Former U.S.-based police officer and public policy analyst, Monday Alade, yesterday warned that Nigeria has reached a critical security crossroads and must urgently adopt structural reforms, starting with the creation of state police, to respond effectively to growing insecurity across the country.
Alade’s remarks followed a high-level meeting between the United States Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell at the Pentagon, where the U.S. urged Nigeria to take concrete and urgent action against jihadist networks and protect vulnerable populations.
He noted that although attacks against Christians in Nigeria are not state-sponsored, churches, mosques, markets, schools, palaces, and transport hubs have increasingly become soft targets for extremists.
Alade emphasized that Nigeria’s security performance is now being evaluated globally and superficial changes are no longer sufficient. He argued that decentralizing the police system to allow states to establish their own policing formations is the most urgent reform.
“Nigeria is the only major federal system in the world that still operates a fully centralized police structure,” Alade said, highlighting that the disconnect between local realities and a central command slows response times, weakens intelligence gathering, limits community trust, and unfairly blames the President for security failures in remote areas.
He stressed that state police would correct this imbalance by empowering governors to secure their states, freeing the President from unrealistic expectations, and enabling communities to work with officers who understand local terrain, language, and culture.
Alade also noted that his experience in the U.S., Israel, Brazil, and the U.K. shows decentralized policing improves accountability, intelligence penetration, and response time. “Nigeria cannot defeat 21st-century threats with a 20th-century policing model,” he concluded.
