President Bola Tinubu has congratulated Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “the historic milestone of becoming India’s longest-serving elected Prime Minister.”
“This remarkable achievement reflects the enduring confidence and trust the people of India have reposed in his leadership over three consecutive mandates,” the Nigerian leader said.
Mr Tinubu is right. But any real recognition of a leader must focus on his achievements, not the length of his time in charge
There is no better testimony about the impact Mr Modi has made in India than the one offered by External Affairs Minister Jaishankar, underlining a “clear, well-thought-out strategy” of four pillars, from which I pick these snippets:
- Public infrastructure investment: from €36bn in 2014 to €127bn; in the rail sector, the government invested about $59bn in two consecutive years. In 10 years, it added 31,000km of new railway tracks and electrified 44,000km of rail networks. Aiming to “democratise” technology, the Digital India programme now serves over 400 million users, processing 17 billion transactions a month. The annual value of transactions is €2.8tn, but the settlement time is consistently less than two seconds.
- Inclusive growth: This has seen the establishment of 446 universities, the opening of 540 million new bank accounts, the construction of 40 million houses for poor families, healthcare coverage for 350 million people, and free healthcare for all citizens over 70.
- Manufacturing & innovation: That has led to over 150,000 startups.
- Simplification of Laws: The Minimum Government/Maximum Governance initiative has removed 1,500 archaic laws and 40,000 compliances from the books.
The World Bank and the IMF confirm these achievements and far more.
Remember that Nigeria claimed the unwanted title of the poverty capital of the world from India during the period in 2018.
APC’s President Muhammadu Buhari responded by telling the United Nations in 2020 that his party would lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty within 10 years.
That was bogus in intent and application, and I have challenged the APC government, again and again, to be to Nigeria what Mr Modi’s government has been to India.
On the contrary, official corruption and indolence continue to spiral, and poverty to deepen.
The World Poverty Clock currently shows that 31% of Nigerians (nearly 74 million people) live in extreme poverty.
In other words, rather than lift Nigerians out of poverty, the APC is driving more people into it. Only last month, the UN warned that about 35 million Nigerians currently face acute hunger.
Most of these problems derive from poor policies and planning, beginning with the insecurity that has paralysed the country from within, as the government avoids a meaningful strategy.
Consider, for instance, its rush to institute a state police system, towards which the House of Representatives advanced a bill last week.
In principle, I am not against state police. The current effort, however, provides motion where movement is required. It is deodorant, not treatment, and could trap Nigerians between governors and criminals.
Here is why: Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila said, “The debate is no longer about whether state police should be established but about creating the appropriate legal and institutional framework for its operation.”
That is the problem: The idea that this is about structure, about insufficient numbers. It follows Mr Tinubu’s emergency declaration in November 2025, in which he authorised the recruitment of more soldiers and police officers. He has also authorised the recruitment of forest guards. Clearly, there is a diagnosis-treatment mismatch.
In April 2025, I called for a multi-dimensional response. In December, I affirmed that we must begin by examining the history of the crisis and address “intelligence failures, systematic impunity, purge corruption, and tackle the political-criminal nexus.”
The reason is that these are qualitative concerns to which the government is offering a quantitative response.
There is no scenario in which forest guards or more policemen are an answer to collusion between political elites and criminals, lack of intelligence-driven operations, porous borders, unemployment, illegal weapons in circulation, or poor leadership.
None of these is a federal-versus-state organisational defect. Multiplying the number of police forces from one to 37 does not resolve any of them.
The push for state police amounts to a dangerous illusion: it suggests that multiplying police forces will improve security, when it may simply create more opportunities for the well-connected to profit.
Nigerians understand that if 36 new police forces are recruited, trained, and controlled by the same political class in the same culture of impunity, the result will be more abuse, not more safety.
And what about the governor-capture nightmare?
According to reports, the bill in the House “empowers governors to issue lawful directives to State Commissioners of Police on matters relating to public safety and maintenance of law and order,” with federal arbitration.
Read that again, if the alarm has not already gone off for you. That drafters felt compelled to build in a federal arbitration mechanism for “unlawful directives” is itself an admission that gubernatorial abuse is the expected default case.
I was sufficiently concerned myself in my strategy proposal, in which state police appeared only in Phase III (Year 1–3), to demand strong accountability mechanisms, adding, “The law must prevent State Governors from weaponising state police for personal or party use by prescribing firm deterrence measures, including immunity, waiving federal prosecution for election-related abuses.”
That the House is bringing it up reflects the national concern here. Among others, the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that ₦2.23 trillion ($2.88 billion) was paid to kidnappers between May 2023 and April 2024. And at least N2.57bn was paid to kidnappers between July 2024 and June 2025, according to SBM Intelligence. Ransom demand totalled N48 billion during the period.
Throughout the Fourth Republic, on the other hand, state governors have routinely been linked with brigandage and corruption, as HEDA’s Compendium of 100 High Profile Corruption Cases in Nigeria and other media reports prove.
State Assemblies become an arm of the executive, and the Auditor-General the governor’s clerk.
To thrust state police into such a cauldron would complicate Nigeria’s distress.
Yes, it would decentralise” policing, which works elsewhere. But this mechanism functions in those climes because of institutional cultures built slowly over time, such as independent prosecutors, professional civil services insulated from political appointment, strong constitutional courts, and professional mass media.
In the United States, the local/state policing system is strengthened by an independent judiciary at every level, a free press with functioning libel protections, civil society litigation capacity, federal civil-rights enforcement, strong public-records laws, and local electorates that can vote out sheriffs and remove police chiefs.
Nigeria has none of these, even as political thought, at state level. Meaning: state police in the hands of governors would be mercilessly misused several times a day in 36 states.
Meaning, the governor’s wife will eat the police commissioner alive. The governor’s son will fill jail cells. When the governor winks, someone goes. When he is transiting into a Senator, policemen will line constituency streets. Local communities, civil society advocates, journalists and political opponents would flee into the wiles of other governors or seek the protection of militants!
All because we have no real security strategy.
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