BY TONY OKAFOR
The renewed push for state police—now advancing at full speed with presidential approval—may be presented as bold reform.
But in reality, it is akin to burning down the entire house simply to kill a rat that squeaked in the night.
Nigeria’s insecurity is undeniable and deeply unsettling, but embracing a structurally risky solution in haste will inflict far more harm than the danger it seeks to cure.
Advocates of state police often ignore a critical truth: Nigeria’s political culture is not yet mature enough to wield such decentralised force responsibly.
In a system where state machinery is frequently deployed for personal vendettas and where opposition voices are routinely targeted, handing governors their own armed forces is an open invitation to unchecked abuse.
The only reason some governors have not completely stifled the opposition is the restraining presence of Abuja. Remove that fear, and many state chief executives would effortlessly elevate themselves into demigods over their people.
Beyond politics, the economic argument is equally troubling. Only a handful of states have the financial muscle to sustain a professional, well-equipped police service. The rest would inevitably produce underpaid, poorly trained, and easily compromised security outfits ripe for corruption, political manipulation, and abuse.
Rather than enhancing safety, such disparity would multiply insecurity and widen the gulf of inequality across the federation.
More dangerously, state police threaten Nigeria’s delicate national cohesion. Fragmenting the country into 36 armed commands with divided loyalties is a perilous experiment in a nation still grappling with ethnic suspicions and unresolved historical tensions.
These localised forces could quickly morph into ethnic militias wearing government uniforms—fueling conflicts, not resolving them.
Nigeria’s core security problem is not the absence of multiple policing layers; it is corruption, weak accountability, and the consistent failure to reform the existing federal police.
What the country truly needs is professionalisation, intelligence-driven operations, adequate funding, and firm oversight—not duplication, fragmentation, or politicised firepower.
The battle against insecurity must be decisive, but urgency must never be mistaken for wisdom.
The President must avoid acting in a manner that suggests abdication of responsibility or a hasty transfer of federal duty to subnational governments ill-equipped to manage it.
A hurried state police will not save Nigeria—it will endanger it.
We must not burn down the house simply because a rat darted across it.
