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00:00:23me of
00:00:33me
00:00:37of of At TVs and news, wherever the big news stories
00:00:41happening, we're get up to aggregate. TVs news
00:00:45first with
00:00:46Britain.
00:00:56a
00:00:57in
00:01:06a
00:01:24very kindly, Nigeria is hurting not because we lack
00:01:27of brave men and women in uniform, but because too many Nigerian. now leave with
00:01:30uncertainty, a farmer leaves home, will he return? a
00:01:34child boards or school boss, will the parents see that child again? a
00:01:38commuter begins a journey, will it end at the intended
00:01:41destination or in the hands of kidnappers? across the country,
00:01:45communities are battling
00:01:46of bandatory, kidnapping
00:01:47of has become industry, rural villages are emptied by fair and even
00:01:51our cities are no longer immune, every new
00:01:54of attack raises the same disturbing question, is Nigeria's current police
00:01:58instructure enough for the... security challenges of
00:02:01of today? some insist
00:02:02of the answer is obvious, they argue that governors are called chief
00:02:06security officers, yet they have no operational control
00:02:10over the police protecting their states. they believe officers
00:02:13of recruited from local communities understand the language, the terrain, the
00:02:17culture and the criminals. to them, state policing is no
00:02:20longer an option, it is
00:02:22of necessity, but another school of thought
00:02:24of says, not so fast, the one that creating state
00:02:27of police may simply replace one
00:02:29of problem, with another, could governors weaponize security agencies against
00:02:33political opponents, could ethnic loyalties weaken
00:02:37of professionalism, could poor states even afford to maintain an effective
00:02:40police today? we move beyond slogans,
00:02:44a beyond politics, beyond emotions, we examine the facts, the fears, the
00:02:47possibilities and the future of
00:03:10in of me
00:03:35Nigeria, the conversation about state policing has grown louder than ever.
00:03:39Supporters describe it
00:03:40in as a missing piece in our security architecture. Critics believe it could
00:03:44create even greater dangers. Today we bring together two respected
00:03:48voices with sharply different perspectives. First, we have Dr.
00:03:51Dixon Osaje, he is an internationally certified security
00:03:55experts, strategis and consultant with more than two decades of
00:03:59experience. advising government, multinational organizations and of
00:04:03a course corporate institutions on risk management and security operations. He
00:04:07has consistently argued Nigeria's insecurity requires
00:04:10institutional reform beyond simply
00:04:13a creating state police. Please
00:04:14of welcome Dixon Osaje to the
00:04:18a podium.
00:04:28joining him on the other side Dawn. is a public affairs
00:04:31analyst, broadcaster and commentator who believes Nigeria's centralized
00:04:35police instructure has reached its limits. He argues that
00:04:39empowering states with their own police services will bring security
00:04:42closer to the people and improve accountability. Please
00:04:46John
00:04:47of to welcome the
00:04:47or
00:04:47podium.
00:05:49All right, now we have - two contenders right here on the podium, so we're going
00:05:53to begin this conversation very clearly, first I want to begin with
00:05:56my doctor on uh, my left here, Dr. Sage, you
00:06:00are saying state police is not the solution, how do you
00:06:04begin? All right, thank you very much, Macotabo, uh, you know, we talk about solution, we're
00:06:08talking about answers, we are talking about uh uh how you bring a state
00:06:12of mess. to an end, that's what solution is all about, so when you say uh
00:06:15the state policing is the solution uh to the
00:06:18multidimensional security threat bedaving our country is a big fat
00:06:22lie and I tell you that because uh the Nigerian criminal justice
00:06:26system is not made the state policing alone is made up the police, the
00:06:30judiciary and the prison so if you pick out uh just one uh
00:06:33institution from these three and you think uh that that is going to be the
00:06:37solution I tell you that it's not going to work because the multidimensional security threat
00:06:41from all angles and yes some of you - beautiful faces here in the
00:06:44audience i came in from far and i am sure your parents called you are you have
00:06:48you arrived where are you now you know because they are worried simply because our road uh we
00:06:52have the bad guys that have taken over our road and uh most times the nigerian police
00:06:56try what they do uh try the best to get most these criminals and at the end the day
00:07:00you find
00:07:01that the judiciary you know uh takes time delay in passing
00:07:04judgment and when they take them to the prison at the end the day you also find
00:07:08out that uh they come back more harden criminal that is the
00:07:12area of residivism, residivism is one the major problem we're having in this country, so if you
00:07:16want to say that state policy is solution, tell you it's
00:07:19not a solution, except we look holistically and address the root
00:07:23cause and the causative factors the security thread be devilling
00:07:27nigeria, st policing i stand to family uh
00:07:31disagree that it is not the solution uh quote and quote the
00:07:35problem of nigeria, thank you,
00:07:47All right, Dr. You heard the way he started, and you see he was very
00:07:51firm about it, he's telling us, look, we have to look at it
00:07:54holistically, and that is not the way we feel we can
00:07:58tackle this, how do you begin from your own end as well? Okay, so
00:08:01um, thank you once again for having me, and thank you everyone for
00:08:05comment, I think um, you have to begin
00:08:08something for you to be able to arrive at somewhere.
00:08:12"and if you continue to have the argument that state police is not
00:08:16the solution to our security problem in Nigeria, that means that we just want
00:08:20to lazy out and fold our arms and not do anything about
00:08:23it. every insecurity issue is
00:08:27local, and we cannot take our policing to
00:08:30federal and be able to solve any local um security
00:08:34challenge. for instance, Nigeria is a country of about
00:08:37250 million people, over 250 ethnic
00:08:41nationalities. you cannot 36 states plus federal
00:08:45capital territory, you cannot have a situation in my
00:08:48community and you are relying on other that comes from abuja before you get
00:08:52it solved, and the question is very simple, it's not whether we need
00:08:56the more security, we've agreed to that fact that insecurity is a
00:09:00challenge that needs to be solved, but the question is can the
00:09:03policing structure that we have presently solve the problem, and to me the
00:09:07answer is simply no, it's not no because they do not
00:09:11have the competen. or the capacity, it's a no, because you you
00:09:15cannot totally understand the local communities, I mean the
00:09:19insecurity situation in my community in on those state is
00:09:23different from the ones perhaps you're facing in kara state, so we need
00:09:27people who understand not just the security situation, but the
00:09:31local terrain, who understand the language the people, who
00:09:34can collaborate and coordinate their people, who can
00:09:38extract information from their people to be able to solve our
00:09:41insecurity. situation in Nigeria, but if anybody comes on air
00:09:45to argue that the problem we have in my local community
00:09:49can be solved with the understanding of Abuja, I am here to disagree with the
00:09:53person and tell you that one major solution that we
00:09:56change the security face of Nigeria, it's state police, and I think it's
00:10:00a direction to
00:10:01go.
00:10:18he said whether you like it or not, even though he understands your perspective, he's
00:10:21saying these security challenges we have is low. and there
00:10:25is no way
00:10:26we will not be able to fight it without the state police, because you need people
00:10:30who are on ground, indigens who understand the terrain to be able to
00:10:34extract information and intelligence to make this work, so how do you argue
00:10:38against that? well, he said we are going to begin it in and i
00:10:42think it's not informed that Nigeria has practiced state policing
00:10:46before. in 1966, 68, general go on
00:10:49abolished the regional policing system that we're practicing in this country, because
00:10:53initially we were practicing. policing system, but in
00:10:561966, 68, he discovered that one the major
00:11:00reason that the Nigerian state is been divided was because the regional policing system,
00:11:04we have the regional police, the western regional policing system, we also have the eastern uh
00:11:08policing system and as well are the northern regional uh policy
00:11:11system, so when he came into power,
00:11:13he said no, for the sake of national unity and peace that
00:11:17this state police, regional policing must be abolished, and it was
00:11:21abolished, 60 years down the line, you're coming back to what was abolished 60.
00:11:25ago, it's like uh, you know, we don't follow history, for me, I
00:11:28think uh, general is alive, respected man, and if
00:11:32we must get it right, go and ask him why did you abolish the state policing, and I
00:11:36strongly believe you never made a mistake, one the reason why he abolished the regional policing
00:11:40system was because the regional manipulation, because it was resulting to
00:11:44regional conflict which resulted to the uh 1962 crisis,
00:11:481960 crisis, 1958 crisis across all region and say, hey,
00:11:51we cannot move a country where you have some region regional. leaders allite
00:11:55using the police within their territory to harass other region
00:11:59and as well to harass uh harass the nigerian states so that was why the
00:12:03regional policing system was abolished down the line 60 years ago we
00:12:07have uh federal policy system the negal policing system which was established in
00:12:111930 and today the Nigerian policy system is about 96 years
00:12:14old yet the federal government have not deim it fit to look into their
00:12:18motivation the government has not seen
00:12:20diby feed to look into their welfare all you think is bringing about state policing it's just
00:12:24like a b husband, you didn't take it of your wife and you're bringing a second wife, that second
00:12:28wife will not stay, is going to run away, so what we have now today is a bad husband bringing
00:12:32a new
00:12:44here is confusing regionalism with the present state structure that we
00:12:48have, and apart from that, i want to make it very clear that the concept of
00:12:51democracy is the concept the people, people are
00:12:55take can this at the center of democracy and you rightly put it when they
00:12:59want to describe democracy they call it
00:13:02miss that a government where people wear what i'm wearing now, but
00:13:06do not make a mistake,
00:13:12agbara you what i'm wearing now is beyond the description of ijob to alagbada, be the federal government, take the shirt to be the state and my trouser
00:13:16to be the um the local government, the ag may create an impression
00:13:20that he can cover everywhere, but immediately you take off the shirt, people begin to
00:13:24doubt whether... or whether you are actually saying, it means that the federal
00:13:28government can actually come with the impression that they can secure the entire country,
00:13:32but without the imput the state, it will be practically impossible. what
00:13:35i'm trying to put across to my friend today is that lot of
00:13:39things have actually changed from the century that you are mentioning to the current
00:13:43reality. in 2014, cattle
00:13:46rusling banditry was on the global terrorism
00:13:50index, as at the time you were talking, they weren't there and it was
00:13:54because because the fact that a community of 250 million
00:13:58people we can't have the population that we are having to police us
00:14:01and we we think that we want to be secured what i'm
00:14:05driving at particularly is that
00:14:08regionalism is not what is driving this in security is what is
00:14:12driving this and we will not because of fear of whether somebody is going to manipulate
00:14:16a process and we will not recreate a system that we keep our life
00:14:20and save our people
00:14:37was regional process structure what we have in our
00:14:41current dispensation is totally different ball game and he mentioned
00:14:45something he said democracy is about the government the people if
00:14:49the people are demanding that they need to be secured
00:14:52localized you need to make security local analized: why is that a
00:14:56problem? well,
00:14:57it is a problem because they fail to understand that the problem we are suffering
00:15:01from is not just men security issues. Nigeria has be devilled with religious
00:15:05brutality, and you cannot tell me that state policy is coming to resolve religious
00:15:08brutality. Nigeria is suffering from ethnocentric brutality, and you're not here to tell me
00:15:12that state policy will address ethnocentric brutality. Nigeria is suffering from
00:15:16economical brutality and most of you here sited have been brutalized economical
00:15:19wise, and you cannot tell me that state policing system will address the economic situation the
00:15:23state. Nigeria has been brutal. by trab differences and that's why you see
00:15:27the, you see some,
00:15:28I don't want to mention him, some tribes engaging themselves, Nigeria has been brutalized by
00:15:32b and lot of issues, simply because we don't have effective
00:15:35government system in place that address. the causative factors of this menace
00:15:39b our country, security is good and I tell you state security, state policy is just
00:15:43a structure, it's not - economic drive, it's not
00:15:47a solution that will address those people that has their mentality that if you
00:15:51are not a, you are not from a particular religion, you are not a human being and
00:15:55you can be behed any time, state policy will
00:15:57not address that, state policy will not address terrorism, and let tell you state
00:16:01policing has no boundaries, sorry kidnapping and terrorism has no
00:16:05boundaries, because if you kidnapping and terrorism has boundary simply hips that
00:16:09state police will come and mitigate. now let tell you, we're all going to live with crime
00:16:13till
00:16:13we die, we cannot eliminate crime in this town, because crime will live with
00:16:17us till we die. the only way is that we as
00:16:21citizen we can al mitigate crime, you cannot eliminate
00:16:25crime. that is why i stand here to say that nobody's born a criminal,
00:16:28society makes people a criminal. years ago guy came to the court and
00:16:32the judge was his classmate and the judge look at him and say, you are my classmate, what
00:16:36happened, why did you going to? crime, this is society in America where you have
00:16:40two persons, one is a criminal and the other one a judge, and you are telling me that that state is not
00:16:44where police, this state is where police, simply because society has messed up lot of
00:16:47people, economic situation has messed up lot of people, unemployment has messed up lot of
00:16:51people, even politicians, they messed up this country to a state whereby is
00:16:55beyond repair, during election 2017 is coming, you see them calling the
00:16:59Nigerian youths, abusing them to go and snatch bilot boxes, are those guys are snatch ballot
00:17:03boxes, are they politicians? no, so the foundational problem we have in this country is
00:17:07beyond st. policing, it is from the strategic center of gravity, from
00:17:10the top, if we don't call our leaders together and bring them as as one
00:17:14to address the problem in this country, state policy is going to be
00:17:18avenue whereby you have created 36 more problems to the
00:17:22state, thank you very
00:17:23much,
00:17:28you heard all the facts he dropped, you cannot actually wish them
00:17:32away, but how do you come in with this uh situation
00:17:36now? okay, going to come in by telling you that you will not because the
00:17:40fear of what might happen and you stop a process that can lead to what is
00:17:44better. it is certain as we speak now that the
00:17:47federal policing system is is um when it
00:17:51comes to structure is 40 not in terms of competence and i'm going to make
00:17:55very clear example if somebody dies in oj the local
00:17:59government area of undo state a a constable
00:18:03something is fine we need to travel to abuja guess approval of this.
00:18:07sector general of police before his pension and gratuity or whatever is
00:18:11paid. in fact in some cases we have seen situation where even the wife
00:18:15the disease is being molested in the process of getting
00:18:18payment. it tells you that the center is simply just far from the
00:18:22logic of security. it doesn't mean that there will not be element
00:18:26of abuse, but we can create same state from simily confused
00:18:30country. we will not come here to make an argument that because one part of our
00:18:34country is not working that the other part will not work. must mention to you that
00:18:38states are operating civil service, are they not productive? I must
00:18:41mention to you that even the courts, the justice system that we talk
00:18:45about, states run caught. In fact, I must also
00:18:49mention to you that as we have it now, there are some states in Nigeria
00:18:53that are running electricity, is the electricity they are running not even better than the
00:18:56one that the federal government is running, so my people
00:19:00here, I don't want you to be confused about the fact that one state
00:19:04in Nigeria can actually create better security system. that will be
00:19:08sample for every other state to to follow and for you to have an
00:19:11impression that somebody who is being controlled from Abuja will be able to
00:19:15give you the kind of security that you deserve a democracy that is looking like
00:19:19fallacy in every community and every democracy
00:19:23in the world go look at them they are policing structure there's an existing
00:19:27federal structure state structure and even in the local government where
00:19:31where where that is needed this is about gathering
00:19:34intelligence i have said it repeatedly that in in every
00:19:37community you you see, there are chances that 10% of that
00:19:41community want to take to the part of crime. It's the duty of government
00:19:45to rary the remaining 90% against this 10%, and one way that they
00:19:49can do that is to pick from among them to police among them, and
00:19:53the best way to do that is to stop
00:21:16uh don I need to put this question to you now there is an
00:21:20argument that if state police has to come, some states who have
00:21:24more numerical strength with their economic structure might decide to set
00:21:28up theirs to a certain degree which might cause a bit of
00:21:31disparity with the others. imagine a state police in other
00:21:35states, looking at other states and see how they are giving them the
00:21:39you know their accolades, the uh their purse is fart because
00:21:43they have the capacity to make it happen, would this not bring about
00:21:46disharmony a structure that we are just about getting...
00:21:50started okay, so it will not bring any kind of disharmony, let
00:21:54me to about two weeks ago, the federal allocation was released by the
00:21:57federal government, and if you look through, you discover that states don't e the same
00:22:01thing, so expectedly states don't have the
00:22:05same number of civil servants, states don't have the
00:22:08same number of court even broadcast station, some may have,
00:22:12some may not have, it tells you that as a state, one
00:22:16principle of leadership that is needed at this point is what we call the power.
00:22:20now situation has forced every state to take security as
00:22:24priority and what that means is that either you like it or not now
00:22:28every state must pay attention to security, it
00:22:32becomes one. in fact, mean i would like to inform you that some some of your
00:22:36governors take as high as 2 billion as security
00:22:39vote, some between 500 and 500 million and billion it
00:22:43shows that they have been taking the money and this is about time to deploy the
00:22:47money to the right source so there's no fair. if you have the
00:22:50capacity
00:22:52with within the limit of your population to employ a thous
00:22:55you will do a thousand and from there we keep growing, you will not say
00:22:59because uh my brother state does not have the capacity to buy an
00:23:02helicopter that i will not buy, my duty as a governor is to
00:23:06actually protect the the the people of my state that swore
00:23:10allegiance to do and must concentrate on that, so there's no fair
00:23:14about whether one better than the
00:23:17other. where's the two
00:23:20billion? where's the two billionaire are given to the state? what do
00:23:23you do with it?
00:23:24so so this is why state police is necessary? no, no, before state policing where is
00:23:28the two billion? because you and i don't know where they put the two billion,
00:23:31but for them to
00:23:35actually deploy the money. what are they do with the money presently? where is the money?
00:23:39i don't know, and you're here talking about state policing. that is what i'm telling you that state
00:23:43policy is not the solution, because the subject of discussion today is the word
00:23:46solution. it is a mitigating factor. i agree because when it comes to... crime
00:23:50prevention, we all talk about response measures, reactive measures, proactive measures
00:23:54and as well, reactionary measures,
00:23:58so for you to come here and say they've been giving them security vote as slow at 2
00:24:01billion, what the state governs are doing is that they are centralizing their problem, because if you use that
00:24:052 billion era to deploy some guys as intelligence components to go to various
00:24:09community and various states to use that money to ensure that they check guys that are
00:24:13within the environment that are coming to commit crime and pass
00:24:15intelligence that
00:24:19work is so what are they doing with the money? the
00:24:23truth is that billion, what we are doing
00:24:26is take 2 billion and you're not doing anything with it, now
00:24:30we have security challenge, do something with it, let's
00:24:34create somethinging the money there, it's as
00:24:38simple
00:24:38as that, don't be honest, because if you don't know what you are doing
00:24:41with the
00:24:412 billion, 2 billion is not 200 n, if you give 200 people 1 billion is
00:24:45going to change the country, for you to say state police state governors are giving 2
00:24:48billion. anything you say 2 billion they
00:24:52take 2 billion states today from the
00:24:55allocation that remove 2 billion a security vote and now we
00:24:59need to create an avenue where that money can be judiciously deployed
00:25:03for the security the people for me i think we
00:25:06need to start holding our state governor accountable because what's happening in our country is that we have
00:25:10centralized security issues because every governor comes on board to
00:25:14contest on this matter of security and when they get there they cannot handle
00:25:17security and they start crying to is not their mother, is not their
00:25:21father, you must and ensure that
00:25:25everything is well, state policy, i'm here to say as security
00:25:28professional, that is the way to go, but i want to ask how will you pick out a
00:25:32component from the three from from three institution, and i have said the criminal
00:25:35justice system is made of the police, the judiciary and the correctional
00:25:39facility, now you want to pick state policing and distribute it around state, if
00:25:43they arres would criminals
00:25:44they
00:25:44where take them
00:25:45to, today
00:25:49f years.
00:25:58i think i think at this point you have actually you have actually.
00:26:02spoking like a politician a politician is not considering preventive
00:26:06measure, he just looking at oh when they get to call, when we bring in
00:26:10state police, the essence of that majorly is to prevent crime, when
00:26:14you prevent crime and stop it from happening, you may not need to take people to
00:26:17to call, so when you gather information locally,
00:26:21it helps you to actually prevent crime, but you are lay emphasis on the three
00:26:25other aspect of our um of our system, and
00:26:29i'm telling you as important as that is. we must take the first
00:26:33step and the first step it is to understand to get people who
00:26:37understand our terrain to police our people we are tired
00:26:41of hearing just yesterday a community was
00:26:44rassack many people displaced that is what we are talking about so
00:26:47state police will have provided intelligence that will stop this from
00:26:51happening
00:26:57kidnapped
00:26:58i there no w we there because you are talking
00:27:01about
00:27:33as a template that we eventually be adopted when there's a legal
00:27:37framework to create state police where we are going now in on those state i
00:27:41can say of fact that amoteko has been able to stop some petty petty
00:27:44crime they are not doing what we expected them to do but we need this
00:27:48legal framework that they that we empower them to carry an
00:27:52ammunition that is better than
00:27:54the one the bandits are carrying as we have
00:27:58it now right the solution is that populate our people
00:28:02our community with people understand the terrain with the right infrastructure and
00:28:06equipment which we only be provided by the state policing legal
00:28:10framework the federal
00:28:17much you were asking a question the other time you were saying governor should be held
00:28:21accountable yes d is coming from
00:28:22an angle and saying since our governors have become very irresponsible
00:28:26most them since they have become so difficult
00:28:30to give accountability their action. let's create
00:28:33state police where we now see where that money is being deployed, at least
00:28:37the transparency of understanding that particular funds are now
00:28:41dedicated towards a new state police structure might now give
00:28:45Nigerians a bit of relief that okay, if things are still
00:28:49going bad as it is, the governor will now be held more
00:28:52accountable, I'm surprised my friend is shooting
00:28:56himself at the foot because he has already come here to declare that the state governors have abused
00:29:00funds and as well they are not uh accountable like you rightly say, how
00:29:04do you think a state governor who is not accountable to these people would not be accountable to state policing
00:29:07officers? let tell you something, the major challenges we are having in this country is
00:29:11societal attitude a change, we
00:29:13need a collective approach to solve the problem of this country, the people that are
00:29:17coming as state policing officers, they are not angels,
00:29:20if you people are going to state police officers, they are not angels, in fact if you break
00:29:24angels angels will be polluted here in nigeria because the society is messed
00:29:28up, so what we are trying to say is that our government needs to lead by
00:29:32example, state policy will not stop corruption, state policy is not going to
00:29:35eliminate unemployment, most of you in school brilliant
00:29:39guys after school, four, five years, you are out there seeking for a job, even if you get the
00:29:43job, the will pay you 100, 200, what is that supposed to
00:29:47mean, that's an abuse on human labor,
00:29:49what i'm here to tell you today is that if we have state policing system it is going
00:29:53to mitigate the split of crime, i agree, but it is never the solution to
00:29:57the splate of security in this country,
00:30:07structure, i quite understand, i said where were the yeah,
00:30:10yeah, i i quite understand where he was coming from when he said where was
00:30:14amotekon when it happened in all your, but you were able to actually hold
00:30:18your argument with the fact that amoteku is reflection of what we
00:30:22actually wants to happen when it comes to local policing, how do you
00:30:26expaciates with that? okay, so in Karno, there was
00:30:30a program i attended in Karno and some people came, they call them the hish
00:30:34bar, they are not state police, but it's a template that has been
00:30:37created for something that will prevent crime, so that when the
00:30:41legal framework is properly done, they can actually maybe
00:30:45transform into it and they have better equipment to actually fight crime.
00:30:49as we speak, the legality of state police cannot
00:30:52be debated because it is supported by every democracy in the world,
00:30:56especially the presidential system of government that we practice.