State police will deepen Nigeria’s federalism, argues BASHIR ARE
Nigeria stands once again at a constitutional crossroads. Decades after independence, the country still governs itself through a federal structure that was never permitted to mature on its own terms. The debate this article addresses is not whether Nigeria should add more layers of government, but whether it will finally complete the unfinished project of true federalism, beginning with the devolution of policing, the area where the mismatch between constitutional responsibility and operational authority is most dangerous and most costly in human lives.
Nigeria does not need new constitutional bureaucracy. It needs a return to the fundamental principles of federalism upon which successful and diverse nations have built stable democracies: a federal government confined to genuinely national functions, States exercising real constitutional authority over the services that most directly affect their residents, and local governments guaranteed genuine autonomy at the grassroots.
Nigeria’s federalism problem is not a design flaw waiting to be discovered; it is an inheritance. The 1963 Republican Constitution governed a genuine federation of four regions—Northern, Eastern, Western, and Mid-Western—each with its own constitution, judiciary, civil service, and police, and with substantial constitutional control over its own natural and human resources. That federal architecture was not gradually eroded but deliberately dismantled by the military. General Aguiyi-Ironsi’s Unification Decree No. 34 of 1966 declared that Nigeria would cease to be a federation and become a unitary republic, abolishing the regions outright and merging the regional civil services into a single National Public Service.
Although the military government that followed under General Gowon restored the outward label of federalism and replaced the four regions with twelve states in 1967, the underlying command structure remained that of a military hierarchy: state governments answerable to a central military authority, state budgets subject to central approval, and an exclusive federal legislative list steadily widened at the expense of what had previously been regional or concurrent competence. Nigeria never fully reversed this transition. The 1979 Constitution, drafted while the military still held power and supervised the transition to civilian rule, did not restore the pre-1966 federal balance; it consolidated the centralisation achieved under military rule, moving numerous subject areas that had been concurrent or regional under the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions into the Federal Government’s exclusive competence. The 1999 Constitution, itself substantially a re-enactment of the 1979 text produced by another outgoing military government, carried this unitary architecture into Nigeria’s current Fourth Republic, dressed in federal vocabulary, but built on a unitary foundation.
This is the deeper argument beneath every reform proposed in this article. Nigeria’s recurring federalism debates often proceed as though the country must choose between federal ideals and practical governance. In truth, Nigeria has rarely been permitted to test genuine federalism against its own scale and diversity since 1966; what it has tested, continuously and to poor effect, is a unitary system wearing federal clothing.
A structural analogy is useful here. A twenty-storey building and a bungalow are not the same design merely scaled up or down, they are different buildings, governed by entirely different structural requirements. A bungalow’s foundation, beam sizes, and load paths would fail catastrophically under a twenty-storey structure raised upon them; a twenty-storey foundation poured beneath a bungalow, conversely, is needless and wasteful. Governance follows the same structural logic. A small, relatively homogeneous polity can function adequately under a centralised, unitary command structure. A country of Nigeria’s scale and heterogeneity — over 200 million people, hundreds of ethnic and linguistic groups, multiple major religions, and 36 states spanning vastly different economies, security challenges, and social realities — requires a structurally federal architecture: one engineered from the foundation upward to bear the load of genuine diversity, not a unitary frame with federal signage bolted on top. Since 1966, Nigeria has in essence built the bungalow’s foundation and then tried to raise a twenty-storey federation on top of it. The recurring cracks which include agitation over restructuring, resource control, and above all state policing are not proof that federalism is unsuited to Nigeria. They are the structural cracks of a design mismatch between the scale of the country and the architecture of its governance.
Correcting this mismatch does not require Nigeria to invent something new. It requires a deliberate return to the structural logic the 1963 Constitution already embodied to wit devolved policing, meaningful state control of resources and correctional administration, and a Federal Government confined to genuinely national functions adapted, through the mechanisms discussed throughout this article, to a Nigeria of 36 states rather than four regions.
Among the world’s successful federations, no country offers a more compelling example of this load-bearing model than Switzerland. Together with Germany, Canada, the United States, and India, it demonstrates that national unity is best achieved not by multiplying governmental structures, but by clearly defining constitutional responsibilities, empowering constituent units, and encouraging cooperation rather than centralisation.
Switzerland is particularly instructive because, like Nigeria, it is a country of multiple languages, cultures, religions, and regional identities. Yet it has maintained remarkable political stability, economic prosperity, and social cohesion for generations. The secret lies neither in excessive centralisation nor in creating regional governments above the constituent units. Instead, Switzerland distributes authority among three constitutionally recognised levels of government; the Confederation, the Cantons, and the Communes (local governments). The Federal Government concentrates on national responsibilities such as defence, foreign affairs, customs, currency, and immigration, while the Cantons exercise extensive constitutional powers over policing, education, healthcare, taxation, land administration, transportation, and economic development.
The experience of Germany reinforces this conclusion. Germany’s federation is built upon its Länder, each possessing constitutionally protected authority over major domestic responsibilities including education, policing, culture, and substantial areas of public administration. National legislation affecting the interests of the Länder requires the participation of the Bundesrat, ensuring that constituent states remain active partners in federal governance.
Canada provides another valuable lesson. Despite its linguistic and cultural diversity, particularly between English-speaking and French-speaking communities, Canada has preserved national unity through meaningful provincial autonomy rather than constitutional over-centralisation. Canadian provinces exercise broad powers over healthcare, education, natural resources, municipalities, and numerous aspects of civil administration.
The United States, whose constitutional framework significantly influenced Nigeria’s own federal structure, reaches the same destination through similar principles. Federal authority is confined to national responsibilities, while states retain broad constitutional powers over policing, criminal justice, education, transportation, public health, and local governance.
India offers perhaps the most directly relevant precedent of all, given its scale, diversity, and post-colonial constitutional inheritance not unlike Nigeria’s own. Under the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution, “police” and “public order” are entries on the State List, meaning policing is constitutionally a state subject administered by twenty-eight states and several union territories, each maintaining its own police force under its own Director General of Police. India demonstrates, at a scale comparable to Nigeria’s, that state-controlled policing is not merely theoretically sound but has functioned as the constitutional default in one of the world’s largest and most diverse democracies for over seven decades.
Nigeria already possesses a comparable constitutional framework to these federations. It has the Federal Government, thirty-six States, and 774 Local Governments. The constitutional challenge is not the absence of governmental layers but the incomplete implementation of federalism. Constitutional reform should empower the institutions that already exist, beginning with the states, rather than diffusing constitutional energy into new governmental architecture.
The more constructive path is to deepen federalism through a clearer constitutional allocation of powers. The Federal Government should remain responsible for defence, foreign affairs, immigration, customs, currency, aviation safety, national standards, and interstate coordination. States should assume broader authority over policing, correctional services, education, healthcare, agriculture, housing, land administration, environmental protection, intra-state transportation, taxation within their constitutional competence, and economic development. Local Governments should be guaranteed genuine democratic, administrative, and fiscal autonomy to deliver community services, primary healthcare, sanitation, local roads, markets, and grassroots development.
Such a constitutional arrangement would strengthen accountability by ensuring that governmental responsibility corresponds with constitutional authority. Citizens would know which level of government is responsible for particular public services, while elected officials could no longer shift responsibility to another tier.
The Case for State Police
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s recent support for state police, local government autonomy, and judicial fiscal autonomy reflects an important recognition that Nigeria’s federal system requires meaningful structural reform rather than additional constitutional bureaucracy. These initiatives provide an opportunity to complete Nigeria’s transition from a highly centralised federation toward one that genuinely reflects federal constitutional principles.
The next logical step is the devolution of security and criminal justice institutions, where Nigeria’s constitutional contradictions are perhaps most evident. No federation can function effectively when one level of government bears responsibility for maintaining public order while another exercises exclusive operational control over the institutions that enforce it. If states are expected to guarantee the safety of their residents, they should possess the constitutional authority to establish and administer state police services, subject to national standards, constitutional safeguards, judicial oversight, independent inspection, and full respect for fundamental human rights.
Nigeria’s security crisis has made this argument urgent rather than merely theoretical. Banditry in the North-West, kidnapping-for-ransom along major highways, farmer-herder conflict across the Middle Belt, and separatist agitation in parts of the South-East have exposed the practical limits of a single, centrally commanded police force attempting to secure a country of over 200 million people across 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. A force headquartered in Abuja, however well led, cannot match the response time, local intelligence, and community trust that a properly constituted state police service can provide. Officers who live among the people they protect, speak the local languages, and understand local terrain and social dynamics are structurally better positioned to prevent crime and respond to it quickly than officers rotated in from distant states with no local knowledge or ties.
This is also a matter of constitutional coherence. Governors are held politically and constitutionally accountable by their citizens for security within their states, yet under the present arrangement they have no operational command over the police charged with delivering it. This mismatch between accountability and authority is itself a federalism failure: responsibility should be matched by operational control, a principle that applies with even greater force to policing, where delay costs lives, than to any other devolved function.
The legislative process has already moved decisively in this direction. The National Assembly has passed the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (State Police and Related Matters) Sixth Alteration Bill, 2026 through both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The bill amends Section 214 of the 1999 Constitution to formally establish a dual policing structure comprising a Federal Police Service and a State Police Service for each state, and amends Section 215 to provide that a State Commissioner of Police would be appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Nigeria Police Council, subject to confirmation by the State House of Assembly. It still requires ratification by at least two-thirds of the State Houses of Assembly and presidential assent before taking effect, a threshold that itself reflects appropriate constitutional caution.
Solutions to Mitigate the Political Abuse of State Police
The principal and most legitimate objection to state police is not constitutional but practical: the risk that governors could weaponize a state force against political opponents, journalists, or ethnic and religious minorities. This objection deserves a serious answer, not dismissal, and fortunately Nigeria does not have to design that answer from scratch. A wide body of comparative experience already shows what works, what fails, and why.
India’s Prakash Singh reforms – The most directly relevant precedent is India’s Supreme Court judgment in Prakash Singh v. Union of India (2006), which responded to exactly the fear Nigeria’s critics now raise: that state-controlled police would become an instrument of the ruling party rather than the public. The Court issued binding directives requiring every state to establish a State Security Commission, with independent and civil-society membership, to insulate policy-setting from day-to-day political pressure; to guarantee the Director General of Police a fixed minimum tenure selected through a merit-based, transparent process, so that officers cannot be installed or removed at a governor’s convenience; to separate investigative functions from general law-and-order policing, so that criminal investigations are shielded from political direction; to create Police Establishment Boards to govern transfers, postings, and promotions on professional rather than political criteria; and to establish independent Police Complaints Authorities at the state and district levels, empowered to investigate serious misconduct, including custodial violence, and to issue recommendations binding on the appointing authority. India’s experience also offers an honest caution: nearly two decades after the judgment, compliance across India’s states remains uneven, with several state governments retaining informal influence over transfers despite the formal safeguards. The lesson for Nigeria is not that such mechanisms are futile, but that they must be constitutionally entrenched and judicially enforceable, not left to administrative discretion or political goodwill.
The United States’ pattern-or-practice authority. Since 1994, U.S. federal law has authorised the Department of Justice to investigate a police department for a “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional conduct and to negotiate a court-enforceable consent decree requiring specific reforms, monitored by an independent court-appointed overseer. A number of states have since granted their own Attorneys General equivalent authority, allowing state-level accountability to continue even when federal enforcement priorities shift. This model illustrates a distinct check: an external, legally empowered authority, separate from the police hierarchy and from the executive that controls it, that can compel reform after abuse is documented, rather than relying solely on internal discipline. It is worth noting candidly that this mechanism is politically contested in the United States itself, with recent federal policy sharply curtailing its use; the lesson for Nigeria is to entrench such oversight constitutionally, insulated as far as possible from the shifting priorities of whichever party holds power centrally.
Germany’s parliamentary and judicial checks. Each Land’s police force operates under its own Interior Ministry, but its conduct remains subject to standing oversight committees within the Land parliament, to review by independent administrative courts empowered to strike down unlawful police action, and, for surveillance and intelligence-adjacent powers, to independent data-protection commissioners. Political control of the police is real, but it is bounded on three sides — legislative, judicial, and administrative — rather than concentrated in a single executive hand.
Switzerland’s direct-democratic check. Beyond ordinary parliamentary oversight of cantonal police, several Swiss cantons allow citizens to force a public referendum on cantonal police legislation, and maintain independent cantonal ombudsman offices to receive complaints. This adds a layer of accountability that runs directly to the electorate rather than through any single office-holder.
Canada’s independent investigative bodies. Several Canadian provinces operate civilian oversight bodies — such as Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit — that are institutionally and operationally independent of the police chain of command and are specifically tasked with investigating deaths, serious injuries, and allegations of sexual assault involving police officers. Because these bodies sit outside the police service itself and report through separate statutory channels, their findings carry a credibility that internal disciplinary units, by design, cannot match.
These five examples converge on a consistent design principle: the same government that controls a police force should not also be the sole judge of that force’s conduct. Effective safeguards separate three functions that Nigeria’s reform must keep distinct—policy-setting (who decides what the police should prioritise), personnel management (who is hired, promoted, transferred, or removed), and accountability (who investigates and punishes misconduct)—and ensure that at least one of the three sits outside the Governor’s direct control.
Nigeria’s Sixth Alteration Bill has already absorbed part of this toolkit. No state police service may commence operations until it is established by a law of the State House of Assembly and certified as meeting national minimum standards prescribed by the National Assembly. A Governor’s directives to the State Commissioner are not unchecked; where a commissioner considers a directive unlawful or inconsistent with accepted policing standards, the matter can be referred to the Nigeria Police Council for a final and binding decision. The Constitution would also empower the President, under narrowly defined and procedurally constrained conditions, to assume temporary operational command of a state police service where there is substantial evidence of systematic rights violations, partisan intimidation, or sectional persecution with mandatory notice to the Governor, the State Assembly, the National Police Council, and the National Assembly, and a strict time limit subject to Senate validation.
Nigeria should go further and adopt, explicitly and constitutionally rather than administratively, three additions drawn directly from this comparative record. First, a State Police Service Commission in every state, composed to include non-partisan and civil-society members, with binding authority over the appointment, tenure, transfer, and discipline of senior state police officers, Nigeria’s answer to India’s Police Establishment Board. Second, an independent State Police Complaints Authority, empowered to investigate serious misconduct including custodial deaths and use of excessive force, staffed independently of the state police hierarchy, and able to compel disciplinary action rather than merely recommend it, Nigeria’s answer to India’s Police Complaints Authority and Canada’s Special Investigations Unit model. Third, statutory protection separating criminal investigation units from general law-and-order command structures within each state force, reducing the ability of any single office-holder to direct or suppress a specific investigation.
These safeguards demonstrate that devolution and abuse-prevention are not competing goals but complementary design features. The same logic that has allowed Switzerland’s cantons, Germany’s Länder, Canadian provinces, American states, and Indian states to operate independent or semi-independent police services without descending into permanent political capture can work in Nigeria, provided the constitutional guardrails are honoured in practice, continuously monitored, and judicially enforceable, not merely written into a statute and left to executive discretion. State police is not a departure from true federalism; it is one of its clearest expressions, and Nigeria should complete its constitutional passage into law with these safeguards built in from the outset rather than added after the first scandal.
Extending the Same Principle to Correctional Administration
The same principle applies to correctional administration. Nigeria’s present arrangement requires State High Courts to prosecute and sentence offenders under state laws, yet convicted persons are generally committed to federal correctional institutions over which the prosecuting states exercise little operational control. This disconnect weakens accountability, complicates rehabilitation, and separates criminal justice from correctional administration. Responsibility for prosecution should be matched by responsibility for custody, rehabilitation, and reintegration.
Accordingly, constitutional reform should recognise state correctional services. States should manage correctional institutions for offenders convicted under state laws, while the Federal Government retains responsibility for persons convicted of federal offences and crimes affecting national security. Such a division of responsibility would better reflect federal principles and improve accountability throughout the criminal justice system.
State correctional authority should also include responsibility for inmate welfare, vocational training, rehabilitation programmes, parole administration where authorised by law, and regulated state correctional burial authority. Where an inmate dies while serving a sentence imposed under state law, the responsible state correctional authority should coordinate death certification, family notification, lawful disposition of remains, and other statutory responsibilities in accordance with nationally prescribed standards and always with due regard for the wishes and rights of the deceased’s family. National legislation should establish minimum standards to ensure dignity, transparency, and respect for human rights throughout the correctional process.
These reforms must never be interpreted as an invitation to abuse power. Successful federations combine decentralisation with accountability. The Federal Government should continue to prescribe national policing standards, coordinate intelligence relating to terrorism, organised crime, cybercrime, trafficking, and other transnational offences, maintain national criminal databases, regulate interstate extradition, and ensure compliance with constitutional rights. Independent courts, national human rights institutions, legislative oversight, and periodic federal inspections should provide additional safeguards against abuse by any level of government.
Federalism succeeds because responsibilities are clearly allocated rather than duplicated. The Federal Government should focus on matters that genuinely require national coordination, while states exercise primary responsibility for services that directly affect their residents. Local Governments, in turn, should become effective centres of grassroots administration with constitutionally guaranteed fiscal and administrative autonomy. Strong local institutions reduce the distance between government and citizens and improve public accountability.
Neighbouring states should also be encouraged to collaborate voluntarily on infrastructure, transportation, electricity, agriculture, water resources, environmental protection, investment promotion, emergency management, and regional security. Such cooperation should occur through inter-state agreements, regional development commissions, or constitutional compacts. Switzerland’s cantons routinely cooperate through inter-cantonal agreements while retaining their constitutional independence. Germany’s Länder coordinate extensively through interstate treaties and the Bundesrat. Canadian provinces frequently enter inter-provincial agreements on economic development and public services. American states cooperate through interstate compacts approved under constitutional procedures. India’s states similarly resolve shared concerns—river water sharing, inter-state trade, border security—through Inter-State Councils that facilitate consultation without displacing the states’ own constitutional authority. None of these federations has found it necessary to create an additional constitutional layer between the federation and its constituent units to achieve this cooperation.
Executive Tenure as a Complementary Reform
Constitutional reform should also extend to executive tenure. Nigeria should seriously consider replacing the current renewable four-year tenure with a single, non-renewable seven-year term for the President and State Governors. Under the existing arrangement, political calculations surrounding re-election often begin soon after inauguration, diverting attention from governance to perpetual campaigning. A single seven-year mandate would provide sufficient time to implement structural reforms, complete major infrastructure projects, strengthen public institutions, and pursue long-term economic policies without the distraction of seeking a second mandate.
A single term would not eliminate accountability. Rather, it should be accompanied by stronger legislative oversight, an independent judiciary, transparent public finance, autonomous electoral institutions, constitutional limits on executive authority, and robust anti-corruption mechanisms. The objective is to maximise governance while minimising the distortions associated with continuous electioneering.
Conclusion
The intellectual foundation for these proposals is well established. Daniel Elazar described federalism as a constitutional system combining self-rule and shared rule, allowing constituent units to govern local affairs while participating in national decision-making. William Riker viewed federalism as a constitutional bargain that balances national unity with regional autonomy. Ronald Watts demonstrated through comparative research that successful federations are characterised by clear constitutional allocation of powers, meaningful autonomy for constituent units, and institutions that promote cooperation rather than domination. The experiences of Switzerland, Germany, Canada, the United States, and India confirm these principles in practice and, on policing specifically, each offers a working model of how devolved authority can be checked without being hollowed out.
Nigeria’s constitutional future should rest upon five fundamental pillars. First, preserve the existing three constitutional tiers of the Federal Government, States, and Local Governments. Second, devolve meaningful constitutional powers, chief among them state policing and correctional administration to the states. Third, build explicit, constitutionally entrenched, and judicially enforceable safeguards against the abuse of that devolved power, modelled on proven mechanisms such as independent police service commissions and complaints authorities. Fourth, strengthen accountability more broadly through independent institutions, legislative oversight, and enforceable constitutional safeguards at every level of government. Finally, consider a single non-renewable seven-year executive term that allows elected leaders to concentrate on governing rather than campaigning.
Nigeria’s diversity is not a constitutional weakness. It is one of the nation’s greatest assets. History demonstrates that heterogeneous societies achieve lasting stability not through excessive centralisation or bureaucratic expansion, but through constitutional arrangements that distribute authority wisely, protect local autonomy, foster cooperation among constituent units, and build in the safeguards that make devolved power safe to hold.
The experience of Switzerland, Germany, Canada, the United States, and India points decisively toward this path. Their enduring success demonstrates that the strength of a federation is measured not by the number of its governmental tiers, but by the clarity of its constitutional design, the accountability of its institutions, and the confidence it places in government closest to the people, matched, at every level, by mechanisms strong enough to catch that government when it fails.
Nigeria should therefore complete the unfinished project of true federalism: strengthening the Federation, empowering the States above all through constitutionally devolved and properly safeguarded state police, guaranteeing genuine Local Government autonomy, and building the accountability architecture that allows devolution to succeed rather than merely relocate the risk of abuse. In doing so, Nigeria would not merely reform its Constitution; it would build a stronger, more accountable, and more united federation for generations to come.
Bashir Are is the Chief Executive Officer of the Lagos State Lotteries and Gaming Authority (LSLGA)
