vigilantes and if they should carry sophisticated weapons. Currently it is forest guards. The President has approved that but as you read this piece it is very difficult to say what state has gone ahead to constitute their own and what successes have been achieved. No one knows the modality.
Every year we remain on the same matter even when the issue in question is necessary to push national development in a positive direction. Since independence 64 years ago the challenges have remained the same. Petrol, census, economic diversification, productive economy, foreign exchange earnings and internal security, we have continued to talk about the same issues. Nothing new! For that long it is very difficult to say which of these challenges has been solved in an enduring manner. None at all! Military adventures into power though abhorrent and considered abnormal produced some good elsewhere but in our case it tended to complicate existing challenges. The military administrations we had created more troubles. They bastardised and distorted established processes and institutions – one of them being the security architecture we inherited at independence.
They never created anything new, but rather decimated what was. The different layers of security arrangement were done away with. They killed the concept of state and community policing which is basic to federalism and replaced it with a unitary system. It hasn’t worked. We all ran with the view it was about the military that caused all the problems, their incompetence in civil governance and introduction of the military single command culture but subsequent events seem to suggest we are only correct by half.
The civilians who came after have not done better too. Many even think today the military was a bit better. More than 25 years since the military left civil governance and handed the country’s management to civilians nothing, as would have been expected, has happened in terms of effecting deserved changes to what far greater majority of the citizens believe should be the right prescriptions.
Civil leaders have kept the unitary structure the military created. The central command system is very much in place. The security blueprint for the whole country is drawn mainly from Abuja the federal capital. Officers not conversant with the local areas they are posted still hold sway in those locations. This is causing a serious disconnect.
Governors who as a first line of responsibility should be in charge of protection of lives and property are still telling all who care to hear that in reality “they are not in control.” In classical administration it is difficult to have submission of an employee one didn’t engage, pay or be responsible for their career progression. The tonic to loyalty is in the power to hire and fire. Remove this and what would be left would be a rudderless workforce.
This is what it has come to. It has left the country with one big challenge we must solve if we want this giant of a country to get back on her feet and begin to walk spiritedly and that is providing sustainable solutions to the insecurity plaguing our land.
Talk of security and at the crux of the matter is the case of appropriate policing structure for the country, and multi-layer policing has continued to receive frontline attention and mention. Many insist it should be, the federal, state and community policing. This is one side but there are those who say multi-layer policing is ideal but we are not matured, we would have to grow to it. These are
Yes nations are built gradually but there are institutional frameworks that must be in place from day one and security architecture is one of those. This was settled during independence negotiation talks and what was agreed should have been allowed to stay. It is a fact there were issues of abuses associated with state and community policing but they are aberrations we could correct with legislations, either the constitution received amendments in those areas or new set of laws promulgated to take care of the unforeseen developments as the case may be. Throwing away the bath water with the baby didn’t make sense and still
If truth be told, the argument over policing structure for the country ought to have been a settled matter long time ago. It shouldn’t be an issue to cause us sleepless nights. We hold this view because there are historical examples of other countries that began with a central policing system and midway saw more cogent reasons to transit to the multilayer format.
If we took advantage of available records we would have seen that a large space and heavily populated entity can’t be adequately guarded by a unified police department. It won’t work and it hasn’t worked; this is our experience.
The experience of the country currently is that there is a huge landspace left unprotected. It provides felons with the cover they need. Moreso with instigated insecurity designed towards supremacist objectives. Foreign interests of various kinds are involved in our security challenges, no doubt about that. After all, the new leadership in Burkina Faso told the world they rejected funds from Saudi Arabia that were intended to be deployed to build new mosques across that country. Nigeria is of far more interest to these eternal infiltrators than those other countries.
Naturally, there would be issues of cultural peculiarities too and these must throw up variables that impede national policy conception, pursuit and implementation. Yet, those things that are germane to quick development and forward march must be done with near single-mindedness. National security is one of such. There are very crucial factors in security and one of them is the question of plurality. In our case every tribe has its nuances which only persons from the area can understand and appreciate.
This understanding is crucial to good policing. When officers of other tribes cross the boundary a big gap is usually created, they may know the area but find it difficult to fully comprehend the underpinning momentum that causes the people to act in some ways. This has been part of the challenge. The state vigilante agencies have been very busy in recent times discovering criminals’ havens in areas where the conventional security agents have their presence. The locals have been able to do so because the members are operating around an area they have adequate knowledge of what is going on. They are so to say the “home boys.” They know the corners and all that happens in each location per time. We need this to have enhanced security.
The concept of state police isn’t a new idea, it was there right from colonial days through the granting of Independence. It was jettisoned by the military in power. We have proffered the reason in the earlier paragraphs but under a civil order, lack or absence of a multilayer policing system defies logic.
This system is the preferred across the majority of the countries of the world. It is the most suitable for plural entities. Its absence in the country has become very costly. Human life has become very cheap. The way it is currently, more citizens are being killed in the country daily, more than would have been the case if the country was involved in a war with another country. Traveling on our roads has become like an adventure in recklessness.
We step out not very certain what becomes of us eventually. Marauders are roaming all over the place killing and maiming citizens without cause or provocation. The worst is that criminals from outside the country enter the country freely and find their way to people’s rural locations, enter their forest to create a “colony” in the very strange environments. Locals who insist this is not right get attacked and killed in the most gruesome manner.
The federal government has been blamed for not acting very seriously against the high level of insecurity. The Plain Truth is the argument would have been unnecessary, non- existent if we had different layers of policing to balance and provide some degree of check. Naturally, the omissions of the federal government ought to be picked up by the sub-national governments and handled most adequately.
From what we know, state and local governments are willing to act but can’t do so because they are not in control of the agency of state coercion. A government without power to enforce state objectives and policies is no government. It is just a decoration.
It is not that politicians don’t know the importance of different layers of security. They travel abroad and do know what obtains in those places. What has come between some of them and the real solution is anticipated fear. It has been the main force behind the voices that rise against state policing. Anticipation is a good variable in governance but it shouldn’t be a tool for retrogressive actions. It should rather serve as impetus to think out structures and regulations that can handle the fears before they turn real.
It is commonly believed that state governors would misuse state police. Genuine concern yet this should not be a spring board for circumventing genuine but endurable solutions in this regard rather it ought to serve as motivation to wear our thinking caps and come up with safety valves. We can limit state police activities to purely criminal matters only. As some have suggested we can have a federal board comprising members of Nigeria Labour Congres, journalists, social activists and civil rights advocates to keep a watch over their activities in the 36 states of the federation.
So many other regulations can be put in place to provide checks. There should be the matter of standards and training. It is time we decide what to do with security retirees trained by the nation. This is very crucial.
The other question that has been raised has to do with funding, some insist states won’t be able to provide equipment and pay salaries. Even before the big revenue allocation states are getting now that position holds no water. States still did a lot to assist national security organs in their area.
Again a tier of government with staff it pays can handle any matter; it is only a question of priorities. In terms of hierarchy of needs security, just as rightly prescribed by the Constitution, should be the top thing. Without security no development can take place. The leadership class we have in place makes so much issue about foreign investors even though we never see them come.
But come to think of it, which foreigner will take his hard earned money and stray into a crime and terrorism infested territory? To do what? Business or get killed? No sane person invites death to himself. No foreign investor would contemplate this. This point again buttresses the importance of not only state but community policing.
Some of us who transverse the cities and rural areas frequently do know the country is not near adequate policed. In nearly all the local governments across the country security presence is only felt around the divisional headquarters and a few sub-urban settlements, even those ones are ill-equipped to prevent heinous crimes. This is the gap community policing if well spelt out should cover.
State Police ordinarily should be part of federalism. Let those who have executive powers guarantee the security of citizens under their jurisdiction. That is how it’s done. And that is how it should be. We ought to go beyond state and community to have big concerns and establish some levels of corporate security. Our leaders know hotels abroad for instance have their own security.
What should trouble us in this regard should be our penchant to abuse almost everything. If we must have decentralized policing we must be careful with standards. This point has been made earlier, repetition is for emphasis. Emphasis should be on kind of personnel, provision of arms, then deployment of personnel and arms not forgetting training.
If we leave training at the level of what we have made of Nigeria police, we may end up creating bigger monsters and this obviously isn’t the expectation. Plain Truth is our country can be made great in a matter of few years if truly we are very serious to have a nation all of us can call ours.
