The British Vanguard of Policing Control in Colonial Nigeria, 1953-1959

Control of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in the 1950s underwent a series of transformations. This research studies the colonial administration’s efforts to create a sustainable police force, one that would extend beyond impending Nigerian independence. Thus, the British colonial government grappled with certain challenges regarding the NPF particularly as Nigeria’s independence approached. First, the establishment of a force that could adequately address the bureaucratic issues of police personnel was of great concern. Second, during the decolonisation era of the 1950s, a growing concern of the British administration for the NPF stemmed from fear of its politicization. This fear led to a shift from the policing principle of securing the infrastructure of colonial domination to a more novel imperative of preventing the radicalization of the police system by anti-colonial elements.

However, the question of ultra vires which limited the scope of the Police Forces that the regional governments could create and the deliberations of a Police Service Commission became significant aspects of contention. The administrative transformation of the Nigeria Police Commission during the decolonisation era held substantial implications for policing in postcolonial Nigeria. The research draws on archival documents from declassified files at the National Archives, London.

The paper argues that, during the decolonisation period, the colonial administration increased the centralization of the NPF in response to fears of possible secession following Nigeria’s independence. This was driven by the perception that a strong regional government could challenge the authority of the central government, by competition among regions to establish more robust regional police forces, and by the potential for riots and disruptions that might occur in the 1961 legislative election due to the influence of Northern politicians on the NPF in the 1959 general elections.

Olabode Idris Olalekan, University of Ibadan, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Olabode Idris Olalekan is a postgraduate student of the Department of History, University of Ibadan. He is an IFRA-Nigeria scholar who carried out research on Symbolism in Sacred Arts: A discussion of the Agbeni Sango Shrine in Ibadan under the Storymaps project. Olabode’s Master’s degree dissertation was on Islamic Pilgrimage Control in Colonial Nigeria, 1932-1955, in which he examined the economic, social, political-economy and inter-state implications of the pilgrimage exercise. In this work, he interrogated the colonial super-structure in Nigeria, the discourse of classism in colonial Nigeria, slavery and destitution across the Saharan route.