Overhauling the country is the solution, not relying on state law enforcement

The Tinubu administration's renewed push for state police has sparked a crucial public-policy debate in Nigeria's democratic history, one that addresses the painful reality of the country's failing security architecture, with terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, and violent extremism overwhelming the capacity of a centrally controlled police force to secure lives and property across a population of over 230 million people.

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For many Nigerians, state police appears to be an obvious solution, given the alarming statistics, such as 79 percent considering kidnapping and abduction a serious national problem, 33 percent personally knowing someone who has been kidnapped within the last five years, and 63 percent feeling unsafe in their home or neighbourhood during the previous year, as revealed by recent Afro-barometer findings.

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These statistics are not just security concerns, but indicators of a profound crisis of state effectiveness and citizen confidence, highlighting the need for a deeper examination of the issue, beyond just the symptom of insecurity, to address the underlying disease of a dysfunctional constitutional, governance, and political-economy crisis.

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The security crisis in Nigeria is real, but it is not fundamentally a policing crisis, rather a manifestation of a deeper constitutional, governance, and political-economy crisis that has eroded state capacity, weakened accountability, and undermined the effectiveness of public institutions, making it essential to frame the state police debate within the broader context of Nigeria's federal arrangement.

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The central question before Nigeria should not be whether governors ought to control police forces, but whether the constitutional architecture governing the Nigerian federation remains fit for purpose, considering the evidence that suggests Nigeria's insecurity is inseparable from the country's dysfunctional federal arrangement.

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At the heart of the problem lies a constitutional order that concentrates excessive authority, fiscal resources, and political power at the centre, with Nigeria's institutional arrangements bearing the characteristics of a highly centralised state, despite describing itself as a federation, with the 1999 Constitution allocating powers among three categories — the Exclusive Legislative List, the Concurrent Legislative List, and residual powers reserved for the states.

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The Exclusive Legislative List contains sixty-eight items reserved solely for the federal government, while the Concurrent List contains only a limited number of shared subjects, giving the federal government overwhelming dominance over governance and development functions, a structure that has been observed by constitutional scholars to be exceptionally skewed toward the federal government.

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This imbalance matters because the state police debate focuses on only one item among dozens, with police being merely one of sixty-eight subjects constitutionally monopolised by the federal government, and removing policing from the Exclusive List without addressing the wider constitutional architecture would amount to treating a symptom while leaving the underlying condition untouched.

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The question therefore is not whether policing should be decentralised, but why policing alone should be decentralised while dozens of other functions remain trapped within a constitutional framework inherited from military command structures rather than democratic federal design, making it essential to examine the broader constitutional architecture.

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The state police debate is ultimately a debate about symptoms, with the Exclusive Legislative List being where the disease resides, an arrangement that is neither accidental nor historically inevitable, but rather a result of the concentration of powers accelerating during decades of military rule.

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Scholars of Nigerian federalism have documented how functions that were previously exercised by regions or shared among different levels of government were progressively transferred to the centre, with the 1999 Constitution largely preserving that military-era command structure, resulting in what Nigerians often describe as federalism today being, in many respects, a unitary system wearing federal clothing.

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The consequences of this constitutional distortion are evident across every major sector of national life, with insecurity being one manifestation, economic underperformance being another, and weak public-service delivery being yet another, all resulting from the same constitutional structure that produces a distant and ineffective security architecture.

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Nigeria's security crisis and economic crisis are therefore not separate phenomena, but products of the same constitutional dysfunction, with the geographical spread of insecurity further demonstrating this reality, as what was once largely concentrated in the North-East and parts of the North-West has expanded across virtually every geopolitical zone.

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Recent incidents indicate that kidnapping networks have increasingly penetrated parts of the South-West, underscoring the national character of the crisis, making the challenge facing Nigeria a systemic one, rather than regional, and requiring a comprehensive restructuring agenda anchored in a new constitutional settlement.

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State police will be necessary, but necessity does not make it the solution to a dysfunctional Nigeria, which needs a new policing architecture, as well as a comprehensive restructuring agenda that rebalances the Exclusive, Concurrent, and Residual Lists, devolves powers to the lowest effective level of government, strengthens fiscal federalism, guarantees equal citizenship, promotes productivity and competitiveness, and restores sovereignty to the Nigerian people.

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Obiageli "Oby" Ezekwesili, Founder of the School of Politics, Policy and Governance, will make a case for immediate steps toward the agenda of actions for the restructuring and constitutional processes in her next public memo.