The Federal Government has unveiled a seven-week roadmap for drafting the proposed National Policing Bill, the legislation expected to provide the legal and operational framework for state police in Nigeria.
The move marks one of the most decisive steps yet toward decentralising a policing architecture that has, since independence, been anchored solely on the Nigeria Police Force.
Chief of Staff to the President and Chairman of the Presidential Working Group, Femi Gbajabiamila, during a briefing at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, invited Nigerians and stakeholders to submit memoranda and proposals through the designated portal by August 13.
Gbajabiamila said the approved work programme would run from July 27 to September 14, with the Executive Bill package scheduled for presentation to President Tinubu on September 3.
“The timetable is demanding, but it is not a shortcut. Legal drafting, policy research, data analysis and implementation modelling will proceed in parallel, with fixed review gates,” he said.
He said the proposed legislation would cover recruitment, training, funding, command structure, jurisdiction, accountability, intelligence sharing and cooperation between federal and state police institutions.
Constitutional Groundwork Still in Progress
Gbajabiamila noted that although the Senate and House of Representatives had approved constitutional proposals for state police, the amendment process still required approval by the State Houses of Assembly.
“The constitutional amendment creates the authority and broad architecture for federal and state policing. However, it does not, by itself, provide the complete operating system,” he said.
According to him, no state police service currently exists, while the Nigeria Police Force remains the constitutionally recognised policing institution. President Tinubu, he explained, established the Presidential Working Group to ensure the country was fully prepared once the constitutional process was concluded.
“Our mandate is to produce a technically robust, implementation-ready draft National Policing Bill and supporting legislative package,” he said.
Gbajabiamila said the assignment would include legal audit of existing policing laws, development of national minimum standards, state readiness certification, federal-state cooperation mechanisms and independent complaints institutions.
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He also announced the establishment of a multidisciplinary Policy Advisory Committee, chaired by Justice Abdullahi Liman, to provide policy and technical oversight for the process.
Guarding Against Abuse
A central concern in the national debate has long been the fear that state governors could weaponize state police against political opponents — a worry rooted in the country’s experience with the defunct Native Authority Police in the First Republic, which was disbanded in 1966 after being widely abused for political ends.
Addressing these concerns, Gbajabiamila said the government would balance local policing authority with strong national safeguards.
“State Police cannot mean thirty-six state militias, just as national standards cannot become a disguised method of re-centralizing day-to-day state policing,” he said.
He said no political office holder would be allowed to direct the arrest of opponents or use policing institutions for partisan purposes. “Officers must answer to the Constitution and the law, not to personal or partisan instruction,” he emphasised.
Gbajabiamila further said no state would commence policing operations without demonstrating readiness in recruitment, training, discipline, oversight, firearms control, data management and financial sustainability.
“National standards will be the baseline; states may establish higher standards; however, no Nigerian should receive a lower standard of protection because of where they reside. Safeguards are not obstacles to state police; they are what make it credible, lawful and sustainable,” he said.
The readiness clause is significant: analysts have repeatedly warned that several states — particularly those already struggling with unpaid salaries and thin internally generated revenue — may lack the fiscal muscle to sustain a professional police service without federal support.
The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, said minimum national standards would help prevent political persecution and guarantee equal protection for Nigerians regardless of their location.
Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun, a member of the working group, described the proposed National Policing Bill as one of the most consequential reforms of the Tinubu administration. He said the legislation would define the responsibilities of federal and state police, address funding, jurisdiction and firearms control, and establish the framework for effective state policing.
The Federal Government said the reform would strengthen Nigeria’s security architecture and create a policing system better suited to the country’s size, diversity and evolving security challenges.
In Attendance
Present at the briefing were Olatunji Disu, Inspector-General of Police; Afam Osigwe, President of the Nigerian Bar Association; Justice Abdullahi Liman, Chairman of the Policy Advisory Committee and Nnadubem Moghalu, Special Adviser to the President on Planning and Research.
What Comes Next
With the memoranda window closing on August 13 and the Executive Bill due before the President on September 3, attention now shifts to two parallel tracks: the substantive drafting work inside the Presidential Working Group, and the ratification battle in the State Houses of Assembly, where the underlying constitutional amendment must still secure the required two-thirds approval.
If both tracks converge on schedule, Nigeria could, for the first time in nearly six decades, formally reintroduce sub-national policing — this time under a codified national standard designed to prevent the abuses that ended the experiment the last time around.
Why State Police
For more than two decades, Nigerians have debated whether the country’s single, federally controlled police force can effectively secure a nation of over 200 million people spread across 36 states and 774 local government areas.
The demand for state police has grown louder against the backdrop of worsening insecurity — from Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province insurgencies in the North-East, to banditry and mass abductions in the North-West, farmer-herder clashes in the North-Central, secessionist agitations and unknown gunmen attacks in the South-East, and kidnapping-for-ransom syndicates spreading nationwide.
Successive national conferences (notably the 2014 National Conference) and multiple committees have recommended a multi-level policing structure, but political hesitation, fears of abuse by state governors, and the rigidity of the 1999 Constitution have stalled progress.
In February 2024, President Bola Tinubu convened a landmark meeting with the 36 state governors where a consensus emerged that state policing had become inevitable. Since then, both chambers of the National Assembly have advanced constitutional amendments to move policing from the Exclusive to the Concurrent Legislative List — a change that still requires ratification by at least two-thirds of the State Houses of Assembly.
It is against this backdrop that the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill, inaugurated by President Tinubu, has now released a detailed timetable to convert the pending constitutional change into a workable operating framework.
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