Nigeria has reached a historic milestone in its constitutional reform process as 24 State Houses of Assembly approved the constitutional amendment bill establishing State Police Services, officially satisfying the two-thirds threshold required under Section 9 of the 1999 Constitution.
The resolution clears a critical legal hurdle, paving the way to dismantle the long-standing centralized police structure in favor of a decentralized operational model.
The 24 states that have officially passed the resolutions are Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Kaduna, Kebbi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Taraba, Yobe, and Zamfara. Among the remaining twelve state assemblies, Kano has scheduled the bill for plenary, Bauchi and Katsina are conducting committee reviews, while Abia, Borno, Ebonyi, Kogi, Ondo, and Sokoto have formally received the draft bill. Jigawa, Lagos, and Niger states have yet to publish official updates regarding their legislative timelines.
Following the approval by the required supermajority of state legislatures, the resolutions will now be transmitted back to the National Assembly for collation and formal verification before being presented for presidential assent.
Concurrently, the draft National Policing Bill, which sets the framework for national minimum standards, certification processes, federal oversight, and operational rules, is undergoing executive review before legislative passage. Once the federal framework is fully enacted, individual states will pass their own laws to establish their police units, though no state service will be permitted to deploy officers until it achieves official accreditation and certification under the new national safety standards.
This landmark transition marks the culmination of a decades-long debate over security governance in Nigeria. Prior to 1966, the country operated regional and local authority police forces alongside federal forces under its early post-independence constitutional structures. However, military regimes centralized all law enforcement under the single command of the Nigeria Police Force to prevent political misuse by regional leaders.
Over time, the strict monopoly codified in Section 214 of the 1999 Constitution presented structural challenges, effectively leaving state governors as “Chief Security Officers” without direct operational command over local police commands. Rising internal security demands led several regions to establish local vigilante frameworks and non-police security networks, ultimately driving the political consensus behind this historic constitutional amendment.
