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Presidency says submissions on the National Policing Bill close at 5 p.m. on Thursday as Nigeria moves closer to a dual federal-state policing system
ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigerians have until 5 p.m. on Thursday, 13 August 2026, to submit their views on the proposed National Policing Bill, as the Federal Government advances plans for one of the most significant changes to Nigeria’s policing structure in decades.
The Presidency announced the deadline as consultations continue over the legal framework that could eventually govern state police services across the federation.
The Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill, chaired by the Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, Femi Gbajabiamila, has been developing proposals intended to translate the state-police constitutional framework into an operational system.
But behind the deadline lies a much bigger question for Nigerians:
What will state police actually look like, and what safeguards will prevent it from becoming another instrument of political power?
Nigeria Is Moving Towards Two Levels of Policing
Nigeria currently operates a largely centralised police system under the Nigeria Police Force.
The proposed constitutional changes would fundamentally alter that arrangement by providing for a dual policing structure involving federal and state police services.
President Bola Tinubu’s administration argues that decentralisation could bring policing closer to communities and improve responses to local security challenges.
The Presidency has said officers familiar with a community’s language, geography and crime patterns may be better positioned to gather intelligence and respond to threats.
However, creating state police involves considerably more than allowing governors to establish security agencies.
Questions of command, recruitment, financing, jurisdiction, accountability and political interference must all be resolved.
That is where the proposed National Policing Bill becomes important.
Constitutional Amendment and National Policing Bill Are Not the Same Thing
Two related legal processes are involved.
The proposed constitutional amendment is intended to create the constitutional foundation for federal and state policing.
The National Policing Bill is expected to provide the more detailed legal and operational framework under which the system would function.
President Tinubu inaugurated the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill in July, with the Presidency explaining that constitutional changes alone would not be enough to operationalise state police.
The House of Representatives has also been considering an executive-backed constitutional amendment proposal transmitted by the President.
This means Nigerians should not interpret today’s consultation deadline as meaning state police automatically begins tomorrow.
Several constitutional and legislative steps remain before a new policing system can become fully operational.
Question One: Who Will Control State Police?
This is perhaps the most politically sensitive issue.
If state police officers operate within individual states, what authority should governors have over them?
Governors are already constitutionally designated as chief security officers of their states in political discourse, but operational control of the Nigeria Police Force remains within the federal policing structure.
State police would change that relationship considerably.
Supporters argue that governors cannot reasonably be expected to take responsibility for security while lacking meaningful operational authority over police within their states.
Critics, however, fear that excessive gubernatorial control could allow state police to be deployed against political opponents, journalists, protesters, activists or other perceived adversaries.
A successful state-police framework must therefore answer a difficult question:
How can elected state governments exercise legitimate security authority without turning police officers into political enforcers?
Question Two: Who Investigates State Police When They Abuse Their Powers?
Creating another police service without creating effective accountability could simply decentralise existing problems.
Nigeria has experienced longstanding complaints involving arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention, extortion, torture and excessive use of force by law-enforcement personnel.
State policing therefore requires more than uniforms, vehicles, stations and weapons.
There must be credible mechanisms for receiving and investigating complaints against officers.
An effective framework should make misconduct easier to investigate and unlawful political interference harder to conceal.
Citizens must also know where to complain when an officer allegedly violates their rights — and those complaints must be capable of producing meaningful consequences.
Question Three: Can a Governor Order the Arrest of a Political Opponent?
This is one of the fears at the centre of opposition to state policing.
Nigeria’s political history contains examples of security institutions being accused of interference in political disputes.
The concern is that decentralisation could multiply that problem.
Imagine an opposition politician organising a demonstration against a sitting governor.
Who decides whether the protest represents a legitimate exercise of constitutional freedoms or a threat to public order?
What happens during an election campaign?
Could state police be deployed around opposition party offices?
Could an officer refuse an unlawful instruction from the governor or another political office-holder without losing his job?
These questions should not be left until after state police services have been created.
The safeguards need to be built into the system from the beginning.
Question Four: Who Pays State Police Officers?
Policing is expensive.
Salaries are only one part of the cost.
States would potentially need to fund police stations, vehicles, communications systems, training, intelligence operations, weapons, forensic services, pensions, insurance and other infrastructure.
Nigeria’s states also have dramatically different financial capacities.
Some generate substantial internal revenue. Others depend heavily on allocations from the Federation Account.
That creates another important question:
What happens when a state cannot afford its police service?
Nigeria must avoid creating a situation where wealthy states have well-equipped police services while poorer states struggle to pay officers.
Poor remuneration could itself create security and corruption risks.
Question Five: Who Has Jurisdiction When Federal and State Police Disagree?
A dual policing system requires clear boundaries.
The proposed constitutional framework envisages the continued existence of federal policing alongside state police.
That immediately raises practical questions.
Who investigates kidnapping that begins in one state and ends in another?
Who handles terrorism?
What happens when criminals cross state boundaries?
Who investigates crimes involving federal institutions?
And what happens when state police and federal police both claim jurisdiction over the same case?
The constitutional framework must clearly establish mechanisms for cooperation rather than competition.
Federal Police Would Not Simply Disappear
State police does not mean the abolition of federal policing.
Under the proposals under consideration, federal police would continue to perform federal policing responsibilities and could provide assistance to state police under circumstances established by law.
The proposed constitutional framework also contemplates circumstances in which federal authorities could intervene where there is a serious breakdown of public order that state police cannot contain.
The details of those intervention powers will be particularly important.
Federal intervention must be strong enough to protect national security while not being so broad that state-police independence becomes meaningless.
Recruitment Must Also Be Addressed
One argument frequently advanced in favour of state policing is local knowledge.
An officer recruited from or familiar with a particular region may better understand local languages, geography, cultural relationships and patterns of criminal activity.
That can be valuable for intelligence gathering.
But recruitment must still be based on professional standards.
Nigeria should avoid replacing a national police system with security organisations dominated by political patronage, ethnicity or local political loyalty.
Training standards, disciplinary procedures and minimum professional requirements therefore need national attention even where officers serve individual states.
State Police Could Improve Security — But It Is Not a Cure for Everything
Nigeria faces serious security challenges ranging from kidnapping and banditry to armed robbery, communal violence, terrorism and organised crime.
Decentralised policing could potentially improve response times and local intelligence.
A police officer who understands the terrain and knows the community may identify threats more effectively than personnel repeatedly transferred between unfamiliar regions.
But simply creating state police will not automatically eliminate insecurity.
Police effectiveness also depends on intelligence, training, technology, forensic capacity, public trust, adequate funding, professional leadership and an effective justice system.
State police should therefore be treated as structural reform — not a magic solution.
What Should Nigerians Be Asking Before Supporting the Bill?
The debate should move beyond the simple question of whether Nigeria needs state police.
Citizens should ask:
Who appoints the State Commissioner of Police?
Who can remove that person?
Can governors give operational instructions directly to officers?
What happens when an instruction is unlawful?
Who investigates misconduct?
Who pays officers and guarantees their pensions?
Can state police operate outside their state?
Which crimes remain exclusively federal?
What happens when federal and state police disagree?
What protections exist for journalists, protesters and political opponents?
Who prevents a future governor from turning state police into a private political force?
The answers may ultimately determine whether state policing strengthens Nigerian democracy or creates new opportunities for abuse.
Step Rights Legal Insight
Nigeria’s state-police debate is fundamentally a constitutional rights issue as much as it is a security issue.
Citizens need effective policing.
They also need protection from the police when police powers are abused.
Those objectives are not contradictory.
A democratic police service should have enough authority to investigate crime, arrest suspects and protect communities while remaining restrained by the Constitution, the courts and enforceable accountability mechanisms.
The strongest state-police system would therefore not necessarily be the one that gives governors or officers the greatest power.
It would be the system that gives police sufficient power to protect society while making abuse of that power difficult to conceal and possible to punish.
Nigeria has an opportunity to rethink policing at a fundamental level.
The question should therefore not simply be:
“Do we want state police?”
The more important question is:
“What kind of state police do we want — and what protections must exist before we give it power over citizens?”
As the initial public-submission period closes, those questions should remain at the centre of Nigeria’s policing reform debate.
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