Introduction: The
unprecedented security challenges in Nigeria – Boko Haram insurgency (albeit
retiring), marauding herdsmen attacks, militancy, wanton incidents of kidnap
for ransom and extortion, amongst others, has birthed a blossoming vigilantism
industry or state security task forces as some states call them to fill the
void created by overwhelmed and ineffective central government-controlled conventional
security agencies. There’s a perennial debate in Nigeria whether or not to
permit state control of police or ‘State Police’. For
the sake of clarity, regional or State police is hereby defined as a kind of
decentralized police service under the direct control of a regional or State
government rather than under the direct control of the federal government as
dictated by Section 214 of the Nigerian 1999 constitution. This essay
argues that the trend in State Vigilante outfits portend we already have a
semblance of ‘State Police’.
