Critics of this idea also warn that state police or armed security outfits are likely to end up as tools in the hands of state governors and other politicians to perpetrate politicallymotivated intimidation and persecution against their political oppone

The apparent incapability of the Nigerian police to stop the persistent deterioration of the security situation in Nigeria, on the one hand, and the justifiable worries over the implications of sanctioning the creation of state police or armed security outfits in a fragile federal state like Nigeria, on the other, represent a dilemma that requires a collective sense of responsibility to address without prejudice to the bases of the country’s corporate existence.

This is particularly necessary now that the six South-west states have launched a sub-regional security outfit named Amotekun without enabling laws, which they, in the first place, lack the jurisdiction to make, thereby prompting the raging controversy. Also, though the federal government has declared the outfit illegal, the governors behind it aren’t likely to comply.

This development is also likely to encourage other governors or geopolitical zones to follow suit; after all, advocates of “true federalism” have always advocated enabling legislation for the creation of state police to complement the federal police. They have always argued, among other things, that it’s one of the basic characteristics of the American-style federalism that Nigeria ostensibly practices.

However, northern Nigerian establishment has always been against it on account of deeprooted worries that it may undermine and jeopardize the country’s corporate survival, which the region particularly considers nonnegotiable.

Besides, there are understandable worries that, against the backdrop of the recurrent outbreak of ethnoreligious conflicts in the country, state police, more so state security outfits could be manipulated in the intimidation and victimization of vulnerable communities living in states other than their respective native states. After all, over the decades, there have been so many instances across the country whereby indigenous armed groups would carry out heinous atrocities against communities on account of their regional and ethnoreligious backgrounds. Massacres and countermassacres have been committed, which left irreparable scars in the minds of millions of Nigerians.

There are worries also that it may trigger a vicious circle of victimization, vendetta and vengeance among various ethnoreligious groups in the country. Because whenever a particular ethnoreligious community suffers and persecution against their political opponents. Politicians, after all, already sponsor armed thugs who intimidate and perpetrate violence against the electorate, election officials and, of course, their rival armed thugs to effectively grab election victory for their respective sponsors.

Northern Nigerian establishment is particularly obsessed with those worries, which explains its uncompromising obsession with Nigeria’s corporate existence. Interestingly, however, what most northern