DIG Mohammed Usaini Gumel (Rtd)
The security of Nigeria’s cities begins, in important respects, in its villages, farms, forests, grazing areas, border communities and rural markets.
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When these spaces become unsafe, the consequences do not remain in the countryside. Farmers abandon their fields. Livestock production and legitimate pastoral activities are disrupted. Rural markets contract. Transportation becomes dangerous.
Families are displaced. Food production declines. Prices rise. Criminal recruitment expands and, ultimately, public confidence in the ability of the State to protect its citizens begins to weaken.
What starts as rural insecurity eventually becomes urban inflation, food insecurity, unemployment, displacement and a wider national-security problem.
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This is why the ongoing debate on State Police should not be reduced to the question of whether governors should have police forces. There is a much larger issue before Nigeria: how do we bring professional policing closer to the communities where insecurity actually begins and where the presence of the State is often weakest?
For decades, Nigeria has relied principally upon a centrally organised federal policing structure. The Nigeria Police Force has served the country through extremely difficult circumstances, and generations of officers have made enormous sacrifices in protecting lives and property.
But acknowledging those sacrifices should not prevent us from asking whether one predominantly centralised policing structure can adequately meet the security requirements of a federation as large, diverse and complex as Nigeria.
We have tried centralisation for decades. Serious security challenges and public dissatisfaction nevertheless remain.
State Police therefore deserves a fair trial—not as a replacement for the Federal Police Service, but as an additional layer of professional policing capable of bringing security closer to the people.
Rural Security Is National Security
Nigeria must begin treating rural security as a strategic national priority.
A country cannot achieve sustainable food security when farmers are afraid to cultivate their land.
It cannot stabilise food prices when agricultural communities are repeatedly displaced. It cannot modernise livestock production when cattle rustling and organised criminality threaten legitimate pastoralists.
Neither can Nigeria attract substantial agricultural investment when investors cannot guarantee the safety of farms, workers, processing facilities, storage centres and transportation corridors.
The relationship is straightforward: insecurity reduces production; reduced production constrains supply; constrained supply contributes to higher prices; and rising food prices deepen poverty and social vulnerability.
Rural policing is therefore economic policy as much as it is security policy.
The farmer should be able to cultivate without fear. The pastoralist should be able to pursue a lawful livelihood without collective suspicion. The trader should be able to reach the market safely. The child should be able to travel to school. Women should be able to access farms, markets and healthcare facilities without fear.
Above all, the rural family should know that distance from the State capital does not mean distance from constitutional protection.
The Advantage of Proximity
This is where State Police could make a significant difference.
Nigeria’s security challenges are increasingly localised. The policing requirements of a border community in Jigawa or Borno are not necessarily the same as those of an oil-producing community in the Niger Delta, a farming settlement in Benue, a mining community in Zamfara or a densely populated neighbourhood in Lagos.
Effective rural policing requires knowledge of terrain, forests, waterways, grazing routes, farming cycles, weekly markets, traditional boundaries, local languages, seasonal movements and historical relationships between communities.
Such knowledge is itself an intelligence asset.
A police officer who understands the environment and enjoys the confidence of the community is better positioned to recognise unusual movements, identify emerging tensions and obtain information before criminal activity escalates.
This should become one of the operational advantages of State Police.
State Police Services should therefore not merely reproduce the existing police structure at state level.
They should develop specialised rural-security capabilities combining permanent police presence, intelligence-led patrols, forest intelligence, agricultural and livestock crime investigation, rapid-response capacity, community partnerships, conflict-sensitive policing and appropriate technology.
Nigeria must gradually move away from a situation where security agencies arrive after villages have been attacked towards a system based on presence, prevention, intelligence, early warning and rapid response.
Communities Are Intelligence Partners
The communities themselves must become part of this architecture.
Traditional rulers understand their communities. Farmers notice unfamiliar movements around settlements. Pastoralists understand grazing and livestock routes. Market associations recognise unusual transactions. Transport operators understand movement patterns. Women and young people frequently possess information that formal security structures may never receive.
The challenge is to establish trusted and lawful channels through which this information can reach professional security agencies.
Community participation, however, must complement rather than replace the constitutional responsibility of the State.
Vigilantes, hunters and other community-security groups should not become substitutes for properly trained police officers. Where they participate in security arrangements, they should be properly screened, regulated, accountable and connected to recognised professional command structures.
The objective should be to transform community knowledge into actionable intelligence while preserving human rights and the rule of law.
Criminality has no ethnicity: There is another principle that must remain central to rural policing. Nigeria must resist the temptation to associate criminality with ethnicity, religion, occupation or place of origin.
A farmer who commits a crime should answer for the crime. A pastoralist who commits a crime should answer for the crime. The same principle must apply to traders, miners, migrants, settlers and indigenes.
Criminal responsibility is individual.
Police action should therefore protect farmers, pastoralists, traders, legitimate land users and rural families without ethnic, religious, occupational or political discrimination.
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This is particularly important in areas affected by farmer-pastoralist conflicts, communal disputes and competition over land and natural resources.
Professional policing must distinguish criminal conduct from communal identity. The responsibility of the police is to identify offenders and protect communities—not to criminalise identities.
Reclaiming Forests and Ungoverned Spaces
Nigeria must also confront the growing security significance of its forests and difficult rural terrain.
Where government presence becomes weak, criminal organisations attempt to establish alternative authority.
They create camps, control routes, impose illegal levies, recruit vulnerable young people and use forests and remote terrain as operational sanctuaries.
Occasional security operations alone cannot permanently resolve this challenge.
Nigeria requires sustained territorial security.
Federal and State Police institutions should consequently develop interoperable capabilities for forest intelligence, border-community policing, ground and aerial surveillance, geospatial crime mapping and rapid deployment.
Technology can substantially strengthen this effort. Drones where lawfully deployed, satellite imagery, GPS-enabled patrol management, secure communications, emergency-response platforms and integrated criminal databases can improve situational awareness and response. But technology cannot replace human intelligence.
The farmer, pastoralist, traditional ruler, transporter or market leader who observes suspicious activity may provide information more valuable than any camera. The responsibility of government is to build a policing system that earns sufficient public confidence for citizens to share that information.
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Nigeria Needs Both Federal and State Police
State Police should therefore not be presented as an adversary of the Federal Police Service.
Nigeria needs both.
A strong Federal Police Service remains necessary for interstate crime, terrorism, organised criminal networks, national criminal intelligence, specialised investigations and other responsibilities constitutionally assigned to the federal level.
Strong State Police Services can provide deeper territorial presence, community policing, rural crime prevention, local intelligence and faster response.
The objective should be one national security architecture with multiple constitutionally defined and professionally coordinated policing capabilities.
Clear jurisdiction, common professional standards, interoperable communications, shared criminal databases, intelligence exchange and joint operational protocols will be essential.
Competition between police institutions would weaken reform. Cooperation will strengthen it.
Build Safeguards, Not Barriers to Reform
Concerns about political interference and possible abuse of State Police are legitimate. Nigeria’s political history requires these concerns to be taken seriously.
But the possibility that an institution might be abused is not, by itself, an argument against establishing the institution.
The appropriate response to potential abuse is strong constitutional safeguards.
State Police should therefore be accompanied by transparent recruitment, professional training, national minimum standards, independent Police Service Commissions, effective complaints mechanisms, legislative oversight, human-rights protections, financial accountability and enforceable restrictions against political interference in operational policing.
Similarly, any federal power to intervene in State Police operations should be clearly defined, objectively triggered, independently reviewable and subject to appropriate legislative and judicial safeguards.
The architecture must be designed not merely for today’s President and governors but for future officeholders whose intentions cannot be predicted. That is what constitutional safeguards are meant to achieve.
Give State Police a Fair Trial
Nigeria should not expect State Police to solve every security problem overnight.
There will be implementation difficulties. There will be jurisdictional disagreements. Institutions will require adjustment. Mistakes will be made and lessons will have to be learned.
But Nigeria has operated essentially one federal policing model for decades, and Nigerians are still asking fundamental questions about police presence, response time, community trust and insecurity. We cannot simply assume that the situation will eventually take care of itself.
The prudent approach is to preserve what works, reform what does not, introduce strong safeguards and allow professionally regulated State Police Services to complement the Federal Police Service.Ultimately, the success of the reform will not be determined by constitutional provisions alone.
It will be measured in Nigeria’s communities.Can the farmer safely return to his farm?Can the pastoralist move legitimate livestock without fear of criminals?
Can traders reach rural markets without paying illegal levies?
Can children travel safely to school?
Can agricultural produce move from farms to markets without criminal disruption?
Can police receive intelligence early enough to prevent attacks rather than merely arrive afterwards?
And can every Nigerian, irrespective of geography, ethnicity, religion, occupation or political affiliation, reasonably expect protection from the State?
When these questions can increasingly be answered in the affirmative, Nigeria will know that policing reform is working.
The security of the village and the prosperity of the city are inseparable.
When Nigeria secures its farms, it protects its food supply. When it secures livestock and rural markets, it protects livelihoods and commerce. When it secures forests and border communities, it denies criminals operating space. When it protects rural families, it reduces displacement and criminal recruitment.
And when citizens encounter professional police officers who understand their communities and protect them impartially, confidence in the Nigerian State itself becomes stronger. That is why State Police deserves an opportunity.
The ultimate objective should be neither Federal Police supremacy nor State Police supremacy. It should be the supremacy of public safety, constitutional protection and the rule of law.
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If Nigeria can secure the village, the farm, the forest, the grazing area and the rural market, we will not merely be securing rural communities.
We will be securing the foundations of the Nigerian nation itself.
DIG Mohammed Usaini Gumel (Rtd), is a retired Deputy Inspector-General of Police and a public policy contributor on policing, community security and security-sector reform.