The renewed debate over state police has once again exposed the deep fault lines in Nigeria’s governance and security architecture. In a recent interview, Professor Chidi Odinkalu advanced a powerful caution: introducing state police in the current political environment, particularly on the eve of a general election, risks institutionalizing partisan coercion rather than improving public safety.
His intervention deserves careful attention.
Professor Odinkalu argues that Nigeria is already in an election season, making it an inappropriate period to undertake a reform as profound as creating state police. He warns that hurried legislation without transparent public consultation, proper institutional preparation, adequate training infrastructure, or effective oversight could transform existing political militias into officially armed state security forces. Drawing on the findings of the 2008 M.D. Yusuf Presidential Committee on Police Reform, he recalls how politically connected criminals found their way into police recruitment during previous mass recruitment exercises. His concern is that history could repeat itself on an even larger scale.
He further argues that many states lack the financial capacity to sustain professional police services. States that struggle to pay salaries and pensions are unlikely to maintain well-trained, adequately equipped, and accountable police institutions. Under such circumstances, poorly paid officers carrying state-issued weapons may become vulnerable to corruption, political manipulation, and abuse.
These concerns are legitimate and should not be dismissed.
For years, the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre Rulaac (RULAAC) has consistently argued that Nigeria’s centralized policing structure is no longer fit for purpose. The Nigeria Police Force is overstretched, under-resourced, distant from many communities, and incapable of responding effectively to the country’s complex and localized security challenges. From rural banditry to urban crime, communal violence, kidnapping, and organized criminality, one centrally controlled police force cannot adequately police a country as vast and diverse as Nigeria.
However, acknowledging the failure of centralized policing does not require embracing any model of state police without safeguards
The debate should not be framed as a choice between the status quo and an unrestricted transfer of policing powers to state governors. Rather, the challenge is to design a genuinely decentralized policing system that strengthens public safety while preventing political abuse.
Professor Odinkalu rightly reminds us that Nigerian governors have often demonstrated intolerance toward political opposition. State Independent Electoral Commissions have become instruments for manufacturing one-party dominance at the local level. Vigilante structures in several states have, at different times, been manipulated for partisan purposes. These experiences cannot simply be ignored.
Yet these failures are not arguments against decentralization itself. They are arguments for building strong institutions of accountability.
RULAAC has consistently maintained that any transition to state or sub-national policing must be accompanied by constitutional and institutional safeguards that insulate policing from partisan political control. Such safeguards should include independent police service commissions at the state level, transparent recruitment processes, nationally uniform professional standards, independent civilian complaints mechanisms, robust legislative oversight, judicial accountability, operational autonomy for police leadership, and effective federal oversight limited to constitutional compliance and protection of fundamental rights.
Equally important is sequencing.
Creating state police should not become an emergency political project driven by electoral calculations. Institutional design must precede deployment. Recruitment standards must precede recruitment. Training institutions must precede policing powers. Accountability systems must precede operational authority.
Nigeria’s experience teaches us that poorly designed security institutions often become generators of insecurity rather than providers of security.
Professor Odinkalu also links Nigeria’s insecurity to the wider crisis of democratic legitimacy. His contention that credible elections are essential to sustainable security deserves serious reflection. Governments whose legitimacy rests on the genuine consent of citizens are generally more accountable to the people and more responsive to their security needs. Electoral integrity and security sector reform are therefore mutually reinforcing rather than competing priorities.
Nevertheless, Nigeria’s insecurity also reflects structural weaknesses in policing, intelligence coordination, criminal justice administration, economic exclusion, and governance more broadly. Electoral reform alone cannot resolve these challenges, just as state police alone cannot.
What Nigeria requires is comprehensive security governance reform.
This includes implementing the Police Act 2020 in full, professionalizing the Nigeria Police Force, strengthening intelligence-led policing, improving police welfare, expanding community policing based on accountability rather than political patronage, modernizing forensic and investigative capacity, and carefully developing constitutionally safeguarded sub-national policing.
The central question should not be whether Nigeria should have state police.
The real question is what kind of state police Nigeria should have.
If state police merely transfers coercive powers from Abuja to thirty-six state governors without building democratic safeguards, transparency, professional independence, and effective oversight, Nigeria will simply decentralize abuse rather than security.
If, however, decentralization becomes part of a broader democratic reform agenda anchored on constitutionalism, accountability, professionalism, and respect for human rights, state policing can become an important component of a more responsive and effective security architecture.
Nigeria’s security crisis demands bold reforms. But bold reforms must also be wise reforms.
In matters of policing, institutional design is not a technical detail – it is the difference between protecting democracy and endangering it.
