State Police Now In A Declared Emergency As Advancing AK47 Bandits Overtake Territories: What Exactly Is Stopping The Governors From Acting -By Prof. John Egbeazien Oshodi

If attackers do not wait for permission before advancing, why should governors behave as if they need approval to protect their people, their land, and their constitutional responsibility?

Nigeria is no longer standing at the edge of a cliff; it is already tilting over it. Insecurity has shifted from crisis to culture, and fear has become a daily companion. You can sense it on the highways where bandits decide who lives or dies, in the markets where traders watch shadows more than buyers, in the farms where people plant with caution instead of confidence, and in the homes where parents no longer trust the night to protect their children.

This is not a difficult season.

This is the slow collapse of the nation’s security foundation.

Then came the president’s admission: a national security emergency. For the first time in years, the center publicly acknowledged what citizens have long been whispering. But here is the puzzling contrast that raises deeper questions: an emergency was declared, yet the states are still held back as if nothing about Nigeria has changed. Abuja announced danger, but still keeps the decision-making structure of normal times.

In the midst of this contradiction, the United States publicly criticized Nigeria’s leadership for governance failures and careless spending during a period of mass insecurity. That external judgment carries international weight, and the embarrassment is not coming from the governors. Many of them have supported decentralised policing for years. The discomfort comes from a federal structure that refuses to adjust even as the crisis expands.

The world now observes a country that recognizes the fire but still hesitates to allow additional hands to help control it. It sees a government acknowledging emergency while maintaining old restraints. And it sees governors caught between growing insecurity and a system that tells them to wait.

This is where the quiet alarm begins to rise.

If insecurity advances while central decisions remain slow, what moral and constitutional responsibility begins to fall on the states?

How long can governors stand between public expectation and federal hesitation without creating a new form of risk for themselves?

These are not instructions.

They are the uncomfortable questions that emerge when a nation is in emergency but the response is not.

You cannot scream fire and still lock the exit doors.

That contradiction is no longer political; it is psychological dysfunction. The presidency is signaling danger while still holding the very rope that slows reform. Governors are watching their people suffer yet remain bound to a federal structure that has openly admitted it is overwhelmed.

This is why Nigeria remains stuck.

The center is out of breath.

The states are out of time.

The people are out of patience.

Yet the governors still hesitate.

Governor Abdullahi Sule revealed that thirty-five out of thirty-six governors already support state police. That level of agreement is extraordinary in Nigerian politics. But support without movement becomes comfort without courage. Agreement is meaningless when the country is bleeding and states behave as if they must wait for a formal blessing from Abuja before defending their own citizens.

This is why the message must be clear, unavoidable, and anchored in constitutional logic.

If the president has declared a national security emergency, then responsibility naturally shifts downward. Under emergency conditions, the burden of survival rests not only with the center but increasingly with the states. This is not disobedience; it is federalism responding to strain.

When the federal roof shakes, the state becomes the house.

If bandits are carrying rifles openly, if kidnappers operate without fear, if violent groups move freely across communities, and the federal structure remains slow or overstretched, then the states cannot continue to behave like passive observers in their own territories.

This is why states must begin thinking in terms of readiness:

Organizing.

Structuring.

Training.

Certifying.

Preparing.

Even if quietly.

Even if cautiously.

Even if step by step.

Even if fully within the law.

Even if through community-based, non-lethal protective tools.

Even if through their own universities, assemblies, and local institutions.

Even if misunderstood by Abuja.

These are not calls to confrontation.

They are reflections on what responsible leadership looks like when a nation is in emergency and the center cannot carry the weight alone.

The Inspector-General of Police’s opposition to state police is not a mystery. He is defending the old ways because the old ways keep him powerful. He is holding onto a centralized policing culture that has failed the country again and again, yet still insists on controlling the narrative. Even as bandits display assault rifles in broad daylight, even as communities bury their dead weekly, he wants Nigeria to remain trapped in a policing model designed for a smaller, quieter, long-gone nation.

And a governor who waits for permission during an emergency is not practicing caution; he is stepping into paralysis.

This is why the IGP’s position, and the slow but deliberate pressure from federal power circles demanding that state police must “report to Abuja,” cannot be treated as genuine concern. It is a psychological tactic. It is meant to scare, to intimidate, to stop governors from acting boldly. It is a way of telling states:

Remain weak.

Remain dependent.

Remain supervised.

Remain silent.

But the governors are not naïve. They have seen this pattern for decades — the pattern where a system that cannot protect the people still insists on supervising every attempt to fix the problem. They know what it means when a structure that is overwhelmed still wants to be the referee, the commander, and the gatekeeper.

At some point, the question is no longer about legality or procedure. It becomes a test of courage.

Supervision kills reform.

Supervision keeps the center in control.

Supervision maintains dependency.

Supervision stretches the emergency endlessly.

A state cannot protect its people while reporting to the same structure that has already admitted it is overwhelmed.

That is the truth governors must confront privately, quietly, and with a courage that does not seek public applause.

As insecurity rises, something deeper is shifting

Something psychological.

Something historical.

Something irreversible.

Nigeria’s states are no longer imagining themselves as mere administrative territories.

They are beginning to see themselves as potential security units, responsible for the daily survival of their people.

Across the federation, a quiet shift is spreading, and each state is beginning to picture what its own security identity could look like any moment from now:

Abia State Police

Adamawa State Police

Akwa Ibom State Police

Anambra State Police

Bauchi State Police

Bayelsa State Police

Benue State Police

Borno State Police

Cross River State Police

Delta State Police

Ebonyi State Police

Edo State Police

Ekiti State Police

Enugu State Police

Gombe State Police

Imo State Police

Jigawa State Police

Kaduna State Police

Kano State Police

Katsina State Police

Kebbi State Police

Kogi State Police

Kwara State Police

Lagos State Police

Nasarawa State Police

Niger State Police

Ogun State Police

Ondo State Police

Osun State Police

Oyo State Police

Plateau State Police

Rivers State Police

Sokoto State Police

Taraba State Police

Yobe State Police

Zamfara State Police

FCT Community Safety Police

These are not announcements.

These are not formations.

These are not commands.

They are psychological declarations of readiness.

They reveal something federal authorities may not want to confront:

that the idea of decentralised security has already entered the national imagination, and once imagination shifts, history follows.

These names carry no force.

They carry no deployment.

They carry no legal authority.

But they carry identity.

And identity is the beginning of responsibility.

This is how nations evolve—quietly, invisibly, structurally, long before any law is amended.

States have already begun to imagine themselves as protectors.

And imagination is the first stage of transformation.

These are not simple labels.

These are declarations of identity.

These are signals of readiness.

These are signs of awakening.

And it is time governors understand the difference between illegality and responsibility.

This is not a call to arms.

This is not a push for confrontation.

This is not a rejection of federal authority.

This is not a threat to national unity.

This is an acknowledgment that the president has already declared the country unsafe. And when a nation is unsafe, local survival becomes lawful within the constitutional framework.

So the question, heavier now than ever, returns with full moral and psychological force:

State police — what stops you?

Not the constitution.

Not the people.

Not the emergency.

Not the evidence.

Not the authority of the states.

Not the national mood.

Not the painful history of insecurity.

Not the unity of thirty-five governors.

Not even the president’s own declaration.

The only thing stopping state police now is the psychological prison of centralized fear.

And fear has no rightful place in leadership during a national emergency.

And to the Nigeria Police Force, there is a truth they will eventually have to face. The future will not erase them; it will simply redefine them. A federal police force in a modern federation is not weakened by state police — it is strengthened by clarity. Federal policing becomes what it should have always been: interstate crime management, border security, cybercrime, terrorism response, intelligence coordination, major national investigations, and the protection of diplomats and foreign missions. Not chasing minor disputes in rural settlements. Not handling local community issues that functioning federations rightly assign to state and local agencies. The NPF will evolve into a focused, specialized federal service, not a sprawling force stretched thin across federal, state, and village duties. And that evolution is not a threat. It is overdue reform.

What Nigeria needs is cooperation, not hierarchy. Federal and state agencies working alongside each other, not in a father-child arrangement but as equal partners in the same constitutional family. That is how serious nations secure themselves. That is how federations function. No ego. No intimidation. No supervision politics. Just collaboration shaped by necessity and responsibility.

The mirror is coming.

And it will not treat the hesitant kindly.

About the Author

Prof. John Egbeazien Oshodi is an American psychologist and educator with expertise in forensic, legal, clinical, cross-cultural psychology, public ethical policy, police, and prison science.

A native of Uromi, Edo State, Nigeria, and son of a 37-year veteran of the Nigeria Police Force, he has dedicated his professional life to bridging psychology with justice, education, and governance. In 2011, he played a pioneering role in introducing advanced forensic psychology to Nigeria through the National Universities Commission and Nasarawa State University, where he served as Associate Professor of Psychology.

He currently serves as contributing faculty in the Doctorate in Clinical and School Psychology at Nova Southeastern University; teaches across the Doctorate Clinical Psychology, BS Psychology, and BS Tempo Criminal Justice programs at Walden University; and lectures virtually in Management and Leadership Studies at Weldios University and ISCOM University. He is also the President and Chief Psychologist at the Oshodi Foundation, Center for Psychological and Forensic Services, United States.

Prof. Oshodi is a Black Republican in the United States but aligns with no political party in Nigeria—his allegiance is to justice alone. On the matters he writes about, he speaks for no one and represents no side; his voice is guided solely by the pursuit of justice, good governance, democracy, and Africa’s advancement. He is the founder of Psychoafricalysis (Psychoafricalytic Psychology)—a culturally rooted framework that integrates African sociocultural realities, historical awareness, and future-oriented identity. A prolific thinker and writer, he has produced more than 500 articles, several books, and numerous peer-reviewed works on Africentric psychology, higher education reform, forensic and correctional psychology, African democracy, and decolonized models of clinical and community engagement.