With talks on state police as a veritable option to curtail security challenges gaining momentum and the legitimate fears of critics of the proposed arrangement, Prof Kemi Rotimi has said that governors planning to misuse the apparatus of state police would be playing a risky game.
The don, who lectures in the Department of History at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Osun State, said if state police become a reality, governors who count on their successors to shield them after their tenure in office would get the shock of their lives.
He was a guest on the Friday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.
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As of December 2024, with the exclusion of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the 36 states have submitted their positions on state police, with a majority of them seeing the need for the establishment of state-controlled policing to curb rising security challenges including banditry, kidnapping, ritual killings, amongst other menacing trends. The National Economic Council is expected to continue talks on state police this January.
One of the major fears of critics of state police is that governors will weaponise it against perceived detractors and use the instrument of state to win elections.
However, Rotimi stressed that the principle of federalism underscores state policing and that “if there is any beauty in Nigeria’s constitution, especially at the executive level, it is term limitation. However, nice you may be, it is eight years and it is the end”.
The professor said he has done some works on the history of policing in Nigeria and that policing is about investing one man with state authority to affect the freedom of another, even in the matter of crime control.
He said, “Any governor who has control over the police in his state during the pendency of his governorship, which can be a maximum of eight years, is a fool. He only has a way out which is to die in his office. If he does not die in office, everything he uses the police to do while in office against his opponent will be used against him.
“The police owe loyalty to the government of the day, and it is not for nothing because they didn’t create themselves and they were not the ones who decided who won the election. A man has emerged and he has been sworn in as governor, they have to oblige to work for him.
“Once the regime is over, they (the police) are still there. So, the new man comes and is saluted. He gives instructions and the police oblige him.
“Since 1999, we have had the Nigeria Police Force, haven’t you seen what has happened in states? There are former governors who can’t go to their states today. So, it behooves an incumbent governor to be decent and you cannot legislate for decency and self-respect.
“Misusing the police is a risky game, don’t just try it but you need that determination within you to show that you are a decent person. Cast your minds back from 1999 till now. How many governors have planted successors and what has happened to the successors and the predecessors?
“The most topical one is Rivers State and the one that is next to it is Kaduna, and Kano is also brewing. Planting a successor is wishful thinking because you have no way of controlling a successor. When a man has attained power, it is a different ballgame. Planting a successor to expect the police to oblige you is not true. Whatever your successor directs them to do is what they do.”
