By AfrikTimes | Abuja
The House of Representatives has voted to approve a constitutional amendment that would pave the way for state police services across Nigeria, but the milestone was overshadowed by a walkout from opposition lawmakers who say the process used to pass it broke with standard legislative procedure.
What was passed
Thursday’s vote concerned a bill to amend the 1999 Constitution to provide the legal basis for states to establish their own police services. This was an executive bill transmitted to the National Assembly by President Bola Tinubu as part of a broader push to decentralize policing amid Nigeria’s ongoing security challenges. The bill cleared the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments.
Presenting the Constitution Review Committee’s report, Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu described the reform as one of the most consequential shake-ups of Nigeria’s security architecture in years, framing it as a step toward bringing policing closer to communities and improving how security agencies coordinate and gather intelligence. He acknowledged the bill wouldn’t satisfy every stakeholder but argued that reform of this scale has to happen in stages, with details like recruitment, funding and accountability structures to be worked out through follow-up legislation.
Where things turned chaotic
The trouble began during the Committee of the Whole, when Speaker Tajudeen Abbas moved to pass the bill via voice vote rather than the clause-by-clause consideration typically expected for constitutional amendments. Before the vote, Abbas cited a headcount of 311 lawmakers in support, which was a mix of APC members present in the chamber, other party members physically present, and members participating virtually.
Minority Leader Frederick Agbedi tried repeatedly to raise a point of order but wasn’t recognized by the Chair. When Abbas called for the voice vote and declared the “ayes” victorious, minority lawmakers walked out of the chamber in protest, and the session grew disorderly enough that the Speaker resorted to repeated gavel strikes to restore order.
The minority’s objection
Briefing reporters afterwards, minority caucus spokesman Afam Ogene disputed how the Speaker had determined how many lawmakers were actually present, arguing that only the signed attendance register, not a verbal headcount; hence, can legitimately establish a quorum. He also argued that bypassing clause-by-clause consideration violated constitutional requirements for how amendments are meant to be handled.
Agbedi was emphatic that the caucus isn’t opposed to state police as a concept, only to what he characterized as a shortcut around due process. He questioned how votes could be counted from lawmakers who had already left the chamber and insisted that Nigeria’s constitutional framework requires each clause of an amendment bill to independently clear a two-thirds threshold.
A formal letter, and a call for more work
Beyond the floor protest, the minority caucus had already put its concerns in writing, which was a letter dated July 22 and signed by Ogene, urging House leadership to send the bill back for further technical work before final passage. The letter didn’t oppose the principle of state policing but flagged what it called unresolved gaps: ambiguities in the constitutional language, drafting inconsistencies, and unclear lines of jurisdiction and governance between state and federal policing structures.
The most substantial of these concerns centred on money. The caucus warned that shifting a significant share of policing responsibility to state governments, without a matching shift in resources, risks creating what it called an unfunded mandate. Its proposed fix: redirecting 15% of the Federation Account allocation currently going to the federal government toward states, specifically to help fund their new policing responsibilities.
The caucus asked that the bill be paused and referred for a focused technical review involving constitutional lawyers, security experts, state governments, and fiscal authorities, framing the request as an effort to strengthen the legislation rather than block it.
The bigger picture
State policing has been one of Nigeria’s most persistent constitutional debates for over two decades, with governors and security analysts long arguing that a single centralised police force can’t adequately respond to region-specific threats like banditry, kidnapping, and communal violence. Critics, meanwhile, have warned that state-controlled police forces could be misused by governors, particularly around election periods, and have questioned whether many states can realistically afford to fund and sustain their own forces.
Thursday’s House vote is a significant step, but not the final one: the amendment still needs to pass the Senate in harmonized form and be ratified by at least 24 of Nigeria’s 36 state Houses of Assembly before it can take effect.
