then IGP was unacceptable… I had argued then that if we had state police, we would be able to solve the issues of crime in our nation or reduce it to the minimum. Seven months later, on June 24, 2026, the Senate passed the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Alteration) (State Police) Bill, 2026. The House of Representatives had passed it earlier. The bill now awaits ratification by 24 state Houses of Assembly before presidential assent.
The debate has shifted from ‘whether’ to ‘how’. Yet critics remain. Former Minister and former World Bank vice president, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili insists, “State Police is not the answer, restructuring Nigeria is”. NDC presidential candidate Mr. Peter Obi supports state police in principle but wants implementation deferred until after the 2027 election, warning it could be “used to rig 2027 Elections by proxy”.
This article seeks to deconstruct the points at issue. It is not a polemic. It is a primer on why a central police force of 371,000 officers cannot secure 230 million Nigerians, why the UK’s 43 territorial forces and America’s 18,000 agencies are not anomalies but lessons, and why the safeguards being built into Nigeria’s bill address the exact fears Obi and Ezekwesili have carefully raised. In 2023, as Managing Director and Editor-in-chief of The Guardian, (Nigeria) I was part of the leadership of the Editorial Board and Management that launched a 180-pape book containing a serial of 61 Editorials on Federalism alone titled, “Federalism Is The Answer: The Guardian Federalist Papers”. State Police matters feature prominently in the book, publicly presented when the newspaper marked its 40th Birthday Anniversary on November 28, 2023. In all humility, I have some competence to discuss state police matters arising.
The problem: A Central Police Force is a 19th century answer to 21st century insecurity.
Scale defeats centralisation. Nigeria’s population is more than 230 million. The Nigeria Police Force has about 371,000 personnel. That is 1 officer to 620 citizens, against the UN benchmark of 1:450. But the real problem is not numbers. It is distance. A DPO in Gusau cannot know the alleys of Aba. A police commissioner in Maiduguri cannot map cult routes in Ikorodu. Terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, violent extremism, communal conflicts and organised criminality have “overwhelmed the capacity of a centrally controlled police force. Governors are chief security officers without troops: Former Plateau Governor Jonah Jang called himself “the chief security officer of a state without a troop” after watching communal massacres he could not direct police to stop. A Rivers State Police Commissioner once defied Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s direct order outright. Section 215(4) of the 1999 Constitution subordinates Commissioners to the President via the IGP. As security expert Sule Momodu notes, this clause must be expunged “so that a Commissioner of Police cannot, under any guise, refuse to obey a lawful order from a state governor”.
