#Endsars Protests and the Imperative for State Police in Nigeria

Keyword : Decentralization, EndSARS, Protest, SARS, State Police, Democratization, Security

Author(s) : Lawrence O. Odeh

Abstract :

The issue of police brutality and human rights abuses have been attributed to the failure of the Nigeria Federal Police Force, especially its most notorious former unit known as SARS, which has since been disbanded by the police authority due to several civil society agitations, such as #EndSARS protest movement. The EndSARS protests further revealed the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of Nigeria’s Federal Police Force, and the movement has become a wakeup call for the creation of state police as a better policing option for addressing the complex security challenges in Nigeria, such as fraud, armed robbery, kidnappings, car snatching, cyber criminality, terrorism, cattle rustling, insurgency, and so on. It is in this regard that this article examined EndSARS protests and the imperative for state police in Nigeria, using the secondary method of data and personal observation of the protests in Delta State, where the protests started. The paper found that the political, religious, and ethnic colouration accorded the EndSARS protests by the ruling class was the reason why EndSARS peaceful protesters in Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria, were killed in cold blood, and it was also the reason why several demands of the protesters were not met beyond the disbandment of SARS unit. Hence, a need for a state police in Nigeria as a better policing option. Several recommendations aimed at achieving the objectives of the articles were suggested, such as: The amendment of the constitution to ensure the creation of state police; creating the state police to co-exist with the federal police; appointing only the people who are vast in the local knowledge and language, as well as people with a track record of honesty and transparency into the state police force; ensuring adequate funding for state police project; making provision for a robust capacity building of the state police officials; the federal police to be in charge of interstate security; State governments should ensure that unviable programmes like the Religious Pilgrimage Boards that sponsor pilgrims to annual religious pilgrimages are scraped and the funding for such programmes should be deployed to funding state police project, and so on.

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