State Police: A Policy Option For Current Insecurity

Leadership

31 January 2011

State Police: A Policy Option For Current Insecurity

UMARU ALI SHINKAFI

The unavoidable partisan competition involving a diversity of political beliefs typical of democratic dispensations often translates into power struggle and mutual distrust between rival political leaders. This underlying animosity has in fact tainted the process of building a rightful consensus on the desirability of state police in Nigeria to the extent that the applicability of federalism itself is dismembered discriminately between governing party and the opposition. Thus, the political leadership at the centre will not even contemplate transferring executive powers over security to state governors lest the opposition secure a means of check-mating their own manipulations of the police command, particularly for political purposes.

Political self-preservation overriding considerations for effective state security can only worsen the security situation in the country as is now unfolding.