A presidential panel on the reform of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police Force has recommended the establishment of state and local government police to confront the growing insecurity crises in the country.

But would decentralisation solve the chronic problems of the police force that Nigerians have become ever so familiar with? For starters, Nigerian governments have generally ignored recommendations on police reform by several panels in the past. So the Nigerians tasking themselves on social media on the prospects of the police force coming under the control of state governments, are wasting precious time on something very unlikely to happen.

However the reality is that locally-run police forces in Nigeria only sound like a good idea on paper. If you hand over control of the police to the states or even cities without dealing with the fundamental issues about the force, you wouldn’t solve any problem, but recreate it at other levels. Localisation of power or services has advantages but they also create problems. For example, devolving some power to states and local government areas made sense in theory, but in practice it created expensive layers of bureaucracy and corrupt fiefdoms.

More: https://www.naijiant.com/articles/nigeria-and-state-police-barking-up-the-wrong-tree/