State Police long overdue in Nigeria

 

On June 11 and 24, 2026, the Nigeria House of Representatives and Senate respectively singled out the state police constitution amendment bill for passage into law. This brings to an end decade of agitations and advocacy for the decentralisation of Nigeria policing system. I have argued on this page severally that this is the best way to go. Key highlights include empowering state governors to appoint Commissioners of Police (confirmed by State Assemblies) and establishing institutional safeguards to prevent the political abuse of state police. Dual Police Framework replaces the singular national police structure with a Federal Police Service (handling border security, cybercrime, and terrorism).

The bill explicitly prohibits governors and politicians from directing police to target political opponents, ethnic groups, or associations. State Police Service Commissions will independently oversee recruitment, promotion, and discipline. The federal police retain the authority to intervene in specific cases like electoral intimidation, threats to national security, or severe human rights violations. States wishing to establish their forces must pass enabling legislation through their State House of Assembly and meet national minimum standards set by the National Assembly.

The intriguing thing about this bill is that while the House of Representatives passed the State Police Bill as a Private Member Bill, the Senate passed it as an executive bill. This is because while the House of Rep passed the bill on June 11, the Senate passed it on June 24, a day after it received the version sent to it by President Bola Tinubu. I assume that a conference committee has been set up by the two chambers of the National Assembly in order to harmonise the two versions and sent a clean copy of the harmonised version to the 36 State Houses of Assembly for concurrence. Once two thirds (at least 24 ot of the 36 State Assemblies) passed the bill, it will be forwarded to the president for assent.

Two core arguments have been made against the bill. A section of civil society groups said a bill as important as this should have been subjected to a wide consultation and public hearing rather than being rushed through legislative processes. The other group are opposition political party chieftains such as former Vice President Atiku Abubabkar and Peter Obi who said that the bill should have been passed after next year’s general elections as they feared that state police may be used against opposition political parties during the polls.

My reaction is that this bill has gone through wide consultations already. The Nigeria Governors Forum asked its members (governors) to consult widely with various interest groups in their respective states and come back to the Forum with their responses. These consultations took over a year to conclude. President Bola Tinubu was the last to support this bill as he only openly endorsed the bill last October. So, even if the bill is given longer consultation, not everyone will endorse it. Even the Nigerian Police Force was sometimes ago overwhelmingly against the bill especially during the tenure of the immediate past Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun. It should be understood that this bill has been sponsored by different lawmakers in the National Assembly without success. For instance, Senator Uba Sani, now governor of Kaduna State said he sponsored the bill in 2020 but it did not sail through.

Senate Leader, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele last  Sunday, July 5, 2026  defended the passage of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Alteration) (State Police) Bill, 2026, insisting that 84 of the 109 senators voted in support of the bill during its clause-by-clause consideration (In the House of Rep, 289 lawmakers voted in favor and only four voted against it), describing the outcome as evidence of broad bipartisan backing for the constitutional amendment. He said the proposal was the product of years of consultations, public hearings and stakeholder engagements across the country. Bamidele also dismissed claims that the proposal was driven by partisan interests, insisting that it emerged from extensive consultations with the Executive, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, the Conference of Speakers of State Legislatures and the leadership of the Nigeria Police. He noted that public hearings conducted across the six geopolitical zones in July 2025 produced overwhelming support for state police.

As for the opposition political parties and their chieftains kicking against the bill due to fear of political harassment and intimidation, they should know that there are buffers and guardrails against using the State Police for political molestation. According to the Deputy President of the Senate, Barau Jibrin, to address public concerns about political intimidation, Jibrin explained that the bill includes strict constitutional safeguards. The highest repercussion for a state flouting regulations or using the state police to persecute citizens is the disablement of the state's force by the President, at which point the federal police commissioner would take control.

 Apart from that, even if the legislation is passed and assented to, it will still take sometime for the effective take off state police. For instance, each state governor will still have to sponsor a bill for the setting up of state police in their respective State House of Assembly. Thereafter, there will be need to have budget for the takeoff, Stations and Barracks have to be built, recruitment, training and deployment has to be done. Procurement of arms and ammunition, drones, and other technological devices including building of forensic laboratories have to happen. All these may take a whole year to accomplish by which time 2027 General Elections would have come and gone. So, it is better to have the legislation in place now while other administrative hurdles are taken care of later.

Historically, in the First Republic, Nigeria used to have Local Authority Police. It was scrapped after military coup of January 15, 1966 because of abuse by the political leaders of that time. However, after 50 years and with the potent threat of insecurity across the country, it is now high time to reconsider which is what President Tinubu’s administration has just done. Already, we have state High Court and State Prison and the only missing link in the justice sector is the state police. That is the jigsaw puzzle that is now being put in place. Out of about 28 countries practicing federalism, only Nigeria allegedly has a centralised policing system.

According to online source, Nigeria stands virtually alone among federal states in concentrating policing authority entirely within the central government. In almost all other federal systems—such as the United States, Australia, and Germany—policing responsibilities are decentralised and distributed across multiple tiers of government.  Unfortunately, the centralised Force is not well resourced. No enough personnel, welfare and salary are poor, equipment is archaic and substandard to curb the current security threat.

We should realise that it will take more than state police to combat threat of insecurity. This is just another layer of solution. Federal Government must still continue to pursue the recruitment of additional 50,000 police constables, upgrade and expand the training institutes, recruit, train and deploy more forest guards, strengthen our armed forces, seek international assistance, deploy more technological solutions and reduce unemployment as well as poverty which have been identify as primary drivers of crime and criminality. State governors must also ensure that state police, when set up, are well resourced.

I.G: @jideojong