Mutfwang’s conversation on state police, By Emmanuel Onwubiko

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” Victor Hugo.

My attention has just been drawn to the position espoused last week by the indefatigable governor of Plateau State in the Middle Belt region of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Barrister Caleb Mutfwang regarding the increasingly popularly acceptable calls for the modern day, twenty first century Nigeria to take steps to correct the colossal policing crisis confronting us at a time that terrorists and freelance armed killers have become the most potent dangers and threats to the stability and national security of the Country that prides itself as the largest black nation in the World: Federal Republic of Nigeria. The failed national policing system is one major plank of the larger existential crises confronting the modern day Nigeria and until this debilitating cancer is uprooted surgically by setting up state and local policing outfits that are engineered to proactively stop criminals from attacking soft targets and destroying public and private property, then our larger problems will ballon out of control.

The Plateau state’s owned Standard Newspapers editorialised a position which informed us that last week’s disagreement between Plateau State Governor, Caleb Mutfwang, and the Plateau chapter of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) over the creation of state police has brought renewed attention to one of Nigeria’s most pressing challenges: the failure of the country’s centralised policing and overall security systems and the urgent need to give states more control over security.

The HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) which i founded eighteen years ago, is totally in support of the advocacy by the Plateau state’s chief executive for Nigeria to have both a slim national police and a well functional state police. State police is an idea whose time has come and as the Philosopher Victor Hugo once remarked that ‘an idea whose time has come is stronger than the strongest Army in the whole wide world’, so also it is necessary that the current constitution amendments by the 10th session of the National Assembly must create a state police.

According to the information obtained from the Plateau state owned newspaper, the two-day hearing of the Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution for the North Central Zone held in Jos, saw the presentation by Governor Mutfwang who made a compelling case for independent state police, which he said should be anchored in the brutal realities his state has endured for over two decades.

His words: “Despite various security strategies implemented by successive federal administrations, both hard and soft targets continue to suffer brazen attacks by non-state armed groups,” he declared. “Nigeria is increasingly struggling to provide basic security guarantees for its citizens,” the governor lamented.

In an interview the Plateau state governor granted to The Nation, a media conglomerate owned by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Plateau state’s chief executive said the problem of reactive tendencies of the police rather than preventive action by the police is a fundamental factor necessitating the clarion calls for a state police in Nigeria now.

It bears no repeating to state just like the newspaper being quoted that the present national constitutional provision, which places the control of all security agencies in the hands of the President, has obviously failed woefully. “It has only created a top-heavy, sluggish and often unaccountable system that leaves states like Plateau and others in the Middle Belt at the mercy of marauding killers.

The aforementioned media outlet asserted that Governors, who are said to be the chief security officers of their respective states, are rendered impotent as they have no operational control over the very security forces deployed in their states. The result is a trail of blood, displacement and destruction that continues to deepen across the country,” Nigerian Standard opined and I agree.

A consensus opinion about the institutional failures of the Nigeria Police Force is that there is the urgency of the moment for real, practical policing reforms to happen in Nigeria and it has to be concretised by the amendments of the relevant provisions of the Constitution to implant the formation of a well structured but autonomous policing structure in the states of the Federation which should be free from all executive emcumbrances and control of the state chief executives.

The fear of converting state police to the personal political armed group of the state governor is germane. The only way to assure Nigerians that it is important to bring about the creation of the State Police is to infuse some constitutional provisions to extricate these state police from the maximum control of the governors so that a situation is not created for opposition political parties and their members in the states of the Federation are not muzzled.

However, there is not a single doubt in the minds of Nigerians that the current national policing structure has failed thereby occasioning a very loud cry for the setting up of state police without any further waste of precious time. Even the United Nations have voiced their concern about the failings and incapacities of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).

It is no longer a hypothetical situation but rather a demand that is concretely necessary and existential that the failings, continuous institutional incapacitation of the Nigeria Police Force by the federal government and the hierarchy of the policing platform, have cumulatively resulted in the National consensus that Nigeria right now needs a state police.

I will narrate the case of the breakdown of policing efficiency in Abuja that resulted in the brutal, gruesome and callous murder of a friend of my family Miss Freda Arnong by a gang of thieves in Abuja who operated as one chance thieves. The following narration by another victim of the frequent cases of 1 chance robberies in Abuja about the encounter that my friend from Ghana MISS Freda Arnong had with these thieves in Abuja, suffices as one necessary reason for the immediate Constitution of State police just as has just been canvassed by the Plateau state governor whose state has come under increasing attacks by terrorists made up of Fulani insurgents.

This narrator started by asking what exactly did this beautiful soul did to anyone that they will have to beat her to death? One chance in Abuja, you do this one
Just last week I was robbed of my I phone 13 pro, at knife point.
Still trying to heal and moved on from that, I heard the most d£vastating news ever.
This is Freda. A Ghanaian. A beautiful Soul. This girl is what you can consider an Angel on earth. Selfless and amazing. She loves with the whole of her heart. Never miss any opportunity to be in the presence of God.
She was on her way home from house fellowship on Tuesday, 1st of July, 2025 when she was picked up by some b£asts who disguised as humans.
Three men b£at this lady to the extent that her rib, spine and hips were broken. Should I even talk about her face and eyes?
The trauma she had to go through while she f0ught for her life in the Trauma I. C. U. In National hospital was heartbreaking. Even her kidneys were b@dly affected as a result.
And she couldn’t continue the f!ght, she gave up the ghost in the early hours of this morning.
Her only crime was being a lady living in Nigeria.
The question I keep asking is how can a man, who has a wife, a mother and sisters beat a lady to this extent
She did nothing at all to you.
Why?? Why???
Now she is dead, not because she was sick, not because she committed any crime but because some fools, some beast who lived on earth decided to take her from her mother.
But for all those involved in Freda’s death, yours will come slowly and painfully that you will wish and cry for death but it will be far. The narrator concluded.

Also, Mr. Arnong Arnong, the elder brother of this murdered Ghanaian lady who has been my family friend for two decades almost in Abuja, stated that the attackers destroyed the vital internal organs of Miss Freda Arnong before throwing her out of their moving vehicle around 11 pm in the dark of the night in the lonely road leading to the National Stadium in the Nation’s capital which is exactly five minutes away to the FCT Police Command office and yet the incompetent, inefficient and ineffective police operatives failed Freda Arnong which cost her her precious life.

Similarly, millions of Nigerians have died before the lazy police of the Nigeria Police Force intervened and in multiple cases, the police have always reacted and not deployed effective intelligence to stop criminals before they kill Nigerians. This is one reason a functional state police supported by functional security architecture at the state levels such as functional cctv and effective crime fighting technologies are necessary.

Another issue is the expanding frontiers of ungoverned spaces in Nigeria. For instance, in Imo state, majority of the rural communities in the Senatorial zones don’t have functional policing structures.

In places such as several communities within my hometown of Arondizuogu, innocent residents are killed on regular basis by locally based armed crooks operating under nebulous designations.

Criminals are having their field days and the Nigeria Police Force has shown no capacity or desire to do their work because the bulk of the police manpower are in road blocks extorting drivers and the remaining fractions are engaged in commercial security jobs by guarding politicians and criminal elements who hibernate all over the place.

Last week alone, armed goons invaded a community within Arondizuogu in Onuimo LGA and stabbed one innocent man just for confronting them for coming near his vicinity to buy hard drugs known as Mkpuru mmiri. Communities within Okigwe senatorial zone are witnessing all kinds of organised criminality and deaths from armed freelance attackers and the police is so far off from the scenes of these attacks.

The same situation plays out all over Nigeria which makes most observers to ask why a nation like Nigeria left the Nigeria Police Force to so deteriorate to this sorry state.

The UN through one of the agencies said the following below:

“In Nigeria, actual and perceived impunity for corruption and human rights abuses associated with the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) has, for many decades, adversely affected public confidence and led to a gradual erosion of trust in the police. This has had and continues to have dire consequences for stability in the country. In addition, the weaknesses of existing mechanisms to hold the police accountable lead to public frustration and protests which have at times descended into violence.

The UN Special Rapporteur, on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions on her visit to Nigeria in 2019, described the situation as an ‘injustice pressure cooker’. This include the widespread failure by the federal authorities to investigate and hold perpetrators to account, a lack of public trust and confidence in the judicial institutions and State institutions more generally.

Police misconduct, particularly concerning on extortion and bribery continues to negatively affect the relationship between citizens and the Nigerian police. The Second National Corruption Survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics and UNODC in 2019, reported that police officers were the top public officials engaging in bribery, with 33% of those who encountered the police paid a bribe over the previous 12 months.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Country Office Nigeria (CONIG) with support from the United States Embassy and U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) and its partners, the Nigeria Police Force, in line with its Strategic Vision for Nigeria commit to supporting the Nigeria Police Force to better able to address police impunity through strengthened oversight and accountability mechanisms under the two year project: ‘Strengthening the Internal Oversight and Accountability Mechanisms of the Nigerian Police Force’ (NPF). SOURCE : UNODC.ORG.

Nigeria needs a state police that ought to be patterned after London Metropolitan Police which for me is one of the most effective policing institutions globally.

The state governors must as a matter of fact steer clear of any ambitions to control these state policing outfits. The kind of state police we need is such that only patriotism, professionalism and loyalty to the wellbeing and welfare of the citizens must be the top priority of these operatives to be set up as state police in the states making up the Federation of Nigeria. If the current amendments to the 1999 constitution is completed without the coming into being of state police, it should be assumed that this session of the National Assembly has failed. And generations unborn will curse the leaders and members of this tenth session of the National Assembly if that evil scenario of failing to create statevpokice is not actualised.

* EMMANUEL NNADOZIE ONWUBIKO IS the founder of the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA and was NATIONAL COMMISSIONER OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF NIGERIA.