President Bola Tinubu has thrown his weight behind a dual policing system that would allow willing and capable states to establish their own police services while the Federal Government retains a national force for federal responsibilities and interstate crimes.
The President’s position, delivered by his Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, at the 66th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Port Harcourt on Wednesday, represents one of the clearest statements yet of the administration’s case for decentralising policing in Nigeria.
Gbajabiamila said the proposed arrangement was designed to tackle a basic weakness in the country’s present security structure: the difficulty of providing timely police protection across a vast and diverse federation through a single command system.
“The first duty of government is protection,” he said, adding that when lawful protection is absent, “schools close, businesses retreat and communities begin to make dangerous arrangements for their own survival.”
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He said the constitutional arrangement, under which the Nigeria Police Force is the country’s only police institution, had placed excessive demands on a centralised structure expected to police crowded cities, remote settlements, and long border corridors.
From Tinubu’s standpoint, the question is no longer whether Nigeria needs a different policing structure, but whether the country can afford to postpone the change.
Gbajabiamila said the President had chosen to confront what he described as a longstanding structural weakness. He noted that “a country of our size and diversity cannot continue to depend on a single centrally commanded police institution for all its policing needs.”
He pointed to the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, India, and Brazil, where policing responsibilities are shared between federal and constituent authorities. Nigeria, he noted, operates differently because its Constitution prevents states from establishing police services of their own.
The proposed dual system would change that arrangement without dismantling the national police structure. States that have the capacity and willingness to establish police services would handle local security needs, while the national service would continue to deal with federal responsibilities and crimes that cross state boundaries.
Gbajabiamila emphasised that decentralisation would not create different classes of Nigerians. He said every citizen would continue to operate under one constitutional framework and receive equal protection regardless of “origin, ethnicity, religion, or political affiliation.”
The administration is also tying the proposal to the speed and quality of police response. Gbajabiamila said success should be measured by whether help reaches citizens quickly, whether officers understand the communities they police and whether victims can report crimes without fearing that sensitive information will be misused.
He disclosed that Nigeria has approximately one police officer for every 650 citizens, compared with a commonly used international benchmark of one officer for every 450 people. On the figures cited in the speech, the country faces a shortfall of roughly 160,000 officers against that benchmark.
The gap becomes more significant, he said, because an estimated 100,000 officers are deployed on administrative and special protection duties rather than routine community policing.
State police, therefore, would not simply mean creating more uniforms. The administration wants personnel stationed closer to the communities they serve, with local recruitment expected to give officers stronger knowledge of the people, terrain, and intelligence networks within their areas.
But Gbajabiamila cautioned that increasing police numbers without raising professional standards could create another problem.
He said recruitment must include rigorous background checks, while training should equip officers to understand the law, preserve evidence, and exercise force within lawful limits. Political connections, he added, should not substitute for proper screening.
The proposed reform also addresses police welfare. Gbajabiamila said the government could not demand integrity from officers while tolerating irregular pay, inadequate pensions, or poor support for personnel injured in the line of duty.
He further disclosed a proposed safeguard against officers dismissed for misconduct moving between jurisdictions.
“An officer dismissed for brutality, extortion, or criminal association in one service should not, never, be able or allowed to reappear in another uniform elsewhere quietly,” he said.
As for citizens, the administration’s stated test is ultimately practical. Gbajabiamila said the reform should produce competent investigations, faster emergency response, safer communities, and greater confidence in the police.
The President’s message to the lawyers was that Nigeria’s policing architecture must now be judged by what citizens experience on the ground, rather than by the convenience of preserving an arrangement that has existed for decades.
“By proposing a dual policing system, the federal government is prepared to share an authority it has long held alone because the safety of Nigerians matters more than preserving a familiar arrangement,” Gbajabiamila said.
The proposal, if translated into constitutional and legislative changes, would mark a major shift in the distribution of policing powers within Nigeria’s federal system.
