36 State Speakers Pledge Immediate Backing for State Police Bill, Moving Decentralized Law Enforcement to the Brink of Reality

Nigeria’s decade-long debate over the decentralization of law enforcement has cleared its most unpredictable political hurdle, with the leadership of the 36 State Houses of Assembly promising a swift, collective endorsement of the newly passed State Police Bill.

The unified commitment from state lawmakers directly follows a rare display of bipartisan urgency in the National Assembly, where both chambers overwhelmingly approved the constitutional amendment. Because changing the country’s security framework requires altering the foundational text of the 1999 Constitution, the proposal cannot become law through federal votes alone. It must now survive a rigorous state-by-state ratification process requiring a two-thirds majority of all state legislatures.

Any anxiety regarding a potential gridlock at the state level was put to rest by Rt. Hon. Dennis Guwor, the Chairman of the Conference of Speakers and Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly. Issuing a formal statement on behalf of his colleagues, Guwor made it clear that regional assemblies view the legislation not as a partisan debate, but as an absolute necessity to protect lives and properties across vulnerable rural and urban communities.

The speakers argued that the current centralized model, which forces local commands to wait on operational directives from Abuja, has consistently slowed down emergency interventions during critical security breaches.

“Security issues are best tackled at the local level because our communities deserve policing structures that intimately understand their peculiar environments, cultures, and concerns,” Speaker Dennis Guwor stated. “The Conference of Speakers stands fully prepared to give this bill the required legislative backing once it is formally transmitted to the states. We believe that community-based policing, when properly structured within the boundaries of the law, will drastically improve response times and allow us to handle localized threats far more effectively than we ever could under a single, distant command.”

The proposed bill outlines a massive reorganization of domestic law enforcement. By moving policing to the Concurrent Legislative List, individual states will gain the constitutional right to recruit, fund, and manage their own security personnel. However, to address persistent warnings from civil society groups and opposition parties that governors might turn state police into private political armies, federal lawmakers embedded significant institutional checkpoints into the final draft.

Under the approved framework, no state police force can hit the streets until its establishing laws are thoroughly certified by an Act of the National Assembly to ensure they meet strict national minimum standards. Furthermore, while governors retain the right to appoint State Commissioners of Police, they can only do so based on the direct advice of an expanded National Police Council—a body that will now include representatives from human rights organizations, labor unions, traditional rulers, and the media.

The progress of the bill has triggered wave of optimism among state executives. Benue State Governor Hyacinth Alia and security analyst Senator Ayo Arise both released statements celebrating the development as a historic milestone for true federalism in Nigeria. The momentum even caught international attention, with United States Congressman Riley Moore publicly applauding President Tinubu and the National Assembly for taking decisive steps to decentralize the nation’s security architecture.

As administrative clerks prepare the final legal copies of the bill for transmission to the 36 state capitals, individual assemblies—including the Plateau State House of Assembly—have already begun setting up internal committees to manage public hearings. By signaling their total readiness to approve the dual-policing model, the state speakers have turned the long-awaited dream of localized law enforcement into a concrete countdown, setting the stage for a fundamental shift in how public safety will be managed across the country.