The push to create state police in Nigeria has cleared its first legislative hurdle at the sub-national level, with four state assemblies approving the constitutional amendment that would end nearly three decades of fully centralised policing.
Edo, Rivers, Osun and Oyo have passed the bill, according to Nnadubem Moghalu, Secretary of the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill and Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Planning and Research. He gave the update on Tuesday in Abuja while delivering the lead paper at the second Annual Distinguished Parliamentarian Lecture organised by the House of Representatives Press Corps.
Moghalu was careful to set the threshold. He said at least 24 of the 36 state Houses of Assembly must approve the amendment before it can proceed, which leaves another 20 states to go. The Clerk to the National Assembly, Kamoru Ogunlana, transmitted the bill to the state legislatures on 16 September 2026, and Osun was the first to adopt it.
The lecture, themed “Imperative of State Police: Securing Communities, Strengthening Federalism,” drew much of its weight from a familiar problem, the sheer thinness of police cover. Moghalu put the Nigeria Police Force at about 380,000 officers for a population above 200 million, a ratio of roughly one officer to 650 citizens.
He then adjusted that figure downward to reflect reality on the ground. Around 180,000 officers are tied up in special protection and administrative duties, he said, leaving about 200,000 for core policing. In his words, “That means that your ratio has now gone from one to 400 to one to 1,000. One police officer for every 1,000 citizens.”
Those numbers track closely with the official record. The Nigeria Police Force has long operated at between 370,000 and 400,000 personnel, well short of the United Nations benchmark of roughly one officer to 450 people, and successive Inspectors-General have said the force needs at least 190,000 more officers. President Tinubu, after declaring a nationwide security emergency in November 2025, ordered the recruitment of 50,000 new constables, part of a longer plan to grow the force towards 650,000.
The proposed design is a dual system rather than a free-for-all. Moghalu explained that state police would handle offences committed within a state, while the federal police retained crimes that cross state lines or require national coordination. He named human trafficking, cybercrime and offences with international implications as matters that would stay federal.
He stressed that the two tiers would have to work closely, with technology central to stopping criminals who slip between jurisdictions. This, he argued, answers one of the oldest objections to decentralised policing, that offenders would simply relocate to exploit the seams between state and federal authority.
Abuse of power remains the sharpest fear, and Moghalu addressed it directly. He acknowledged the risk that a governor could lean on state officers to go after political rivals, or that a local majority could turn the police against a minority. He said those concerns had been central to the drafting, and that the framework would define powers clearly, build accountability mechanisms and provide sanctions for abuse.
His framing of the goal was blunt. “We are trying to build a system that is as immune to the personal foibles of individuals as possible,” Moghalu said, and he warned separately against a reform that merely federalises existing weaknesses by copying the current force’s failings at state level.
On the perennial question of money, he was equally direct. Moghalu said states would fund policing in line with the priority they place on security, remarking that “you fund what you prioritise,” and noting that many governors already spend heavily to support federal security agencies operating in their states.
The current effort is the furthest the idea has travelled in years. Section 214 of the 1999 Constitution provides for a single national police force and bars any other, which is why a constitutional alteration, not an ordinary law, is required. The Senate passed the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Sixth Alteration) Bill on state police on 24 June 2026, clearing the path to the states now considering it.
Moghalu drew a line between two separate instruments that are often confused. The constitutional amendment creates the legal basis for the dual model, he said, while the proposed National Policing Bill, still being developed through consultations, would supply the operational framework once that basis exists. One cannot recruit officers or build stations on its own, he noted.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, represented by the Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Akin Rotimi, commended the Press Corps for convening the discussion. He urged journalists to weigh the legislation on evidence, principle and likely consequences rather than partisan lines.
What happens next rests with the remaining assemblies. Twenty more approvals are needed to meet the 24-state threshold, and until that mark is reached, state police remains a proposal on paper rather than a settled part of Nigeria’s security architecture.