By Bolutife Oluwadele

Continued from yesterday

That accountability architecture should be explicit. A workable state police model would need, at a minimum, clear statutory limits on gubernatorial control, independent state police service commissions, legislative oversight at the state level, judicially enforceable rights protections, transparent complaint mechanisms, and defined channels for local government and community input. Reform must not stop at the creation of a new force; it must also include rules governing recruitment, postings, discipline, operational boundaries, and citizen redress.

Even the current reform proposals raise questions about coordination and conflict resolution between federal and state policing authorities, especially in cross-jurisdictional crimes. Those ambiguities must be settled before any system is rolled out at scale.

Comparative experience supports this caution. In other countries, decentralised or community-oriented policing tends to work best where local institutions can sustain coordination and trust. South Africa, for example, has long relied not only on formal police structures but also on local-level community policing forums intended to connect residents and police around safety concerns.

Such arrangements are imperfect, but they reflect an important principle: local security works better when policing is embedded in wider civic structures rather than treated as a stand-alone force. Nigeria does not need to copy any model wholesale, but it should understand the lesson. Decentralised policing succeeds where local governance can carry part of the load.

It is also fair to acknowledge a counterpoint. There are jurisdictions where sub-national policing has functioned even without especially strong local governments. India, for instance, has long operated state-level policing despite uneven grassroots governance, largely because state bureaucracies, the courts, and entrenched administrative traditions help absorb the gap.

The United States offers a more qualified parallel, where decentralised policing is sustained by layered oversight, judicial strength, and durable professional norms rather than by uniformly strong local institutions alone. But that is precisely why Nigeria must be careful. Where those buffering institutions are fragile or uneven, weak local governance becomes a more dangerous flaw rather than a tolerable one. Nigeria should not assume that the mere existence of state police will, by itself, generate competence.

So what should be done?

The first step is to restore local governments as real governing institutions. That means more than rhetoric about autonomy. It requires enforcing direct fiscal allocation in both letter and practice, ending the habitual financial strangulation of councils through state-level controls, and ensuring that democratically elected local councils replace the widespread overuse of caretaker arrangements. Local governments cannot serve as pillars of public order if they are denied the institutional legitimacy conferred by elections and financial independence.

The second step is to build administrative capacity deliberately. Each local government should have a minimum governance-and-security support framework: functioning records systems, trained administrative staff, local mediation structures, emergency communication channels, and regular liaison mechanisms with state security agencies, schools, health authorities, market bodies, and traditional rulers. This is not glamorous reform, but it is the infrastructure of prevention.

The third step is to treat local service delivery as part of the security policy. Budgeting for streetlights, rural access roads, motor-park regulation, market management, and youth engagement should not be seen as peripheral development matters. They are core components of local order. A state police system operating in communities where local governance has collapsed will spend too much time responding to symptoms that better administration could have reduced.

The fourth step is to design strong safeguards against political misuse. State police legislation should include transparent appointment processes, fixed professional criteria for leadership, independent complaints and disciplinary systems, legislative review of key appointments, and clear grounds for federal intervention only in tightly defined circumstances. The point is not to frustrate state policing before it begins, but to ensure that its legitimacy survives the realities of Nigerian politics.

The fifth step is to formalise the role of communities without romanticising vigilantism. Local intelligence is indispensable, but it must flow through accountable civic channels rather than through ethnic militias, partisan youth groups, or informal coercive actors. Local governments are well placed to convene structured community-security forums that include traditional rulers, women’s groups, religious leaders, youth representatives, professional associations, and security officials. Done properly, this can create an early-warning system rooted in legitimacy rather than fear.

Nigeria’s state police debate should therefore move beyond the simple question of whether decentralisation is desirable. The better question is whether decentralisation is being built on institutions capable of sustaining it. A badge is not a governance system. A new command structure is not a substitute for civic capacity. And a state police law, however necessary, will not by itself produce safety in communities where the local state barely functions.

State police may well be part of Nigeria’s future. But if that future is to be effective rather than merely symbolic, the reform must be anchored in a broader revival of local government administration. The real promise of localised policing lies not just in moving coercive authority closer to the states, but in rebuilding the grassroots institutions that allow public order to be intelligent, preventive, and trusted.

That is the deeper lesson Nigeria should heed. State police need a grassroots backbone. Without stronger local governments, the country may decentralise policing without truly improving security. With them, it stands a far better chance of creating a public safety system that is closer to the people, more accountable in operation, and more effective in practice.

Concluded.

Dr Oluwadele is a public policy scholar, author, and governance commentator based in Canada. He is also a chartered accountant and certified fraud examiner. He can be reached via: [email protected]