Insecurity: Why State Police Will Not Work In Nigeria – Ex-Enugu Governor



As leaders and experts continue to propose how Nigeria can overcome the problem of insecurity, a former governor of Enugu State believes state police is not an option.

Senator Chimaroke Nnamani was of the opinion that adopting state police as a solution to the security challenges would be a wrong move because the factors that led to the abolition of regional police were still very much available.

“That is not the solution. State police will not work in Nigeria,” he said when he featured as a guest on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.

He added, “Remember that we had some form of state police – regional police, we had an ordinance of 1916 that formerly established regional police. There were factors that led to the abolition of state police.

“All those factors that led to the abolition of the regional police and formal entry into the central police have not changed. Nigeria is organic, it is one unit and what that means is that if the eye is having a problem, the brain could have a problem.”

An Unjust System?

The former governor, however, stated that having state police would only function effectively if it was made to be uniform in all 36 states of the federation.

He warned that should state police not be in uniform and standardised in all the state, it would amount to what he described as an inherent inequality.

According to the lawmaker, it is an imbalance to have state police in a state like Lagos where the poverty rate is very low compared to other states with a higher rate of poverty.

On the way forward, he suggested a conference of ethnic nationalities to help address the imbalance said to have been created by the constitution.

“Nigeria is a country of multi-ethnic African nationalities – those ethnic nationalities are in Nigeria on basis of inequality.

“The constitutions that have been derived from all these fora are inefficient, unequal, and unjust because those constitutions are results of political machinations of people who got the people to make the constitutions together,” said Nnamani.

He added, “What we need is a conference of ethnic nationalities on equal basis. Multi-ethnic nationalities have to conference and produce a system that is equitable, fair, and just.

“The system, as it is – the National Assembly, State assemblies…, are inherently unjust because of the way they were derived.”