The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, has said that a proper funding mechanism must be well spelt out before the establishment of state police.
President Bola Tinubu had on Tuesday transmitted the State Police Bill to the House for consideration. Following this development, the green chamber rescinded the State Police Bill it passed earlier for the consideration of the one transmitted by the president.
But speaking on Wednesday in Abuja at the National Security Roundtable session as part of the National Assembly Open Week 2026, Abbas suggested measures to be put in place for the actualisation of a better decentralised police structure in Nigeria.
He stated: “First, the National Minimum Standards Act must come before the first state police issue a single directive: standards first, structures after. Second, we should move step-by-step, state-by-state, learning as Germany and Canada learned, rather than switching on 36 new forces on the same day.
“Third, we must settle the question of money from the very beginning, whether through a dedicated policing fund, through shared services, or through federal support that is tied firmly to standards, so that no state creates a police force it cannot pay, and no unpaid officer becomes a threat to the citizen he has sworn to protect.”
The Speaker commended President Tinubu for leading the move to decentralise the current Nigeria Police Force and create state police.
According to him, “For the first time in our history, a sitting president has made state police a central part of national reform. President Tinubu has done so not with words alone, but with a bill that now sits before the National Assembly.”
Abbas, however, suggested minimum policing standards, phased creation of police across states, and funding options before establishment. He added: “Let me begin with a word of appreciation, because it is deserved. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has done what many leaders talked about for 30 years, but few dared to attempt.
“He has sent this Parliament an Executive Bill to amend the Constitution and to allow for State Police Services. It takes conviction to bring the most sensitive question in our federation before the whole country, and it takes humility to place that question in the hands of the legislature and the people. For that, this House thanks him.”
While noting that the National Assembly has funded security agencies year after year, and it will continue to do so, the Speaker stated that “money by itself is not a strategy”.
Abbas noted: “We must legislate for a modern, shared criminal and biometric database so that a suspect known in one state is not a stranger in the next. We must connect our agencies into one network of intelligence so that they work together instead of apart.
“We must build, in law, the architecture for inter-agency coordination and intelligence-sharing. We must legislate for technology, safe schools, border security, and the welfare and equipment of the officer at the checkpoint. And we must use our oversight to ensure accountability at all times.”
The Speaker was of the opinion that a country as large and as varied as Nigeria cannot be policed forever by one central force run from the capital. He stressed that more than 200 million people live across forests, farmlands and borders, saying that a single force cannot know every community or watch every road. Abbas added that local security problems need local knowledge, local presence and local accountability.
He stressed that policing works best when the people who protect a community actually belong to it, and that is the confidence this reform is meant to rebuild.
The Speaker said he understood the “reasonable” concerns of many people in the state police discourse, especially the fears that police could become the private army of a governor or a political godfather. He said: “The people who drafted this bill had the same fears, and they answered it. A state appoints its Commissioner of Police on the recommendation of the National Police Council.
“The state Assembly must confirm that appointment, and only a two-thirds majority of the Assembly can remove the officer and, even then, only for good cause.
“If a state police breaks down, or falls into the wrong hands, or turns against the very people it should protect, the constitution allows the federal police to step in. But it allows this only in defined situations, only in writing, only for a limited period, with notice to the governor and to the National Assembly within 48 hours, and always subject to the courts.
“No such step may dissolve a state police or suspend a state’s elected institutions. These are the safeguards that will keep the reform honest.”
Citing the examples of Germany, Canada and the United States and how the countries decentralised their police structures, Abbas called for a proper study of their models and how the systems can work for Nigeria.
“From all of these examples, one lesson keeps returning. Local policing succeeds only where national standards, shared information, and firm accountability hold it together. Where those are missing, a police force can become a danger to the very people it was created to protect. Let us take what is strong in these models, and let us avoid what has failed in them,” he said.