STATE POLICE IS NOT A MAGIC BULLET
The Crisis of Underfunding, Lack of Democratic Control and Corruption Must First be Addressed!
Police Must Enjoy Democratic Right to Join Union and Control Their Welfare Funds
By Abbey Trotsky
President Bola Tinubu has transmitted to the National Assembly a Bill seeking to establish State Police across Nigeria. Predictably, the proposal has generated widespread national debate. Nigerians who support the initiative have argued that the highly centralized structure of the Nigeria Police Force as we currently have it has proved incapable of confronting the country’s escalating security challenges. The other camp fear that state police could become another instrument of political persecution, allowing governors to intimidate opposition parties, suppress democratic protests, harass labour activists, and consolidate authoritarian control within their respective states.
While the two camps have valid points, the crux of the matter should not be reduced to a simple choice between centralized policing and state-controlled policing. There is no doubt that the Nigeria policing under the current centralized command structure is a fiasco whose evidence is overwhelming. Kidnapping, terrorism, banditry, armed robbery, communal violence, cultism and other violent crimes continue to spread despite repeated security operations, while corruption and bribe-taking continue. Many rural communities remain effectively without any form of protection, while urban residents increasingly rely on private security companies, vigilante groups and neighborhood watches because confidence in the police has steadily declined.
Besides, contrary to the impression created by the opponents of State Police, it is not when the control of police is transferred to the state government that they will become an instrument of repression and attacks on democratic rights. It is already the feature of Police under the current arrangement of the federal government control.
However, decentralization of the current command structure alone cannot solve the enormous Nigeria’s policing crisis which is rooted primarily in decades of chronic underfunding, corruption, poor welfare conditions, inadequate manpower and lack of democratic control. Worse still, many police officers are under permanent service of VIPs and top political office holders, something that has deepened the police shortage.
In some instances, officers still purchase uniforms, boots, writing materials and even fuel for patrol operations from their own salaries or the extortion from civilian population. Numerous police barracks remain overcrowded and dilapidated, lacking potable water, sanitation, and healthcare facilities. Besides, salaries are low for the rank and file and there is usually a frustrating delay in the compensation for families of officers killed in active service. These conditions inevitably undermine morale and effective discharge of duty while encouraging corruption.
So, corruption within the police cannot be explained simply as individual moral failure. Tackling corruption therefore requires among other things significant improvements in police officers’ living and working conditions.
This is one of the reasons we call for the rights of the rank-and-file police officers to form or belong to a union. Independent unions can provide police officers with a legitimate platform to negotiate better salaries, improved housing, healthcare, pensions, insurance, safer working conditions and transparent promotion procedures. The rank-and-file police officers should also be allowed to exercise democratic control over welfare funds and welfare institutions established for their benefit. Too often, resources intended for police welfare, which are already limited or paltry, are usually misappropriated. Such a democratic control can help reduce corruption and relatively improve welfare condition of both active and retired officers. However, such democratic measures as stated above are not part of the Bill, and it is one of the reasons State Police will not make any fundamental difference from the current arrangement.
By and large, the masses must not have an illusion in the capacity and sincerity of any section of the capitalist ruling elite whose anti-poor program and policies largely create and maintain material conditions for insecurity in the first place to adequately protect them. As already stated above, the major reasons the police and other official security bodies cannot adequately fight crime is firstly because they are in reality fundamentally run as an instrument of class oppression rather than serving the communities and secondly because they are not adequately equipped while the rank-and-file members are poorly paid and ill-motivated. So, it is misplaced to expect that the governors who pay poverty wages or have failed to fulfill their social obligation on the provision on health, education, housing and infrastructure to run and finance an effective and efficient security outfit to defend their respective states.
Especially now with the increase in insecurity the working masses should support the call for the formation of multi-ethnic and multi-religious defence committees in communities, which could be armed, if necessary, but whose operation must be under the democratic control of the community people. The committees should also exercise democratic control over financial allocation and operation of the police in communities.
More importantly, it must be stated that insecurity cannot be separated from the broader capitalist crisis that is responsible for the growing mass unemployment, poverty, inequality, poor education and a collapsing healthcare system across the country. No policing model, whether centralized or decentralized, can permanently resolve insecurity without addressing these underlying socioeconomic conditions created by the unfair capitalist system.
This underscores the urgent responsibility of the trade union movement, working-class organizations and other oppressed groups to build an independent political platform capable of fighting for a workers’ and poor people’s government based on a socialist programme. Such a government committed to public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy under democratic workers’ control can mobilize society’s enormous resources to guarantee decent life for the vast majority and provision quality public services and thus begin to reduce material condition for insecurity and policing.