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SPECIAL REPORT: Enugu community where residents rely on polluted river, deplorable PHCINVESTIGATION: TETFund’s N3.8 billion training contract triggers procurement controversy, concernsThe root cause of national failure and tragedy, By Sunday AdelajaSPECIAL REPORT: Enugu community where residents rely on polluted river, deplorable PHCINVESTIGATION: TETFund’s N3.
At the end of the review, we all hope the outcome of this process will transform to a new constitutional order that will birth a more functional federal system. But is the process really necessary? For me, I strongly believe, the process is highly imperative given the dysfunctional nature of our federal system. This system is dysfunctional due to its failure to decisively address the deficit inherent in our political and economic spaces.
However, the conversation has gained more traction with the resolve of the National Assembly to review the grundnorm that governs our federation. Unlike the previous exercises, we are not just undertaking another review as the Parliament of the Federal Government. Rather, we are undertaking this national assignment as the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a legislative power derived from Section 4 of the 1999 Constitution.
The proposals essentially can be reduced to two separate strands, which public intellectuals of diverse ideological orientations have canvassed within their spaces of persuasion. The conservatives, for instance, have embraced a centrally controlled police doctrine, which in entirety domiciles the policing powers exclusively in the Federal Government.
These explanations are not obviously convincing enough to disapprove the proposal for State Police outright. And this can mainly be understood from different socio-economic and political dimensions. In the first instance, whether in principle or practice, Nigeria is a federation of 36 states, six geo-political zones and one FCT. Ordinarily, the realities of Nigeria’s governance structure should define its national security architecture.
As currently constituted, the Nigeria Police does not possess any of these attributes, which I strongly believe, is central to crafting an alternative national security architecture that will guarantee the protection of lives and property. In other words, the dysfunctionality of the current police system directly correlates to the prevalence of criminal incidents in virtually all states of the federation.
As a federation, however, Nigeria cannot be left out in the matrix of new thinking that glaringly defines the world. In real terms, rationalism should, as a custom, shape the choice of police model we adopt and not what we are or what we are not. Put differently, our current socio-political realities or security dynamics ought to define our collective response.
This argument does not end with the critical perception of Nigeria by visiting donors, investors and partners. It also dovetails into the economy of security itself. In principle, political economists, especially those that share Karl Marx’s philosophy of economic determinism, always argue that the economy is the substructure of every society. And in essence, the economy forms the foundation on which socio-political structures are built.
As it is in other climes, the adoption of State Police will in reality bring the people to the core of security operations. And the global trend in security practice supports this proposition, especially in emerging democracies like India, Mexico and even South Africa, where policing powers have been significantly devolved to sub-national governments.
With this emerging anarchic context, we must embrace an alternative police system, explicitly defined and technically designed in response to our socio-economic and political realities. As the debate for a more efficient police model subsists, the National Assembly is under obligation to provide a legal framework that provides clearly defined preconditions, to which sub-national governments must conform before they can establish their own police formation.
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