By Owei Lakemfa
MY LORD, Honourable Justice Isah Dashen of the Federal High Court, Lokoja, was beaten to second place by his colleague in Abuja, Honourable Justice Peter Lifu, in the race for the judge that constitutes the gravest danger to democracy.
Justice Lifu was so much in a hurry to claim the title that when the Court of Appeal ordered him to arrest his intended judgment, he flouted the order and overruled the appellate court by ordering the deregistration of the African Democratic Congress (ADC). To arrest the growing disorder, the appellate court sat the next day and issued a bench ruling immediately reversing Justice Lifu.
At independence, we had the Native Authority Police, which was responsible for local law enforcement. It had been formalised by the Native Authority Ordinance of 1916 and enshrined in the 1960 Independence Constitution. The military that wanted absolute control of state power dissolved this system and imposed centralised policing. This is to the ridiculous extent that a man from one regional province is recruited into the police and transferred to another region he has never been to, whose language he does not understand and whose culture is alien. Such a policeman is alienated from those he is expected to serve and may not get their cooperation or receive information because he is practically an alien.
In the case of Justice Dashen, he went for the jugular of the National Democratic Party (NDC) which, along with the ADC, are the two largest opposition parties. He had, on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2025, ruled that the NDC met the criteria to be registered as a political party and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to register the party. INEC obeyed.
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Then Justice Dashen, on June 26, 2026, announced he had changed his mind and sat on appeal over his own judgement. He ordered the NDC deregistered. This will be the third attempt in eleven weeks to deregister leading opposition parties. The first was the 2026 April Fool Day announcement by INEC under Joash Amupitan, a professor of law, that it had removed the names of the ADC Chairman, Senator David Mark, and National Secretary, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, from its portal, thereby rendering it headless. INEC had premised its mischief on the Court of Appeal directive that the status quo be maintained in the party’s leadership tussle. But rather than obey the court, the Amupitan-INEC decided to behead the party. It took the intervention of the Supreme Court to restore the ADC leadership. The second attempt was, of course, that of Justice Lifu.
Since it would be impossible to bar the ADC and the NDC from the 2027 ballot without it leading to the disruption of the electoral system and democratic process, Justices Lifu and Dashen might actually be playing the role of undertakers.
So far, the judiciary has been self-correcting and I have hope that it would repair the damage Justice Dashen is inflicting on the political system. However, the normal method of punishing judges who misuse their offices and endanger the judicial system may not be enough. We need to check the rise of such judges by severely punishing the erring ones. The public also has a role to play by publicly shaming such judges and campaigning for their visa bans by other countries.
Our country, which is under the siege of terrorists, bandits, separatists and criminals in various shapes and guises, cannot afford the mix of errant judges who are pushing us towards disorder. Our security services are being overwhelmed, which is why there is the groundswell of public opinion for the establishment of State Police. In the first place, this is not new.
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At independence, we had the Native Authority Police, which was responsible for local law enforcement. It had been formalised by the Native Authority Ordinance of 1916 and enshrined in the 1960 Independence Constitution. The military that wanted absolute control of state power dissolved this system and imposed centralised policing. This is to the ridiculous extent that a man from one regional province is recruited into the police and transferred to another region he has never been to, whose language he does not understand and whose culture is alien. Such a policeman is alienated from those he is expected to serve and may not get their cooperation or receive information because he is practically an alien.
The growing state of disorder can be reversed by ensuring that the security forces can defend the citizenry. This also requires the immediate establishment of state police. Also, the citizenry should be engaged in self-defence, the judiciary must be sanitised and crime must be punished irrespective of the origins and status of the perpetrator.
The centralised police system we have been subjected to for over five decades is an aberration in a federation and is one of the reasons policing has failed in the country. It is basic logic and a necessity for every law-making tier of government to have a police that can enforce the laws it makes. So, it is a basic requirement for the local and state governments to have their separate police distinct from the centralised police.
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The United States, with no national police, presents a unique form of policing. At its local level, where most policing is done, individual municipalities and towns have their own police while each of the fifty states has its police. The US Executive branch at the federal level has its own federal agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which investigate specific crimes under federal jurisdiction or that cross state lines. For instance, the famous New York City Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary police enforcing law within New York City.
It is a misnomer for the governor of a Nigerian state, who is the chief security officer of a territory consisting of millions of people, not to have control over the most basic body to enforce law. To deploy the police in the state for the most basic duties, he needs the permission of some authority outside the state.
Apart from local policing making law enforcement easier, it will free us from the unsustainable culture of misusing the armed forces for basic policing, thereby diverting them from their primary task of defending the country’s territorial integrity.
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A primary concern about state police is that it can be abused. Yes. But so also is central police being abused. Therefore, the issue is not the likelihood that state police can be abused, but how the citizen can be shielded from abuse at any level. Nigeria is a signatory to all major conventions on human rights so any abuse of such rights must be checked.
We can establish human rights tribunals at the three tiers of government. These should be composed of active groups that are independent of the executive, such as labour, civil society and the main political parties with equal representation. Their participation can be based on their winning a legislative seat at any level. Also, all human rights must be justiciable and nobody, including the President, should have immunity where it concerns abuse of fundamental human rights.
Funding state police can be based on the template of the judiciary: from the federation account. The funding can be such that the basic salaries for state police would come directly from the federation account and the allowances from the states.
The growing state of disorder can be reversed by ensuring that the security forces can defend the citizenry. This also requires the immediate establishment of state police. Also, the citizenry should be engaged in self-defence, the judiciary must be sanitised and crime must be punished irrespective of the origins and status of the perpetrator.
