Reported by: Oahimire Omone Precious | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, has delivered a forceful verdict on Nigeria's security architecture, declaring that the country's centralised policing system, anchored on obsolete laws that concentrate police authorisation in Abuja, has fundamentally failed to protect the lives and property of Nigerians and must give way to a decentralised state police model. Kalu made the declaration on Wednesday, July 9, 2026, during an ARISE NEWS Town Hall on State Police, where he argued that the current framework has crippled timely responses to crime and insecurity, particularly in communities far removed from the Federal Capital Territory.
Kalu, who is also the Chairman of the House Committee on Constitution Review, argued that for any government, the protection of lives and property must remain the foremost priority, and that the administration of President Bola Tinubu has rightly placed security at the top of its agenda. However, he lamented that despite this commitment, the existing policing structure has not delivered the expected level of security, largely due to an outdated centralised system. "The obsolete laws that centralise authorisation points for policing have failed us over the years," Kalu declared, according to the ARISE TV report. "It is the responsibility of government to constantly assess how well our laws have served us and whether our security structure has delivered on the expectations of Nigerians."
The Deputy Speaker explained that the National Assembly undertook extensive consultations across the country through public hearings and found a general consensus that the current structure must be retooled. Lawmakers examined several options, including restructuring the existing system, increasing funding, and decentralising police operations. "One of the things we noticed was that proximity is key in policing. If the authorisation point is in Abuja and incidents are happening far from Abuja, by the time authorisation comes, the crime may already have been committed," Kalu stated. He further stressed that delayed response times undermine the effectiveness of law enforcement. "If you don't respond within the expected time, the police will not achieve the purpose for which it was established," he said.
Kalu also emphasised that policing is more effective when officers are familiar with the communities they serve. He argued that those who live in the forest understand the forest better and are better positioned to protect it, just as someone who understands the waterways in the creeks can secure that environment more effectively than someone brought in from a distant part of the country who may not understand the language, culture or local realities. "I often put it simply: the officer who comes from a community knows its roads, its markets, its people, its tensions. The officer who knows the forest will police the forest," he said.
Kalu addressed longstanding concerns that governors could weaponise state-controlled police formations against political opponents, insisting that the proposed constitutional amendment contains sufficient safeguards to prevent political abuse and ensure accountability. "And to legitimate concerns about abuse, the bill responds not with assurances but with architecture. Our objective is not simply to decentralise policing; it is to constitutionalise accountability," Kalu told European Union envoys earlier in the week. "We have put guardrails in the way the state police are going to be operated. The guardrails will not allow any abuse," he added.
Making the case for decentralised policing, Kalu argued that Nigeria's vast size and population make the current arrangement increasingly unsustainable. Nigeria is a federation of 923,768 square kilometres, home to more than 230 million people by United Nations estimates, yet it remains policed by a single, centrally commanded force, stretched far below the United Nations' recommended ratio of one police officer to every 450 citizens. "No other federation of our size operates this way; from Germany to India, from Canada to Australia, the world's great federations police locally and coordinate nationally," he said.
Kalu's remarks come amid ongoing efforts by the Federal Government and the National Assembly to establish the legal framework for the creation of state police as part of broader reforms aimed at tackling insecurity nationwide. The House of Representatives has already passed the State Police Bill, and the constitutional amendment bills have now moved to the crucial stage of securing approval from at least 24 state Houses of Assembly before they can be transmitted for presidential assent. Kalu noted that the legislative action on state police has reached 98 per cent completion and will soon be concluded.
As the debate over state police continues, Kalu has made it clear that the centralised model has outlived its usefulness. The question, as he sees it, is no longer whether Nigeria should decentralise its policing but how quickly it can be done to save lives and restore public confidence in the nation's security architecture.
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