Is State Policing An Instrument Through Which Insecurity Can Be Curtailed In Nigeria

The level of insecurity in Nigeria has rock the bottom, totally leaving situation with no constitute authority appear to seem that banditry, armed gunmen and terrorism have taken over the government, the country playing directly into their hands. The response has been at snail speed, the state governors have argued that structure of Nigeria Police Force [NPF] have tied their hands watching the situation keep on deteriorating every single day. While the constitutional provisions allow the police to take order from IGP [Inspector General of Police] acting under the sole principal and direction of the president of the country, the major clamour by the state governors is to have state police to help hasten the response and curb crimes at the quickest time.

Boko Haram, Kidnapping and Banditry

This was the biggest backlash suffered by the previous administration after the notorious kidnap of Chibok Girls in Borno State, Nigeria. At that time, Borno was very vulnerable to all terrorist attacks coming from Boko Haram sect, after the previous administration was massively voted out principally on the ground of insecurity which was curtailed only at the north-east part of the country, at the penultimate year of this present administration the country is burning more divided on ethnic and religious lines, making the whole insecurity thing hard to fight.

Keep reading:

• Awakening of consciousness and the role of youth in today’s Nigeria

• What life is like in today’s Nigeria

• Inside the oil theft market and role of leadership in Nigeria

Banditry has become the order of the day in all the northern part of the country where bandits kidnap for ransom, it has been estimated that bandits have received more than a billion naira since their operation, people are scared to carry on their daily farming activities or go to school for the fear of being kidnapped. While bandits and Boko Haram terrorists have different ideologies, the former kidnap to keep expounding their havoc by using money incurred from victims to buy more sophisticated weapons, while the later are keen to Islamize the country through abolishing western way of life and enthroning Islam. 

IPOB and Oduduwa republic

The major secessionists group in Nigeria and have threatened to break away from the country as they felt they no longer belonged. The two groups that have origin from south-east and south-west of Nigeria respectively, created Eastern Security Network [ESN] and Amotekun to curb the menaces of Fulani herdsmen which have spread across the region, while federal government has run out of steam on how to curb Fulani herdsmen and farmers clash, people take it into their own hands to fight insecurity which is one of the dominant problems facing the country.

While governors have proposed state policing it has received some arguments on the basics that state governors will use it, as a tool to go after their political enemies, making it hard to establish a proper ground on how state police is going to work. Nigerians are running out of patience. The unknown gunmen operating in the south-east have caused a lot of eyebrows, while they seem no active plans to curb insecurity. The worst kind of leadership system that operates in Nigeria, is the inability of elected public officials to communicate the process of any development to the public, often time they feel that they are not under obligation to do so, and it destroys the concept and what democracy stands for.