State Police and the questions Nigeria can no longer avoid

Nigeria’s post-1999 democratic era has coincided with one of the gravest crises of state authority in the country’s history, with the state appearing weak and incapable of defending its authority. Fundamentalist Islamist groups, ethnic militants, gangs, secessionist movements, cult groups, organized criminal groups, and political thugs, among others, have relentlessly challenged the state to a duel of superiority, forcing the state into either spasms of retroactive violence or face-saving settlements. While this crisis of governance has interconnecting structural and operational drivers, political actors, particularly at the subnational level, have increasingly framed the decentralisation of the Nigeria Police Force as one of the key solutions to this complex problem.

Undoubtedly, the centrally controlled Nigeria Police Force and the uniform conceptualisation of policing in Nigeria are problematic for the country’s diversity and complexity. In acknowledgement of this fact, every president since 1999 has initiated police reform of some sort. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration appears poised to advance the most far-reaching reform yet: the constitutional amendment required to permit state-controlled police services. While the political momentum behind this proposal is significant, the critical policy question remains unresolved: will the creation of state police meaningfully address Nigeria’s security crisis, or merely reproduce existing failures at a subnational scale?

There is no empirical, contextual, or policy-based evidence that suggests constitutional authorisation alone can deliver Nigeria’s much-needed security outcomes. Public policy effectiveness is largely determined by the political and institutional environment in which it operates. For a political system characterised by low levels of accountability, deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions, permanently simmering secessionist agitations, and politicisation of policy processes, will the establishment of state police not create worse problems in the long term?

What will stop these new policing outfits from being appropriated as personal enforcement gangs for state governors?

While policing is less about institutional form and more about institutional character, Nigeria is oddly one of the few countries globally among multiethnic and multireligious federal states that expressly prohibits subnational governments from exercising any policing authority. Therefore, the case for state police is compelling; however, the challenges lie less in principle than in the operational and institutional details. Given Nigeria’s political history, how then should the proposed police decentralisation be structured to safeguard critical constitutional guarantees, enhance the capacity of subnational units to respond to local security concerns, and reduce the potential for abuse?

Across the world, all effective and efficient policing systems are built on three crosscutting pillars: legitimacy, accountability, and professional competence. Assessments based on multiple performance indicators suggest that the Nigeria Police Force performs poorly across all three dimensions. Creating state police will at best address the question of legitimacy, leaving unresolved the crisis of accountability and professional competence. The Nigeria Police Force is the ideological successor entity to the colonial Consular Guard of 1861, which was built on the mantra of using ‘strangers to police strangers’—an extractive policing system conceived to protect ruling power rather than local communities. State-created policing outfits will at least be resourced from local communities, will be enmeshed in local contexts, and will have cultural affinity with the communities they serve. This will to some extent address legitimacy concerns that bedevil the Police Force in Nigeria. Unless there is deliberate institutional design, state creation and control of policing authorities will not automatically translate to fairer and more respectful policing procedures, a more equitable distribution of policing outcomes, or strict adherence to law and human rights.

Policing is an expensive enterprise, demanding sustained investment in personnel, training, infrastructure, intelligence systems, and operational logistics. Without these critical financial inputs, a decentralised system risks merely replicating the current inefficiencies at a subnational level. Currently, only nine out of the 36 states can meet their salary obligations without total dependence on federal funds, and only about 20 states are paying the current minimum wage. Where, therefore, will the funds to finance the proposed state policing outfits come from? The stark disparity in fiscal capacity of states creates a dangerous possibility, where poorly funded state police units could become bands of armed men, nominally in uniform but functionally abandoned to fend for themselves. This would incentivise extortion and predation on the very citizens they are meant to protect, and we could see these units auctioning their coercive power to the highest bidder, deepening insecurity and corruption. Therefore, the transition to state police demands not just a constitutional amendment but a fundamental revaluation of fiscal federalism to prevent the birth of thirty-six potentially uneven and, in some cases, dangerously unmoored police services.

Beyond the hurdle of fiscal viability lies the more contentious question of operational and organisational independence. If state police services are to be more than just ‘State House Enforcers’ with broader jurisdictions, their leadership must be insulated from local politics. Lessons from abuses by the First Republic’s regional policing force teach that without clear institutional safeguards, state police risk becoming instruments of political patronage rather than instruments of public safety. Independence, among other things, will require legal frameworks that define the chain of accountability, establish professional standards, and create oversight mechanisms—possibly through independent policing commissions—ensuring that state police serve the people, not the political ambitions of individual governors. Knowing what we know, how many governors will commit to this in practice?

Ultimately, Nigeria’s current policing system is in urgent need of reform. A realistic reform pathway lies in restructuring the existing centralised system to allow for hybrid control and a multi-tiered policing arrangement that accommodates both national and subnational policing platforms. Whatever choice is settled upon, any serious policy on police reform in Nigeria must be accompanied by a clear framework for sustainable funding, an oversight system, and accountability mechanisms to ensure that the creation of state police strengthens, rather than destabilises, local security governance.

State police may indeed be inevitable. Whether they become a solution or a new source of insecurity will depend less on constitutional amendments than on the political will to confront Nigeria’s deeper governance failures.

Tosin Osasona is a criminal justice professional and senior research associate at the Centre for Public Policy Alternatives, Lagos.

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