Governor Ayade moves to promote security in Cross River; Police moves to stop him. What irony! What hypocrisy!

NIGERIA’s unfeasible security architecture is undergoing a severe test of wills. Essentially, the Commissioner of Police in Cross River State, Jimoh Ozi-Oleh, got himself into an awful tangle when he declared two new security/safety outfits established by Governor Ben Ayade “illegal”. Ayade set up the Homeland Security and Green Police to arrest escalating criminality and the deteriorating sanitation profile of the state. The looming face-off depicts the hypocrisy underpinning federalism in Nigeria.

Frankly, it is bad politics for the police to single out the state for intimidation as it moves to secure its domain. Several states in the North have provocatively established the Islamic religious police, Hisbah, yet no federal finger has been lifted against them. Hisbah is the divinely-sanctioned duty of the ruler (government) to intervene and coercively “enjoining good and forbidding wrong” in order to keep everything in order, according to Sharia (Islamic law).

But, because of Nigeria’s grossly flawed federalism, the attempt by Cross River State to protect its own citizens and track sanitation is facing a threat. This is double standard. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

It is foreboding that insecurity has reached an alarming scale in Nigeria. Kidnapping, armed robbery, rape, terrorism and oil militancy are at a premium. As it is, nobody is safe. No government plays politics with this albatross. The Federal Government and the Nigeria Police should stop pretending that they have all the answers to this unfolding anarchy. Therefore, Ayade should be supported by the centre and not be threatened with jail terms to his newly-created cadets. Ozi-Oleh’s threats against the cadets should be withdrawn.

To enforce the Sharia Islamic legal code they unilaterally declared, states in the North have been operating the Hisbah. Despite the fact that the Hisbah operations conflict with the constitution in two respects (it promotes a religion and it sets up a parallel police force to enforce discriminatory laws), the police and government have let them be. Take the case in Niger State, where, in January, its Hisbah officials seized and destroyed alcoholic beverages in Suleja. This is state-sponsored assault on other Nigerians’ rights and business; the state has not atoned for the economic loss of the owners. To make matters worse, the head of the Hisbah, Habeeb Madaki, praised the police for their support. How awful.

So, why is the case of Cross River State different? In November 2013, the Kano State Hisbah unlawfully intercepted 20,000 cartons of beer. In a show of terror and crude force, it publicly destroyed 240,000 bottles of beer and 8,000 litres of burukutu, a local brew.

On November 4, Jigawa State Hisbah officials destroyed 238 bottles of beer in Kazaure Local Government Area, claiming that the consumption of alcohol was illegal in the state. It had earlier seized 111 cartons of beer in Birnin Kudu LGA. Nigeria is a secular state and the constitution guarantees freedom of choice for the individual. This includes the right to consume, produce or distribute alcoholic beverages. How come the Value Added Tax from these alcoholic drinks are not rejected by these states?

At present, the country is in the throes of insecurity, which the Nigeria Police are unable to cope with. All the 36 state governors are funding the police with their resources, but they are the Chief Security Officers of their states only on paper. The governors buy equipment, weapons and vehicles and pay special allowances to the police, yet they do not have control over them. For instance, the Lagos State Security Trust Fund has boosted the police with logistics, which the Federal Government has shied away from providing. In February, it spent N4.8 billion on patrol vehicles, gunboats, three helicopters and power bikes to equip the police. It is a glaring contradiction of the Nigerian union that is being reinforced by the subsisting federal police structure.

Seeing their financial commitment to the federal police, it is not surprising that some states have initiated steps to protect their people by establishing legally-defined security agencies. In particular, the Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Corps Law and the Ekiti State Anti-Grazing Law are perceptive. The Lagos law aims at improving security in its neighbourhoods on the platform of community policing. In Ekiti, the intention of the law is to restrain the murderous Fulani herdsmen by empowering the Ekiti Grazing Enforcement Marshals. Therefore, Cross River State Government should not be made a scapegoat in its efforts to curb insecurity in its domain.

But the real solution lies with the Federal Government. It is time Abuja faced the reality of state policing in Nigeria. It is the norm in every federal polity. The United States, Canada, Australia and India – all federal jurisdictions – operate decentralised policing. Nigeria ought to be the same. Even the United Kingdom, a unitary polity, runs a devolved policing system.

It is time to put an end to injustice in our federalism. Ayade‘s commitment to tackling insecurity and other problems is therefore welcome, and the strategy makes plenty of good suggestions. States should mobilise the lawmakers to push for a constitutional amendment that will approve state police, along with the fiscal structure that will fund their operations. After all, the manifesto of the ruling All Progressives Congress includes state policing. President Muhammadu Buhari should pay this political debt.