Who Controls the Police Force? Yemi Ajayi
In this analysis, examines the structure of the Nigeria Police Force and concludes that it's not in conformity with the requirements of policing in a federal state.
In the wake of the rising wave of banditry that had brought Zamfara State to its knees, forcing hundreds of thousands of its residents to flee their homes and farms, the then Governor, Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari, had out of frustration, announced his resignation as the state’s Chief Security Officer (CSO). He had hinged his decision on his inability, as the state’s CSO, to “direct security officers on what to do or sanction them when they erred.”
Ordinarily, Yari’s announcement was supposed to be dismissed as a distractive comedy given the fact that it sought to trivialise a serious security crisis in the state and to divert attention from his failure to tackle headlong the banditry, which according to him, led to the death of 3,526 persons in the state between 2014 and April 2019.
But his resignation then, which was of no effect, brought to the fore the controversy over who controls the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).
Statutorily, the police are under the supervision and control of three major governmental agencies: the Nigerian Police Council, Police Service Commission (PSC), and Ministry of Police Affairs. The PSC is responsible for the recruitment, promotion and discipline of officers and men below the rank of Inspector General of Police (IGP).
The constitution saddles the president, who chairs the Nigeria Police Council, with the task of appointing the IG in consultation with the council. The council, through the president, assigns responsibilities to the IG while the Ministry of Police Affairs oversees the welfare of personnel.
However, it is ironic that in a federal system of government, the central government has so much control of the policing system, leaving leaders at the subnational level at the mercy of the president and or his aides.
As seen in the Yari case, governors are mere figure heads as chief security officers of their respective states. The 1999 Constitution(as amended) that ipso facto made them chief security officers of their respective states, however, took back the little powers bestowed on them in Section 214(4), which entered a caveat that their directives to Commissioner of Police in their respective state commands are subject to ratification by the president or “such Minister of the Government of the Federation as may be authorised in that behalf by the President for his directions.”
The caveat in Section 215(4) creates a lacuna that is being exploited over time by the federal government to undermine governors’ control of police apparatus in their domains.
But while governors have little or no control over the policing system in their domains, they have over the years emerged as the main financiers of police operations in their states due to underfunding by the federal government.
Some governors have set up trust funds to generate money to provide basic tools for the police to fight crimes in their states.
Lagos State provides a flagship example of such states with the passage into law by the state House of Assembly in 2007 of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund (LSSTF) to tackle logistics problems that impaired the ability of the state police command from tackling the peculiar security challenges in the state.
The federal government is replicating this effort at boosting funding of the police with the signing into law of the Police Trust Fund Act, which provides a legal framework for the management and control of the Police Trust Fund.
Governors’ lack of control over the police, largely seen as an aberration in a federal system of government, led to the campaign for the decentralisation of the NPF. The argument is that Nigeria should go the way of other modern nations such as Britain and the United States that have a decentralised police force.
For example, there are 43 geographic police forces in England and Wales plus the British Transport Police, Civil Nuclear Police and the Ministry of Defence Police. The Chief Constable/Commissioner of a force is responsible for delivering policing services.
On its part, the United States policing is being carried out by close to 18,000 federal, state, local and city departments, all with their own rules.
Each of the 50 states has its own nomenclature for its law enforcement agencies, and their powers, responsibilities and funding vary from state to state.
The central theme of the campaign is the creation of state police, an advocacy that the federal government has absolutely rejected.
Rather, the federal government is proposing the setting up a community police system to strengthen the security in the country. According to the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, unlike the state police under which each state government would create, recruit, train and manage a policing system distinct from the centralised force, community policing involves each community in every policing initiative.
Adamu said the federal government would recruit 40,000 community policing officers for the new security architecture. The new personnel are to be sent to their local communities to complement the regular police personnel in performing enforcement functions and to carry out low-risk and nonsensitive duties.
Good as the intention may be, the flaw of the community police system lies in the command and control structure.
Questions are being raised on how effective such a system would be with the present posting system of the police whereby Commissioners of Police are posted outside their states of origin.
To remedy this flaw, there is a need to review the policy so that Commissioners of Police are posted to their states of origin where they are not only familiar with the people and culture, they could easily rally support to enhance the implementation of the community policing system.