Experts warn against hasty establishment of state police
Identity good governance, social justice as panacea to insecurity
As agitations for state police gather momentum, experts at the Nigeria Society for Criminology (NSC) have called for national legislation to limit the abuse of state police and check local oppression of Nigerians.
Professors Etannibi Alemika, Smart Otu, and Lanre Ikuteyijo made this known during the webinar, ‘Perspectives on State Policing’ organised by the executive committee of NSC.
The trio highlighted the benefits (improvement of security, provision of job opportunities, promotion of true federalism) and challenges (antagonistic competitions among forces, varied standards and processes of operations, partisanship and capture by local dominant powers, poor coordination of information sharing and cross-border operations across jurisdictions, displacement of crime across jurisdictions) associated with the establishment of state police.
They, however, cautioned on the need to seek expert input in drafting a framework that will be suitable based on research evidence. While both the Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), Alemika, and Ikuteyijo maintained that the problems facing the police must be solved to make it more efficient, they warned that any rush to establish state police without due diligence would reproduce the same structural, organisational and individual challenges, which the police is faced with.
Specifically, Alemika noted, “Police is not a transformative agency because its role is to reproduce the prevailing social order and repress dissent against it.”
He noted that solutions to criminality “are to be sought within the social, political and economic structures that cause and reproduce them for the benefit of the economic, political and social power-holders” in Nigeria.
“Police and policing reforms will not guarantee security and development without good governance, efficient public service delivery of essential services such as education, health care, shelter, water, sanitation, communication and transportation by the government, as well as opportunity for meaningful employment and income, social recognition, social protection from deprivations, equality and justice. Police performance and relations with citizens reflect the extent of good governance and the performance of government, of which the police force is an agent.
“The quest for good policing must be an intrinsic element of the struggle for the entrenchment of a social democratic political system and a developed economy managed and advanced for the welfare, security and dignity of citizens. Without scrupulous interrogation or scrutiny of the constitutional provisions, bills and laws to establish state police and the adequate constitutional limitations to prevent egregious abuse of police powers, the clamour for state police by the power-holders may pass for them to realise their latent aim of capturing the state and turning the country into a police state,” he added.
In his opening remarks, President of NSC, Prof Oludayo Tade, stated that one of the mandates of the society was to guide the government in the formulation of appropriate policies to check criminality and improve the country’s criminal justice system.
According to him, NSC is ready to partner with relevant government agencies to review and recommend a suitable model that will improve the security situation in the country.
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