John O. Ifediora
I. Introduction
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and one of its most ethnically and linguistically diverse, operates one of the most centralized police systems in the world. The Nigeria Police Force (NPF), established under colonial rule and retained virtually intact since independence in 1960, functions as a single federal institution under the command of the Inspector-General of Police, who reports directly to the President of the Federal Republic.[1] This arrangement, inherited from British colonial administrators who designed it primarily as an instrument of social control rather than community service, has proven profoundly ill-suited to the complex realities of a nation comprising over 250 ethnic groups, six geopolitical zones, and thirty-six states with vastly different cultures, languages, and security challenges.[2]
The consequences of this structural rigidity have been severe. Communities across Nigeria—from the oil-producing Niger Delta to the agrarian Middle Belt, from the predominantly Muslim North to the Christian Southeast—routinely encounter police officers who neither speak their language nor understand their customs. Officers are deployed far from their home states and regard the communities they serve not as stakeholders but as subjects. The result is a profound crisis of trust between the citizenry and the institution charged with protecting it. Crime rates remain high, community cooperation with law enforcement remains low, and the police force itself has become synonymous in the popular imagination with corruption, extortion, and cultural insensitivity.[3]
This essay argues that Nigeria must urgently decentralize its police force, empowering states and local governments to establish, fund, and administer their own police departments staffed by locally recruited officers. Such a reform would dramatically improve the effectiveness of community policing, enhance the flow of intelligence from local informants—the primary source of solved crimes—and ensure that officers operate in cultural and linguistic environments they understand.[4] While this reform model may seem radical, state and local policing is the norm in most advanced democracies, and its adoption in Nigeria represents not an experiment but a correction of a colonial anachronism.
II. The Colonial Legacy and the Failure of Federal Centralization
To understand why the current system is structurally defective, one must appreciate its origins. The Nigeria Police Force was created not to serve Nigerians but to serve the interests of British colonial authority. It was designed to suppress dissent, enforce taxation, and maintain the social order that permitted extraction of resources from the territory.[5] Officers were frequently deployed far from their home regions precisely so that they would have no personal ties to the communities they policed—a feature the colonial administration considered an advantage, as it reduced the risk of sympathy or solidarity between officers and local populations resisting imperial rule.
Independent Nigeria inherited this structure in 1960 and, despite decades of constitutional debate, has never fundamentally reformed it. The 1999 Constitution, currently in force, vests exclusive control of the police in the federal government, prohibiting states from establishing their own forces.[6] Successive federal administrations have defended this arrangement on grounds of national unity and security, arguing that state police could be weaponized by governors against political opponents or ethnic minorities.[7] While this concern is not without merit, it cannot justify the perpetuation of a system that has demonstrably failed to deliver public safety to hundreds of millions of Nigerians. The solution to potential abuse is not the abolition of decentralization but the construction of robust oversight mechanisms—a challenge that governance reformers have successfully addressed in diverse federal systems across the world.[8]
The operational consequences of federal centralization are readily observable. The NPF, with a nominal strength of approximately three hundred thousand officers serving a population of over two hundred million people, is critically understaffed by international standards.[9] More fundamentally, the deployment of officers across state lines—a routine feature of the federal system—produces officers who are strangers in the communities they police. An Igbo-speaking officer from Enugu State deployed to Kano, a predominantly Hausa-speaking city in the North, operates with severe communicative and cultural handicaps. These are not incidental inconveniences; they are fundamental impediments to effective policing.[10]
III. The Indispensable Role of Local Intelligence in Crime Solving
Perhaps the most compelling practical argument for decentralized policing lies in the fundamental sociology of criminal intelligence. The overwhelming majority of crimes that are solved by law enforcement agencies—across all jurisdictions and in all countries—are solved not through forensic investigation or surveillance technology but through information provided by members of the public.[11] Tips from concerned citizens, testimony from witnesses, disclosures from informants with knowledge of criminal networks: these human intelligence sources are the lifeblood of effective policing. Without them, even the most technologically sophisticated police force is largely blind.[12]
The cultivation of such intelligence depends entirely on trust. Citizens provide information to police officers they believe will act on it responsibly, who will protect their identities, and who understand the local context sufficiently to use the information effectively.[13] Trust, in turn, is built through sustained, respectful presence in the community—through familiarity, shared experience, and cultural affinity. An officer who grew up in a neighborhood, who speaks its language, who understands its social hierarchies and informal networks, is infinitely better positioned to cultivate informants than one who arrives from a distant state and is perceived by residents as an outsider with no stake in the community’s welfare.[14]
In Nigeria’s context, the cultural dimension of this problem is particularly acute. The country’s extraordinary diversity means that notions of authority, crime, community obligation, and civic duty vary significantly across regions.[15] In many communities, the relationship between individuals and institutions is mediated by traditional rulers, elders, religious leaders, and kinship networks that federal police officers—deployed from distant states—have no knowledge of and no access to. A locally recruited officer, by contrast, would likely have existing relationships with these gatekeepers, enabling intelligence flows that the federal system structurally forecloses.[16] Decentralization is therefore not merely an administrative preference but a prerequisite for the kind of embedded, trust-based policing that effective crime control requires.
IV. The Problem of Cultural and Linguistic Incompatibility
Nigeria’s federal police deployment system places officers in environments where cultural and linguistic incompatibility is not the exception but the rule. With over 250 languages spoken across the country, and with officers routinely posted to states and communities where their mother tongue is entirely unknown, the communicative barriers facing the Nigeria Police Force are staggering.[17] The consequences manifest at every stage of the law enforcement process: in the inability to take statements accurately, to understand distress calls, to communicate instructions clearly during emergencies, or to distinguish between the customs and behaviors that are normal within a community and those that constitute genuine cause for concern.[18]
Beyond language, cultural incompatibility generates friction that corrodes the police-community relationship at its foundation. Officers unfamiliar with local customs may inadvertently violate cultural norms in ways that are deeply offensive to the communities they serve—entering sacred spaces inappropriately, failing to observe customary protocols when interacting with traditional authorities, or misinterpreting culturally specific forms of expression and behavior as suspicious or threatening.[19] These encounters generate resentment, reinforce the perception of the police as an occupying force rather than a community institution, and erect barriers to cooperation that may persist for years.[20]
The psychological dimension of this dynamic deserves particular attention. Officers deployed to hostile or unfamiliar environments—where they do not speak the language, do not understand the customs, and are regarded with suspicion or open hostility by residents—are themselves subject to significant stress. Research in organizational psychology and policing studies consistently shows that officers who feel alienated from their communities are more likely to exhibit defensive, aggressive, or corrupt behavior.[21] The hostile environment does not merely impede effective policing; it actively produces the dysfunctional policing behaviors that further alienate communities and deepen the crisis of legitimacy. Decentralization addresses this vicious cycle at its root by ensuring that officers serve in environments where they are culturally at home.
V. Community Policing and the Advantages of Local Accountability
Modern policing theory has increasingly recognized that the most effective approach to crime prevention and control is not reactive enforcement but proactive community engagement—what has come to be known as community policing. This approach, which has demonstrated success in diverse jurisdictions across the globe, rests on the principle that public safety is best achieved through partnership between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve.[22] Officers build relationships with residents, engage with local organizations, address the social conditions that breed crime, and create channels through which community concerns can be raised and addressed. The result is not merely better crime statistics but a genuine restoration of legitimacy and public trust in law enforcement.[23]
Community policing, by its very nature, requires local officers. It cannot be delivered by a centralized force whose officers are posted on rotation to communities they barely know, who may be reassigned at any time, and who have no long-term stake in the community’s safety and development.[24] The sustained relationships that community policing depends upon—with business owners, school administrators, religious leaders, youth groups, and ordinary residents—are built over years of consistent presence and mutual engagement. State and local police departments, whose officers are recruited from within the community and who can reasonably expect to spend their careers in the same area, are structurally equipped to deliver this kind of policing in ways that a rotational federal force never can be.[25]
Decentralization also creates meaningful accountability mechanisms that the current federal system lacks. When a police department is governed at the state or local level, it answers to governors, state assemblies, local government councils, and ultimately to the residents who elect them.[26] Complaints about police misconduct, corruption, or ineffectiveness can be raised through accessible local channels rather than navigating the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the federal NPF. This proximity of accountability is not a minor administrative detail; it is the structural mechanism through which democratic communities exercise meaningful control over their law enforcement institutions.[27]
VI. Addressing the Counterarguments
Opponents of police decentralization in Nigeria typically advance three principal objections: that state police would be weaponized by governors for political purposes; that weaker or poorer states would lack the fiscal capacity to maintain effective police departments; and that decentralization would exacerbate inter-communal conflicts by creating ethnically partisan law enforcement agencies.[28] Each of these concerns deserves serious engagement, though none is sufficient to defeat the case for reform.
The concern about political weaponization is real but not unique to Nigeria, and it has been addressed effectively in federal systems elsewhere through robust constitutional and legislative safeguards. State police forces can be subjected to independent oversight commissions with powers to investigate and sanction misconduct, including politically motivated deployments. Officers’ tenure can be protected from arbitrary gubernatorial interference through civil service protections. Federal authorities can retain concurrent jurisdiction over serious federal offenses and can intervene when state police are demonstrably abused.[29] The risk of abuse is a governance challenge to be managed through institutional design, not a fundamental objection to decentralization itself.
The fiscal capacity argument acknowledges a genuine inequality between Nigeria’s wealthier and poorer states, but the appropriate response is not to deny all states the benefits of local policing but to establish federal fiscal support mechanisms—grants, shared funding formulas, or minimum staffing standards—that ensure all states can maintain adequate police departments.[30] Nigeria’s current fiscal architecture already includes federal allocations to states through the Federation Account; a portion of these funds can be specifically designated for policing. Furthermore, the waste and inefficiency endemic to the current centralized system—including the enormous costs of inter-state deployments, accommodation allowances, and the administrative overhead of a unitary national force—would be substantially reduced under a decentralized model.[31]
As for the fear that ethnic or communal bias would infect state police forces, it bears noting that the current federal system has not eliminated such bias—it has merely relocated it. Reports of police officers discriminating against members of ethnic groups different from their own are common within the NPF, and the federal character principle, intended to ensure ethnic balance in federal institutions, has not resolved the fundamental problem of cultural and linguistic alienation.[32] State police forces, subject to local accountability, would face stronger community pressure to treat all residents fairly than federal officers deployed from distant regions with no personal stake in local community relations.
VII. Lessons from Comparative Federal Experience
Nigeria need not proceed without the benefit of models drawn from comparative experience. The United States, another large and diverse federal republic, operates a policing system comprising over eighteen thousand separate law enforcement agencies at federal, state, county, and municipal levels.[33] The vast majority of policing in the United States is delivered by local agencies whose officers are recruited from within the communities they serve.[34] Despite genuine challenges in American policing, the decentralized structure has enabled community-specific approaches to public safety that would be impossible under a unitary national force, and has generated diverse experiments in community policing, restorative justice, and crime prevention that have produced measurable improvements in public safety across many jurisdictions.
Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia—each a federal state with significant subnational diversity—similarly vest primary policing responsibility in subnational units, with federal agencies handling a narrower range of national security and cross-border criminal matters.[35] South Africa, a fellow African state navigating the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic policing model, has incorporated community policing forums and provincial consultation mechanisms into its national police structure, recognizing that local community engagement is essential to the legitimacy and effectiveness of law enforcement.[36] Even the United Kingdom, which historically operated a more centralized policing model than most democracies, has progressively devolved policing responsibility to regional authorities, particularly in Scotland and Wales, in recognition of the benefits of local accountability and cultural responsiveness.[37]
The pattern across these diverse cases is consistent: jurisdictions that place policing closer to the communities being policed—with locally recruited officers, locally determined priorities, and locally accountable leadership—consistently achieve better outcomes in terms of public trust, crime clearance rates, and the quality of police-community relations.[38] Nigeria, in retaining the colonial model of centralized federal policing, stands as an outlier not only among established democracies but increasingly among African states undertaking police reform.
VIII. A Framework for Reform
Effective decentralization of Nigeria’s police force requires more than a constitutional amendment, though constitutional reform is indeed the essential first step. Section 214 of the 1999 Constitution, which establishes the NPF as the sole police force for the entire federation, must be amended to permit states to establish and maintain their own police forces.[39] This amendment, long debated in the National Assembly and consistently recommended by constitutional reform committees, has been blocked by political resistance from federal authorities reluctant to cede control.[40] Building the political will for this reform is the most pressing challenge facing advocates of police decentralization.
Beyond constitutional amendment, a successful reform framework requires several complementary elements. First, states must be granted sufficient fiscal autonomy or federal support to fund adequate police departments, with minimum national standards for officer training, equipment, and compensation to ensure quality across jurisdictions.[41] Second, independent state-level police commissions—insulated from direct gubernatorial control—should be established to manage recruitment, appointments, promotions, and disciplinary matters, providing institutional protection against political abuse.[42] Third, a reformed and appropriately resourced federal police agency should retain jurisdiction over terrorism, organized crime, human trafficking, and other threats that transcend state boundaries, ensuring that decentralization does not create gaps in national security coverage.
Fourth, all police forces—federal, state, and local—must be subject to independent oversight mechanisms with genuine investigative and sanctioning powers, operating transparently and with direct accountability to civilian authorities and the public.[43] Fifth, recruitment policies for state police forces should include provisions to ensure that all residents within a state’s jurisdiction—including ethnic and religious minorities—are protected from discrimination, with federal oversight and intervention powers available in cases of demonstrated bias. These safeguards, taken together, address the principal risks of decentralization without sacrificing its substantial benefits.
IX. Conclusion
The Nigeria Police Force, as currently constituted, is an institution designed for a purpose and a political context that no longer exist. Created to serve colonial authority in a territory that had no democratic aspirations, it has been perpetuated into a sovereign democratic republic where the security of the people—all the people, in their magnificent diversity—is the paramount obligation of government. It has failed in that obligation, not primarily because of the personal failings of its officers, though those are real, but because of a structural design that systematically alienates officers from the communities they police, suppresses the intelligence flows on which effective crime control depends, and insulates the institution from the local accountability that democratic governance requires.[44]
Decentralization of the police force offers Nigeria a path to the effective, trusted, community-embedded law enforcement that its citizens deserve and that democratic theory demands. By empowering states and local governments to recruit officers from within their communities—officers who speak the local language, understand local customs, share the lived experience of the communities they serve, and are accountable to local democratic institutions—Nigeria can at last begin to build the police force its people have never had: not a force of occupation but a force of protection, not strangers with badges but neighbors with authority.
The risks of reform are real and must be managed thoughtfully. But they pale against the demonstrated costs of the status quo: communities where citizens regard the police as predators rather than protectors; a nation whose security challenges—banditry, separatist violence, kidnapping, inter-communal conflict—have worsened decade after decade under a centralized policing model that has proven incapable of addressing them.[45] Nigeria cannot afford to wait. The constitutional, institutional, and moral case for police decentralization is overwhelming. The time for reform is now.
References
Adedipe, Biodun. “Ethnic Diversity and Police Effectiveness in Nigeria.” Journal of African Law 54, no. 2 (2010): 219–238.
Alemika, Etannibi, and Innocent Chukwuma. “Police-Community Violence in Nigeria.” Lagos: Centre for Law Enforcement Education, 2000.
Bayley, David. Police for the Future. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Brodeur, Jean-Paul. “Comparative Penology and Comparative Policing.” In The New Police Science, edited by Markus Dubber and Mariana Valverde, 218–245. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Bureau of Justice Statistics. Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2018. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, 2020.
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended). Abuja: Federal Government of Nigeria.
Eze, Emmanuel. “Language and the Politics of Exclusion: Indigenous Voices and Nigerian Policing.” African Studies 72, no. 3 (2013): 387–406.
Falola, Toyin, and Matthew Heaton. A History of Nigeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Goldsmith, Andrew. “Police Reform and the Problem of Trust.” Theoretical Criminology 9, no. 4 (2005): 443–470.
Goldstein, Herman. Problem-Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.
Human Rights Watch. “Everyone’s in on the Game”: Corruption and Human Rights Abuses by the Nigeria Police Force. New York: HRW, 2010.
Kersten, Joachim. “Police and Communities in Germany: Structure, Culture and Reform.” Policing and Society 11, no. 3–4 (2001): 319–337.
Marks, Monique, and Clifford Shearing. “Neighbourhood Policing in South Africa.” South African Crime Quarterly 10 (2004): 11–16.
National Assembly of Nigeria. Report of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs on the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Amendment) Bill 2021. Abuja: National Assembly, 2021.
National Research Council. Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004.
Nigeria Police Force. Annual Report 2022. Abuja: NPF Directorate of Research and Planning, 2022.
Nigerian Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission. Revenue Allocation Formula and Principles. Abuja: RMAFC, 2020.
Ojewale, Oluwole. “Community Policing in Nigeria: Constraints and Prospects.” African Security Review 29, no. 1 (2020): 45–63.
Ojewale, Oluwole. “State Police in Nigeria: The Debate Revisited.” Institute for Security Studies Policy Brief No. 132. Pretoria: ISS, 2021.
Ojukwu, Chidi Nwachukwu, and John Olaolu Shopeju. “Elite Corruption and the Culture of Primitive Accumulation in 21st Century Nigeria.” International Journal of Peace and Development Studies 1, no. 2 (2010): 15–20.
Presidential Committee on Police Reform. Report of the Presidential Committee on the Reform of the Nigeria Police Force. Abuja: Federal Government of Nigeria, 2008.
Rosenbaum, Dennis. “Community Crime Prevention: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature.” Justice Quarterly 5, no. 3 (1988): 323–395.
Sampson, Robert, Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.” Science 277, no. 5328 (1997): 918–924.
Sherman, Lawrence. “Communities and Crime Prevention.” In Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising, edited by Lawrence Sherman et al. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 1997.
Skogan, Wesley, and Susan Hartnett. Community Policing Chicago Style. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Skolnick, Jerome, and David Bayley. The New Blue Line: Police Innovation in Six American Cities. New York: Free Press, 1986.
Sparrow, Malcolm, Mark Moore, and David Kennedy. Beyond 911: A New Era for Policing. New York: Basic Books, 1990.
Suberu, Rotimi. Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001.
Toch, Hans, and J. Douglas Grant. Police as Problem Solvers: How Frontline Workers Can Promote Organizational and Community Change. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: APA, 2005.
Tyler, Tom. Why People Obey the Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Walker, Samuel. The Police in America: An Introduction. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014.
[1]Toyin Falola and Matthew Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 112–115.
[2]Etannibi Alemika and Innocent Chukwuma, “Police-Community Violence in Nigeria” (Lagos: Centre for Law Enforcement Education, 2000), 14–18.
[3]Human Rights Watch, “Everyone’s in on the Game”: Corruption and Human Rights Abuses by the Nigeria Police Force (New York: HRW, 2010), 2–5.
[4]David Bayley, Police for the Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 3–10.
[5]Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria, 117–120.
[6]Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), Section 214(1).
[7]Oluwole Ojewale, “State Police in Nigeria: The Debate Revisited,” Institute for Security Studies Policy Brief No. 132 (Pretoria: ISS, 2021), 3.
[8]Presidential Committee on Police Reform, Report of the Presidential Committee on the Reform of the Nigeria Police Force (Abuja: Federal Government of Nigeria, 2008), 45–47.
[9]Nigeria Police Force, Annual Report 2022 (Abuja: NPF Directorate of Research and Planning, 2022), 7.
[10]Alemika and Chukwuma, “Police-Community Violence in Nigeria,” 28–32.
[11]Jerome Skolnick and David Bayley, The New Blue Line: Police Innovation in Six American Cities (New York: Free Press, 1986), 210–214.
[12]Malcolm Sparrow, Mark Moore, and David Kennedy, Beyond 911: A New Era for Policing (New York: Basic Books, 1990), 5.
[13]Lawrence Sherman, “Communities and Crime Prevention,” in Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising, ed. Lawrence Sherman et al. (Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, 1997), 3-1–3-49.
[14]Robert Sampson, Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton Earls, “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy,” Science 277, no. 5328 (1997): 918–924.
[15]Chidi Nwachukwu Ojukwu and John Olaolu Shopeju, “Elite Corruption and the Culture of Primitive Accumulation in 21st Century Nigeria,” International Journal of Peace and Development Studies 1, no. 2 (2010): 15–20.
[16]Wole Ojewale, “Community Policing in Nigeria: Constraints and Prospects,” African Security Review 29, no. 1 (2020): 45–63.
[17]Biodun Adedipe, “Ethnic Diversity and Police Effectiveness in Nigeria,” Journal of African Law 54, no. 2 (2010): 219–238.
[18]Emmanuel Eze, “Language and the Politics of Exclusion: Indigenous Voices and Nigerian Policing,” African Studies 72, no. 3 (2013): 387–406.
[19]Rotimi Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), 67–71.
[20]Alemika and Chukwuma, “Police-Community Violence in Nigeria,” 41–44.
[21]Hans Toch and J. Douglas Grant, Police as Problem Solvers: How Frontline Workers Can Promote Organizational and Community Change, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: APA, 2005), 88–92.
[22]Wesley Skogan and Susan Hartnett, Community Policing Chicago Style (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 5–9.
[23]National Research Council, Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004), 228–231.
[24]Herman Goldstein, Problem-Oriented Policing (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990), 24–27.
[25]Ojewale, “Community Policing in Nigeria,” 55–58.
[26]Dennis Rosenbaum, “Community Crime Prevention: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature,” Justice Quarterly 5, no. 3 (1988): 323–395.
[27]Ojewale, “State Police in Nigeria,” 8.
[28]Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria, 91–94.
[29]Ojewale, “State Police in Nigeria,” 6–7.
[30]Nigerian Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Revenue Allocation Formula and Principles (Abuja: RMAFC, 2020), 12–15.
[31]Presidential Committee on Police Reform, Report, 60–63.
[32]Suberu, Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria, 82–86.
[33]Bureau of Justice Statistics, Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2018 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, 2020), 1–3.
[34]Samuel Walker, The Police in America: An Introduction, 8th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014), 44–48.
[35]Joachim Kersten, “Police and Communities in Germany: Structure, Culture and Reform,” Policing and Society 11, no. 3–4 (2001): 319–337.
[36]Monique Marks and Clifford Shearing, “Neighbourhood Policing in South Africa,” South African Crime Quarterly 10 (2004): 11–16.
[37]Jean-Paul Brodeur, “Comparative Penology and Comparative Policing,” in The New Police Science, ed. Markus Dubber and Mariana Valverde (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 218–245.
[38]Andrew Goldsmith, “Police Reform and the Problem of Trust,” Theoretical Criminology 9, no. 4 (2005): 443–470.
[39]Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, Section 214(1)–(2).
[40]National Assembly of Nigeria, Report of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs on the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Amendment) Bill 2021 (Abuja: National Assembly, 2021), 8–11.
[41]Ojewale, “State Police in Nigeria,” 10–12.
[42]Presidential Committee on Police Reform, Report, 72–75.
[43]Tom Tyler, Why People Obey the Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 3–8.