By Chidinma Ewunonu-Aluko
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Mr Oluseun Abimbola, on Friday analysed constitutional processes and safeguards needed to prevent state police abuse.
Abimbola, a former Attorney-General (AG) and Commissioner for Justice in Oyo State, gave the analysis in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan.
He cautioned that the decentralisation of the Nigeria Police Force required careful constitutional amendments and groundwork to avoid it breaching the 1999 Constitution.
According to him, the debate on state police is not about desirability alone; it is also about structure, safeguards, standards and constitutional discipline.
He said Section 214(1) of the Constitution already established one Nigeria Police Force for the entire federation, expressly prohibiting the creation of any other police force by any level of government.
“There shall be a police force for Nigeria, which shall be known as the Nigeria Police Force, and subject to the provisions of this section, no other police force shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof,” Abimbola quoted the section.
He said the Supreme Court reinforced this in Attorney-General of Abia v. Attorney-General of the Federation (2002), when it emphasised federal supremacy over matters in the Exclusive Legislative List, including policing.
Abimbola, also a partner at Prime Solicitors, Nigeria, said that for state police to be, the Constitution must first be amended under Section 9.
This, he said, required the approval of two-thirds of the National Assembly (NASS), at least 24 State Houses of Assembly and a presidential assent.
“The process is on from news reports, and we have seen the effort of the Inspector-General of Police to suggest a blueprint to the NASS in their deliberations,” he said.
The SAN added that this would ensure that the instruments passed would create a professional body and address the concerns of some commentators on the possibility of abuse.
He added that even after that, the states would still not immediately begin arrests and prosecutions.
“The states must enact enabling laws by the Houses of Assembly, set up command structures, recruit, train, and equip personnel; a process that may take several months to a few years, not instantly,” he said.
The former AG acknowledged the fear of political misuse, given Nigeria’s history of executive overreach.
To safeguard against the envisaged abuse, he called for the operational independence of State Police Commissioners with security of tenure.
He said there must be structures to prevent state police commissioners from being removed at will by governors and to insulate the State Police Service Commission’s oversight functions from executive control.
“There must also be strict compliance with fundamental rights in Sections 34, 35, and 36 of the Constitution.
“Another safeguard is the need for a coordinating national policing council to establish standards, lest different states create a police force coloured in religion, ethnicity, cultural biases and balloon human rights infringements and liability for unlawful arrests,” he said.
On conflicts with the federal police, Abimbola said the Constitution should expressly and unambiguously delineate the boundaries of jurisdiction between both forces.
He maintained that federal law would, in all likelihood, retain overriding authority in national security, terrorism, and interstate crimes, which is desirable.
Abimbola cited the Supreme Court in N.I.W.A. v. L.S.W.A. (2024) to support the likelihood nature of the national overriding state laws.
He said the Supreme Court held that, by the doctrine of covering the field, the NASS-enacted law shall prevail where there is an inconsistency with a state law.
According to him, the states cannot currently arm any police force, since policing is exclusively federal, thus limiting outfits like Amotekun and Hisbah.
He insisted that the creation of state police should not stop federal control on arms regulation, standards and operational protocols.
He noted that the parameters for licensing arms for state police forces should be clear, and operational protocols should be unambiguous.
This, he said, would avoid 36 different policing standards that could undermine professionalism and complicate interstate law enforcement.
Abimbola said the Amotekun and Ebube Agu, not been officially recognised as police under the Constitution, are support agencies like other lesser agencies, such as traffic officers: OYRTMA, LASTMA, etc.
“They may be absorbed into the new state police structure, reorganised or in some cases, dissolved altogether, though their past actions would not be automatically invalidated,” he said.
Abimbola said the military scrapped the pre-1966 regional police while unifying the state apparatus under national decrees.
He said the era witnessed political abuse by some regional governments, unprofessionalism, and the use of regional police as tools of intimidation, etc.
“Hence, we expect the current effort to have learnt from those experiences and insulate the new initiative from the past omissions,” he said.
The key lesson, the SAN added, is that decentralisation without accountability leads to abuse.
“State police is not a silver bullet,” Abimbola cautioned.
According to him, it will not unravel the root causes of crime such as unemployment, poverty, weak institutions, corruption and poor intelligence gathering.
He, therefore, recommended a phased implementation with pilot states under federal supervision, stressing that technology and intelligence should matter more than numbers.
“We should use the opportunity to clean up the system and the federal police standards," he said.
NAN
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