The constitutional reform has finally reached the states. Osun has endorsed it. But Nigeria’s real security gamble is not creating State Police. It is deciding who gets to control the gun when politics enters the room.
Osun’s lawmakers have backed the proposed State Police Services, but Tuesday’s vote should be read as more than another constitutional amendment story.
It marks the moment Nigeria’s decades-old argument over centralised policing begins moving from theory into the machinery of the states.
That changes everything.
For years, governors have carried the political title of chief security officers without possessing a police institution of their own. The proposed amendment would fundamentally alter that relationship.
The National Assembly has already approved the reform and transmitted the Constitution (Sixth Alteration) Bill, 2026, to the 36 state Houses of Assembly. At least 24 must approve it before the constitutional process can advance.
Osun has now joined that process.
But the most uncomfortable question is staring directly at the lawmakers:
What stops a State Police Service from becoming the strongest political weapon in a governor’s arsenal?
The bill contains safeguards designed to address that fear, including legislative confirmation of police chiefs, independent oversight, rules on unlawful directives, funding protections and limited conditions for federal intervention.
The problem is that constitutional safeguards are only as powerful as the institutions willing and able to enforce them.
That is where Osun’s own recent experience becomes impossible to ignore.
In July, Speaker Adewale Egbedun accused the state Commissioner of Police of plotting to implicate and arrest him after the detention of the Secretary to the State Government. The allegations were made amid a highly charged election environment.
On election day, police said they could not confirm a separate claim that armed men had laid siege to the Speaker’s residence.
Those disputes do not prove political policing.
They do prove something else: the relationship between policing and political authority can become combustible when trust collapses.
Now imagine that relationship after constitutional power has been transferred from Abuja to Osogbo.
That is the question hidden behind Tuesday’s applause.
The proposed system would allow a governor to nominate the state police chief, but the appointment would involve the National Police Council and require confirmation by the State House of Assembly. The framework also includes mechanisms for officers and police chiefs to challenge unlawful political directions.
Gbajabiamila captured the concern bluntly:
“State police cannot mean 36 state militias.”
That sentence may prove more important than the vote itself.
Because Nigeria is not only decentralising policing.
It is decentralising coercive power.
The country therefore has to build something stronger than 36 new uniforms.
It needs institutions capable of saying no.
No to unlawful arrests.
No to partisan policing.
No to intimidation.
No to politically selective enforcement.
No to the use of public force to settle private political scores.
The amended framework reported in July attempts to construct those barriers. It proposes independent oversight institutions, direct funding arrangements, state police service commissions, national minimum standards and tightly defined circumstances for federal intervention.
It also keeps the Federal Police Service in place.
That means the future Nigeria being contemplated is not one police force disappearing and another replacing it.
It is a dual system.
Federal police for national and cross-border threats.
State police for local policing.
That could improve responsiveness.
It could also create new disputes over jurisdiction.
Imagine a kidnapping that begins in Osun, crosses into Oyo and ends in Kwara.
Who leads?
Or a politically explosive case involving a governor’s ally.
Who investigates?
Or a state police commissioner who believes an instruction from the governor is unlawful.
Who protects the commissioner?
The proposed framework has answers to some of those questions.
But Nigeria’s history shows that the space between what a law says and what institutions actually do can be enormous.
And that is why Osun’s vote is significant.
Not because it settles the State Police debate.
Because it starts the harder one.
Who will police the police?
That is the question the next 35 state assemblies will also have to confront.
And it may ultimately matter more than whether they say yes or no.
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