Introduction
Policing in Nigeria dates back to the colonial period, evolving from early constabularies established by the Royal Niger Company in Calabar, Lokoja, and Lagos. These forces later evolved into separate Northern and Southern police systems, which were subsequently unified following the 1914 amalgamation. By the 1930s, the institution was formally designated as the Nigerian Police Force.
During the colonial era, policing was primarily oriented toward maintaining colonial authority and suppressing resistance to the administration. In the post-independence period, particularly during the First Republic, the role of the police expanded to include conventional law enforcement functions such as internal security, immigration control, and, at times, the execution of quasi-military responsibilities both within and outside the country.
The Nigerian Police Force underwent significant reorganisation in the 1980s, reflecting broader shifts in governance and security architecture. In its current form, the police is a constitutional creation under the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Section 214 establishes the Nigerian Police Force and expressly prohibits the establishment of any other police force at the state level. For clarity, subsection (1) provides that:
" There shall be a police force for Nigeria, which shall be known as the Nigeria Police Force, and subject to the provisions of this section, no other police force shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof."
Federalism, Legislation and The Police Act 2020
The Supreme Court in A.G. Federation v. A.G. Lagos State defined federalism to mean:
"... an arrangement whereby powers of government within a country are shared between a national, countrywide government and a number of regionalised (i.e., territorially localized) governments in such a way that each exists as a government separately and independently from others, operating directly on persons and property within its territorial area, with a will of its own and its own apparatus for the conduct of its affairs. Federalism is thus essentially an arrangement between government, a constitutional device by which powers within a country are shared among two tiers of government".
As a result of the division of powers between the different levels of government, legislative powers are also demarcated, with exclusive legislation falling within the purview of the National Assembly, concurrent legislation falling within the jurisdiction of the National and State Assembly and any item that does not fall within the two lists falls on the residual list, of which the Federal, State and Local Government can legislate upon.
In recent years, there has been a clamour for decentralisation of the policing structure in Nigeria, with calls for state and local policing. One of the major results of this advocacy is the Nigeria Police Act 2020, which repealed the Police Act Cap. P19, Laws of the Federation, 2004. Under the 2020 Police Act, the functions of the Police Force include preventing and detecting crime, protecting freedoms and rights, maintaining public safety, law and order and enforcing laws and regulations, among others. An innovation of the 2020 Act is the creation of the Community Policing Committees (CPCs) at the State and Divisional levels. These structures, subsumed under the police force, seek to maintain a partnership between the community and the Police Force and promote communication between the Police Force and the community, promote co-operation between the Police and the community, improve police service to the community and improve transparency and accountability in policing to the community.
While the Police Act 2020 provides for the duties of the Community Policing officers to include assisting the Police in detecting and preventing, conflict resolution, criminal intelligence gathering and dissemination to the local Police Commanders, maintenance of law and order, deployment to complement the conventional Police in the patrol of the public space within their local communities, among others. This, however, falls short of genuine local policing, which would require more fundamental reforms, including the creation of a separate local police structure, the restructuring of command hierarchies, a reorientation of policing objectives, and a redefinition of jurisdictional authority to enhance local responsiveness and effectiveness.
However, due to the constitutional restrictions on policing, responses to security challenges have mostly fallen within the framework of community policing under the Police Act. One such arrangement is Amotekun, set up in January 2020 by the states in the South West as a regional response to insecurity in the region. The problem with the existence of security outfits like Amotekun is that it operates on the fringes of what is allowed and legal under the Constitution. The Constitution not only sets up the Nigeria Police Force but also places policing and other government security services established by law under the exclusive legislative list. Amotekun goes beyond the limit envisaged by the Police Act for the Community Police Committee, as its legal structure and existence are backed by laws passed by the State Houses of Assembly in the South West, with its institutional structure and control under the state governments where it is domiciled.
The Way Forward
Under the Constitution, policing still remains within the exclusive legislative list, despite attempts to reform by the Police Act 2020. Also, six years after the enactment of the Act, few states have been able to activate the CPCs, creating a gap in implementation. With security challenges posed by terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and other illegal activities, the national security outfits are stretched beyond their capabilities, hence the need for decentralisation of policing. However, decentralisation cannot be done without revisiting the Constitution and undertaking the onerous task of amendment, taking policing and security away from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent and possibly residual legislative lists, granting state and local governments the power to make laws to provide security outfits and imbue them with the powers to command and deploy in the State Governors and Local Government Chairpersons.
