ADC and Peter Obi Back State Police but Warn Tinubu Against Haste

ABUJA — The African Democratic Congress and former presidential candidate Peter Obi have voiced support for the establishment of state police while cautioning President Bola Tinubu against rushing its implementation ahead of the 2027 general elections. Punch reported the position on Friday, June 26, days after Tinubu formally transmitted the State Police Bill to the Senate.

Obi said decentralising policing is a reform Nigeria genuinely needs given the scale and geographic spread of insecurity. However, he warned that without robust constitutional safeguards, state police forces could be misused by sitting governors to intimidate political opponents, particularly in the run-up to a contested election cycle.

“We support state police in principle. What we cannot support is a hasty rollout without ironclad protections against political abuse. Nigerians have seen how state resources can be weaponised against opposition figures. We cannot risk creating 36 new tools for that,” an ADC spokesperson said.

The Safeguards Debate

Senate President Godswill Akpabio has previously assured Nigerians that adequate safeguards would be built into the State Police Bill to prevent governors from misusing the new forces. However, opposition figures say verbal assurances are insufficient and have called for specific, enforceable constitutional provisions limiting gubernatorial control over recruitment, command, and deployment decisions.

The proposal has support from a wide range of stakeholders, including northern elder statesmen and security experts who argue that decentralised policing would improve local intelligence gathering and response times. House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu noted that security and defence allocations have risen 81 percent in three years, underscoring the scale of investment the country is already making in its security architecture.

Civil society groups have echoed the ADC’s caution. They point to historical precedent in Nigeria where state-controlled institutions, from local government structures to state-owned media, have at times been deployed for partisan rather than public purposes. They argue that state police, without independent oversight bodies, could replicate that pattern at a more dangerous scale.

Timing and Political Calculus

The timing of the bill’s advancement, less than a year before the 2027 election cycle intensifies, has fuelled scepticism among opposition figures about the government’s motives. Some ADC members privately suggested the reform could be designed to benefit incumbent governors loyal to Tinubu’s APC rather than to address insecurity comprehensively.

The Presidency has rejected this characterisation, with officials describing the state police bill as a response to two years of consultation and constitutional review work led by the Senate Committee on Constitution Review. The bill requires support from two-thirds of both legislative chambers and at least 24 of Nigeria’s 36 state assemblies before it can take effect, a threshold that will likely take months to clear regardless of the Senate’s pace.