The campaign to give Nigerian states their own police forces has cleared its first real hurdle, with four state assemblies now on board.
According to the Presidency, Edo, Rivers, Osun and Oyo have given their assent to a constitutional amendment that would legalise state policing. The bill still needs support from at least 24 state Houses of Assembly before it can advance further in the amendment process.
Nnadubem Moghalu, who serves as Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Planning and Research and heads the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill, shared the update at a lecture in Abuja hosted by the House of Representatives Press Corps. The event was titled “The Imperative for State Police: Securing Communities, Strengthening Federalism.”
Building the Legal Framework Isn’t Enough on Its Own
Moghalu drew a clear line between two things happening at once: the constitutional changes working their way through state assemblies, and a separate bill that would actually govern how state police forces operate day to day.
He warned against treating the constitutional process as the whole job. “An alteration to the Constitution cannot, by itself, recruit and train an officer or equip a police station,” he said, pointing out that real implementation takes time and resources the Constitution alone can’t provide.
He said President Tinubu deliberately set up the working group ahead of the constitutional process concluding, so the country wouldn’t be caught unprepared once state policing becomes legally possible.
What’s Shaping the Bill
Moghalu said input for the National Policing Bill has come from a wide pool — academics, think tanks, civil society groups, political parties and security agencies. The working group also ran a public call for submissions through newspaper and broadcast ads in English, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo.
He described the bill’s foundation as largely finished, with remaining effort going into making sure its provisions work together cleanly. He wouldn’t share specific details yet, preferring that the public see the full text once it’s sent to the National Assembly. A version approved by the working group and the Ministry of Justice will first go to the President for sign-off before transmission.
The Risk of Repeating Old Mistakes
Moghalu didn’t shy away from naming the biggest danger in the reform: simply copying federal policing’s existing problems onto new state-level institutions. “If these reforms merely federalise the status quo, distributing familiar failures across more institutions, they will have failed,” he said.
He added that passing a law won’t fix policing by itself — officers will still need real funding, proper training, equipment and welfare support to make any of it work.
Police Leadership Signals Support
Inspector-General of Police Olatunji Disu, represented at the event, said the force backs ongoing constitutional and legislative work to strengthen policing and community safety, and called for continued honest dialogue around decentralisation.
