Duke Calls for State and Local Police, Says Centralised Security Has Failed
Donald Duke, the Peoples Redemption Party presidential candidate and one-time governor of Cross River State, has renewed his push for police formations to be created at both state and local government levels, contending that the country's centralised security arrangement has not delivered results against terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and related crimes.
In Duke's view, policing ought to be devolved, with intelligence collection serving as the main pillar of security work. He argued that people living within communities are in a stronger position to notice unusual activity and identify threats as they emerge.
According to the former governor, Nigeria has not carried out any meaningful overhaul of how its security is organised since the Civil War ended in 1970.
"You really have not updated your security architecture since 1970," he said.
"It is only recently that more military divisions were created, but anything that is essential must be local. You have to localise it," he said.
Duke proposed that state police be set up, alongside local government police where the need arises, and that both should operate under clearly defined rules with robust supervision by the judiciary so that abuses can be checked.
"You have got to decentralise your policing. The idea of state police, even local government police, is right," he said.
"Have it and set the guidelines, but you must strengthen the judiciary because there must be an institution everyone reports to when things go wrong," he said.
He waved aside worries that state governors might convert state police into a weapon for political intimidation, noting that the federal force has itself been accused of being deployed by influential holders of political office.
"If you say state police will be abused, the national police will also be abused by the president. It is not only governors who can abuse the police. Set it up and put stringent guidelines in place," Duke said.
The PRP flagbearer maintained that intelligence work should form the larger share of what police do, adding that officers drawn from local areas would grasp the peculiarities of their communities far better.
"Eighty per cent of security is intelligence. You cannot be in Sokoto and expect to know what is happening in Calabar. You need local people to gather that intelligence," he said.
"Only about 20 per cent of policing is enforcement. Their main preoccupation should be intelligence gathering," he said.
Duke further faulted the country for lacking sufficient intelligence on Boko Haram nearly two decades into the insurgency.
"It is a shame that after almost 20 years of Boko Haram, we don't have adequate intelligence on them," he said.
"We have not infiltrated their ranks. We ought to have infiltrated their ranks by now to know what they will do next," he said.
Citing the United States, Duke pointed to the National Guard as an illustration of how security can be organised at lower levels while still fitting into a national structure.
"In the United States, they have what they call the National Guard, which is military and it is in every state," he said.
"It is really like having a division in every state. They have decentralised security," he stated.
He traced the spread of terrorism, kidnapping and banditry to poverty, joblessness and the scarcity of legitimate ways to earn a living, and recalled the Maitatsine uprising that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
"The northeastern part is the poorest part of the North. You find that those things are exacerbated in those areas," he said.
"Now, it is creeping all over the North and coming down South," he said.
Duke observed that tackling crime grows harder once young people realise that kidnapping and banditry can yield far more money than any lawful job available to them.
"A kidnapper kidnaps someone and gets N20 million. You then tell him to take a steady job that pays N250,000. It cannot work," he said.
"He has already tasted blood, and it becomes very difficult to wean him off it," Duke said.
He consequently urged that changes to policing be paired with better education, job creation and economic opportunity, insisting that sending in troops alone cannot end insecurity in a lasting way.
"The reason we need a government is to ensure the utmost productivity of our citizens within a safe and orderly environment. If people are productive and the environment is safe, what more should the government do? That is the foundation of a stable country," he said.
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