Loading ...ABUJA, NIGERIA — President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s boldest push toward decentralizing Nigeria’s security infrastructure—marked by his recent formal transmission of the Executive State Police Bill to the Senate—has reawakened intense geopolitical anxieties across the country.
While regional socio-cultural bodies like Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, and the Middle Belt Forum have hailed the constitutional amendment as a long-overdue panacea to Nigeria’s spiraling insecurity, pastoralist Fulani organizations, including Miyetti Allah, have voiced vehement opposition.
As the Senate, led by Senate President Godswill Akpabio, fast-tracks the legal framework for a dual policing system, 247ureports dives deep into the complex socio-political reasons why Fulani stakeholders remain fiercely resistant to the creation of state-controlled police forces.
1. The Fear of State-Sanctioned “Ethnic Profiling”
The foremost concern driving the Fulani rejection of state policing is the fear of weaponization by hostile state governors. Over the last decade, clashes between pastoralists and local farming communities over land use, water access, and open grazing have caused deep-seated ethnic friction across the North-West, North-Central, and Southern regions.
Fulani socio-cultural groups argue that a police force entirely recruited, funded, and directed by a state governor would likely become an instrument of oppression against minority or non-indigenous populations. They fear that state police officers would be heavily deployed to aggressively enforce controversial anti-open grazing laws, leading to arbitrary arrests, extortion, and the forceful eviction of pastoralists from host communities.
2. Bitter History with State-Backed Vigilante Outfits
The pastoralist groups base their skepticism on existing experiences with state-sponsored regional security outfits and local vigilante groups—such as Amotekun in the Southwest, the Benue State Volunteer Guards, and various Yan Sakai groups in the North-West.
Fulani leaders have repeatedly accused these local militia-turned-security outfits of human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings, and bias during localized conflicts. They argue that elevating these local actors into constitutionally recognized, heavily armed state police forces would legitimize violence against nomadic herders, who frequently migrate across state boundaries and lack local political protection.
3. Trust in Federal Neutrality
Despite the widely acknowledged inefficiencies and slow response times of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), Northern pastoralist groups heavily prefer centralized police control.
Their argument is simple: a federal police command, answerable to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and the President in Abuja, is structurally insulated from state-level tribal politics. In the event of a deadly clash between local communities and Fulani herders, the federal police are viewed as a more neutral arbiter compared to a local force whose officers are indigenes of the host community.
4. Vulnerability of Nomadic Livelihoods to Sub-National Politics
Unlike settled populations, the nomadic lifestyle of pastoralist Fulanis makes them uniquely vulnerable to changing political boundaries. A herd of cattle moving through five different states could face five different policing standards, tax regimes, and security biases. Fulani associations argue that without a single, uniform federal law enforcement standard, the freedom of movement guaranteed by the Nigerian Constitution would be practically neutralized by hostile state police forces.
The Senate’s Safeguards: Will They Be Enough?
Aware of these explosive ethnic concerns, President Tinubu’s executive bill incorporates unprecedented legislative safeguards aimed at preventing the exact scenario the Fulani groups fear.
The draft legislation explicitly states that:
- Sectional Neutrality: State governors are strictly forbidden from using state police services for partisan, ethnic, sectional, or religious purposes.
- Federal Override: The Federal Police Service retains ultimate constitutional authority. If a state police force is found to be abusing human rights or stoking ethnic tension, the Federal Government can declare an operational emergency and assume direct command of the state’s security apparatus.
The Verdict
As the National Assembly prepares to vote on this historic amendment—which will require approval from two-thirds of both chambers and ratification by 24 State Houses of Assembly—the Fulani rejection highlights the delicate tightrope Nigeria must walk.
While state policing could drastically improve localized intelligence gathering and response times against banditry, the Tinubu administration must aggressively convince minority populations that regional policing will not pave the way for state-sponsored ethnic warfare.
