The African Democratic Congress has faulted the President Bola Tinubu-led government’s push for state police, describing the proposed legislation as a hurried response to Nigeria’s worsening insecurity rather than a carefully planned constitutional reform.
In a statement issued on Friday by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the party said although it has consistently supported the creation of state police, the reform cannot succeed without the institutional safeguards needed to ensure professionalism, accountability, and effective oversight.
The opposition party argued that state police should not be presented as an immediate solution to the country’s growing challenges of terrorism, banditry and kidnapping.
“The African Democratic Congress supports state police. We have always believed that Nigeria’s policing architecture must evolve to reflect the realities of our federal system. But support for state police cannot be confused with support for the Tinubu administration’s handling of this important national reform,” the statement said.
According to the party, the current effort by the Federal Government amounts to “a hurried response to a worsening security crisis, not the careful institutional planning required to build a functional, accountable, and effective policing system.”
The ADC also rejected what it described as attempts to portray state police as a new initiative, noting that decentralised policing has featured prominently in Nigeria’s constitutional debate for decades.
“It is equally important to state that there is nothing novel about the idea of state police.
“What is new is the attempt by the Tinubu administration to package this long-standing national consensus as a bold new initiative and, worse, to present it as a silver bullet for the country’s current security crisis. It is neither. State police is a structural reform whose benefits will only be realised over time. It cannot, by itself, solve today’s emergency,” the statement read in part.
The party criticised the speed with which the proposed legislation is being processed by the National Assembly, insisting that constitutional amendments of such magnitude require extensive public consultation and stakeholder engagement.
“Legislation with such far-reaching implications for every Nigerian, and one that could fundamentally alter the country’s constitutional architecture, requires broad consultation and careful reflection,” it stated.
“Instead, what we are seeing is a government in desperate haste to amend the Constitution in order to create the impression that it is doing something about the country’s worsening insecurity.”
