Twenty-four hours after the Senate passed the State Police Bill, retired security chiefs, lawyers and opposition parties have raised alarm over funding gaps and fears that governors could weaponise the new forces ahead of 2027.
Twenty-four hours after the Senate passed the Constitution Alteration (State Police) Bill, 2026, anxiety and sharp debate have swept the political landscape, even as pro-democracy advocates and state governors celebrate.
Leading the worries is a retired Commissioner of Police, Balarabe Sule, who warned that many states simply can’t afford to fund the new forces. “I can very well tell you that many states will not have the resources to equip and pay remuneration for those to be employed to function effectively,” he said, adding that underpaid officers risk becoming corrupt and “exposed to abuse by governors who pay them, irrespective of the checks and balances.”
The political class shares the jitters. The Conference of United Political Parties, CUPP, through its acting chairman, Peter Ameh, cautioned that “poorly implemented State Police could be vulnerable to abuse, including political weaponisation, election interference, or suppression of opposition.”
The NNPP’s National Secretary, Dipo Olayoku, was blunter about the 2027 election angle: “We must ensure governors don’t pack their political thugs into the State Police, thereby using uniforms to harass opponents.”
The Peoples Redemption Party went further, questioning the government’s motives entirely. National Chairman Hakeem Baba-Ahmed said: “This administration lacks the moral assets and the trust of Nigerians to undertake a major shift in the policing structure of the country… Its plan to engineer the emergence of State Police is suspicious.”
Lawyer Monday Ubani, SAN, warned that without overhauling local government structures first, “the country risks merely decentralising existing security problems rather than solving them,” adding that critics have “consistently warned that State Police could be transformed into instruments of political intimidation, electoral manipulation, suppression of dissent and harassment of opposition figures.”
Even the Nigeria Democratic Congress, which welcomed the bill, flagged the same worry, with publicity secretary Osa Director insisting reforms must not be “subject to abuse.”
Lawmakers are pushing back with safeguards. Former Senator Ayodele Arise wants a state police commission to screen nominees for Commissioner before governors can appoint them, saying: “It is our responsibility to ensure that we put a few checks and balances here and there that will curtail the excessiveness of any leader or governor to use the Police against the people.”
On the other side, Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu called the bill “epochal,” and Labour Party’s Ken Asogwa argued safeguards can ease the fear: “We believe that with the right institutional guardrails, the possibility of executive excesses at the state level will be diminished.”
Still, the common thread across critics is unmistakable — fear that governors, not criminals, may end up the biggest beneficiaries of Nigeria’s new policing architecture, according to Vanguard.
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