Friday July 04, 2025
By Idorenyin UMOREN
An elder statesman and NNPP chieftain, Buba Galadima, has issued a stern warning against the push to establish state police in Nigeria, describing the idea as dangerous and “the beginning of the end for democracy.”
Speaking during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Friday, July 4, Galadima said the Nigerian state is not mature enough to handle decentralised policing and that governors would inevitably turn state police into a political weapon to “arrest, harass, and jail” their opponents.
He said, “Please, I beg Nigerians, and I beg members of this National Assembly, including state assemblies, that they should never, in any circumstance, allow the creation of state police. It may be convenient for us now, but we will come to cry when it becomes constitutional matter, which we cannot do away with in a simple manner. It will destroy democracy, as you see now, what some of those elected are doing with us.”
Galadima argued that in states where even local government elections are already manipulated by governors, adding a security apparatus to their arsenal would embolden abuse and erode citizens’ rights as he said, “If they have the instrument of state police, the democracy we are fighting – we are cherishing is going to the winds. So I completely, throughout my time in Constituent Assembly 1987, Constitutional Conference 1994, and Jonathan’s National Conference of 2014, I have fought relentlessly against the creation of state police.”
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