Ironically, some eminent Nigerians have been brimming with the idea that state police is the panacea to the country’s festering state of insecurity. State governors are the most vocal group believing in its efficacy in fighting the soaring crime wave. The more militant voices added regional autonomy to the demand.
But little do they bother about the cost of funding the state police in a country where the number of men and officers of theNigeriapolice force is put at 320,000.
At the 52nd Annual General Conference of the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA inAbuja, President Goodluck Jonathan appealed to Nigerians to exercise caution the way they go about the demand. He is quoted as saying “if there is state police and the governors manipulate it the way they are manipulating their State Electoral Commissions, the resultant instability will be a child play to what obtains now”. President Jonathan is however optimistic that someday but not now,Nigeria will get to that point of creating state police.
As correctly observed, opposition parties hardly win elections in their states just because the ruling party manipulates the State Electoral Commission outside the orbit of free, fair and credible elections.
State police and to some extent regional autonomy constitute the road map toNigeria’s disintegration. Inspired political arrests by the ruling parties could nurture mass resentment and civil disobedience close to civil war across the states. This may not happen if the excesses of the state police would be checked the way federal laws supersede state laws when the two clash.
It is unbelievable that the present crop of politicians is afflicted with short memories as to have forgotten the atrocities of the state police equivalent decades ago. In pre – colonial days and a little after, maintenance of law and in other words policing was decentralized.
In Northern parts of the country, there were the Hisbah (Islamic police) and the oppressive Dandukas. The later was extremely notorious for perverting the cause of justice and enthroning anarchy. They unleashed terror on non indigenes that must bribe and pet them endlessly to have peace around them. It is a pity that governors from outsideNorthern Nigeriahave joined others in the demand. Any Igbo governor who endorsed the demand did as impulsively as Igbos reside in large numbers outside their ethnic homelands.
In the Igbo speaking areas, the Kotimas were equally too corrupt and specialised in miscarriage of justice.
Rather than engage in this idle semantics, what should concern the leaders is crime prevention. This comes along through good and proper child upbringing, the films we watch, strict control on fire arms, reduction of unemployment levels and scaling down the quest for material wealth among others.
