State police won’t fix insecurity, Ezekwesili warns, urges full restructuring

Former Minister of Education, Obiageli Ezekwesili, has addressed an open letter to President Bola Tinubu, the National Assembly, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, and the wider public, arguing that the push for state police alone will not resolve Nigeria’s insecurity and instability challenges.

In the letter, shared on Monday across her social media handles, she maintained that comprehensive restructuring of the country remains, in her view, the more sustainable path to addressing the underlying issues.

In the memorandum, titled “State Police Is Not the Answer. Restructuring Nigeria Is,” she said the Tinubu administration’s renewed push for State Police has reopened a major policy debate.

Ezekwesili wrote: “The Tinubu administration’s renewed push for State Police has reopened one of the most consequential public policy debates in Nigeria’s democratic history.”

She noted that the proposal reflects concerns over insecurity in the country.

“The country’s security architecture is failing. Terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, violent extremism, communal conflicts and organised criminality have overwhelmed the capacity of a centrally controlled police force to secure lives and property across a country of more than 230 million people,” she stated.

She added: “For many citizens, therefore, State Police appears to be an obvious and long overdue solution.”

Citing survey data, she stated: “Recent Afrobarometer findings show that 79 per cent of Nigerians consider kidnapping and abduction a serious national problem; 33 per cent personally know someone who has been kidnapped within the last five years; and 63 per cent say they or a family member felt unsafe in their home or neighbourhood during the previous year.”

She added: “These are not merely security statistics. They are indicators of a profound crisis of state effectiveness and citizen confidence.”

On the proposal for State Police, she wrote: “Yet the fact that State Police is necessary does not mean it is sufficient.”

She further stated: “The danger confronting Nigeria today is that the country may once again mistake a symptom for the disease itself.”

She continued: “The security crisis is real, but it is not fundamentally a policing crisis. It is the manifestation of a deeper constitutional, governance and political economy crisis that has steadily eroded state capacity, weakened accountability and undermined the effectiveness of public institutions.”

She added: “The central question before Nigeria should not be whether governors ought to control police forces. The more important question is whether the constitutional architecture governing the Nigerian federation remains fit for purpose.”

The ex-minister also spoke on Nigeria’s constitutional structure.

She stated: “At the heart of the problem lies a constitutional order that concentrates excessive authority, fiscal resources and political power at the centre.

“Although Nigeria describes itself as a federation, many of its institutional arrangements bear the characteristics of a highly centralised state.

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“The Constitution allocates powers among three categories – the Exclusive Legislative List, the Concurrent Legislative List and residual powers reserved for the states.”

“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.”

She stated, “This imbalance matters because the State Police debate focuses on only one item among dozens. Police is merely one of sixty-eight subjects constitutionally monopolised by the Federal Government.”

She added, “The question therefore is not whether policing should be decentralised. It should.”

She further stated, “This arrangement is neither accidental nor historically inevitable.”

She wrote: “What Nigerians often describe as federalism today is therefore, in many respects, a unitary system wearing federal clothing.”

On insecurity, she stated: “The consequences of this constitutional distortion are evident across every major sector of national life.”

“Insecurity is one manifestation. Economic underperformance is another. Weak public service delivery is yet another.”

“Nigeria’s security crisis and economic crisis are therefore not separate phenomena. They are products of the same constitutional dysfunction.”

The geographical spread of insecurity further demonstrates this reality, she noted, adding that state police might be necessary but cannot solve the ills bedevilling the nation.

She stated, “The proper national conversation is not ‘State Police or no State Police.’ The proper conversation is whether Nigeria is prepared to redesign a constitutional order that has concentrated too much power at the centre.

“State Police will be necessary. But necessity does not make it the solution to a dysfunctional Nigeria.”

“Nigeria does not merely need a new policing architecture. It needs a comprehensive restructuring agenda anchored in a new constitutional settlement.”

“Restructuring the dysfunctional territory and system that our beloved country has become is THE BOLD CONVERSATION AND ACTION that Nigerians can no longer afford to postpone.”

“No more tragically costly delays.”