By Samuel Igba
House of Assembly speakers in 36 states of Nigeria in May 2024 announced their support for state police following a bill – also in favour – that passed a second reading in the country’s House of Representatives in February 2024. The proposal seeks for every state to have its own police force but will first have to be endorsed by state legislators, requiring two-thirds of the National Assembly members to pass it. This will be followed by a presidential assent – the president, Bola Tinubu has been vocal about his support for state police in the country.
This comes within a context of growing nationwide security challenges ranging from banditry and kidnapping to farmer-herder clashes, livestock rustling, separatist agitations, and the lingering Boko Haram insurgency. In 2023, Nigeria ranked sixth in the world, and second in Africa on the Global organised Crime Index, with a score of 7.28, up from 7.15 in 2021. Nigerian security forces including the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) appear incapacitated in the face of the growing insecurity. Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, stated in August 2023 that the government needs to recruit an additional 190,000 officers to adequately secure the country. The NPF has 370,000 officers – one officer per 600 citizens – which is well below the United Nations-recommended average of one officer per 450 citizens. Speaking to reporters in Abuja in February 2024, information minister, Mohammed Idris, said that Nigeria is considering introducing state police in its 36 states to boost the national police force. This however runs the risk of reawakening First Republic (1963 – 1966) challenges associated with state police forces.
Context of rising insecurity in Nigeria
Since 2010, gangs of kidnappers, bandits, and jihadists have rampaged Northern Nigeria. While no place is free of kidnappings in the country today, the phenomenon is especially prevalent in the North. More than 130 students were abducted in Kaduna, Nigeria in March 2024 – one of the biggest kidnappings since the 276 Chibok girls taken by Boko Haram in April 2014 in Bornu state. The jihadist group rose to notoriety in 2010 and has since launched attacks on government facilities, Christian churches, and public spaces. More than 35, 000 people are estimated to have been killed following its attacks between 2009 and 2020. North-Central Nigeria is another area plagued with criminalities with a variety of unprovoked aggression from herders within the area, including farmland destruction, kidnappings, killing and maiming, carried out frequently. Similar crimes are also commonplace in Southern Nigeria where routine lawbreaking includes armed robbery, murder, grievous harm, and wounding. Cultism is also a nationwide phenomenon, but the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in 2022, reported that cult-related violence appears prevalent in the South-South area of the country. A study of individually targeted killings in Nigeria found that “Rivers, Edo, and Lagos, are the states that experienced the highest levels of cult-related targeted killings”.
Pre-1966 Nigerian Police Force
Until 1966, the Nigerian Police Force existed alongside other local police forces. Modern-day NPF is considered a brainchild of the British Colonial Government security outfit first established in 1820 to maintain the new colonial order. This was followed by the creation of five significant police components: first, a 1,200-member armed paramilitary Hausa Constabulary created in 1879; second, the Niger Coast Constabulary formed in Calabar in 1894 under the newly proclaimed Niger Coast Protectorate; third, the Lagos Police, launched in 1896; fourth, the Royal Niger Company (RNC) Constabulary set up by the Royal Niger Company in the North in 1888 which became the Northern Nigeria Police in the early 1900s; and fifth, Southern Nigeria Police, created from merging the Niger Coast Constabulary and the Lagos Police Force in 1906 following the proclamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates.
These dynamics changed further into the colonial period as the Northern and Southern protectorates were amalgamated in January 1914 marking the birth of the new colony called Nigeria. Both regional police forces were consequently combined in 1930 to form the colony’s first national police – the Nigeria Police Force – which operated alongside regional police forces.
Post-1960 Police in Nigeria
Between 1960 and 1966, the state police system encountered several problems including poor recruitment of personnel who were widely seen as political thugs lacking necessary standard training. This allowed for state police officers to be used by Northern and South-Western governments as political henchmen that intimidated opposition political parties and prevented free and fair elections. Security forces, including the police, were also accused of taking part in sectionalism along ethnic lines, forming part of the triggers for Nigeria’s first military coup d’état in January 1966. This coup initiated the chain of events leading to the Nigerian Civil War from July 1967 to January 1970 following the assassination of the first military Head of State, Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, in July 1966 in a countercoup by predominantly Northern soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Murtala Muhammed. Ethnic tensions remain present in contemporary Nigeria with separatist groups like the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), an Igbo group; the Oduduwa Republic, a Yoruba secessionist movement; and the Arewa Republic, in the North of the country, respectively organising along regional and ethnic lines.
The July 1966 countercoup brought Colonel Yakubu Gowon into power whose regime began dismantling state police structures in October 1966. Subsequent governments followed suit, and by May 1999, all state police had been disbanded. Section 214 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution established the current Nigerian Police Force and forbade all other police forces from operating. The proposal for state police aims to amend section 214, and 11 other sections, to re-establish state police in Nigeria. This has triggered fears in anti-state police supporters who argue that state police are accompanied by the dangers of encouraging secessionists from the various states, amplifying boundary and jurisdiction disputes among states, creating funding challenges for some states, and bringing back first republic challenges such as using police for political oppression by the state governors. Proponents of state police, on the other hand, argue that considering the poor service delivery of the current security forces, state police have the potential to be more effective, efficient, and closer to the community since they will understand the community’s language, terrain, and security challenges, in addition to mitigating the problem of bureaucratic bottlenecks and slow decision-making processes that plagues the current centralised system.
•Dr Samuel Igba is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.