Osun lawmakers weigh in on constitutional amendment for state police

OSOGBO — Osun State has added its voice to a nationwide legislative movement toward decentralised policing, as the state House of Assembly on Tuesday considered a constitutional amendment bill seeking the establishment of state police services across Nigeria.

ValidViewNetwork reports that the matter was deliberated upon during plenary session at the Assembly complex in Osogbo, placing Osun among the states working through the ratification process required to alter the 1999 Constitution.

A reform years in the making

The push for state police is not new, but it gained fresh momentum in June 2026 when President Bola Tinubu transmitted an executive bill on the subject to the National Assembly, which the Senate took up and passed the same day.

The House of Representatives later withdrew its own competing proposal in favour of the president’s version, streamlining the process before it moved to individual state assemblies for the constitutional ratification that Nigerian law requires.

Why governors are pushing so hard

ValidViewNetwork gathered that governors across party lines, including Ogun State’s Dapo Abiodun, have been vocal advocates, arguing that Nigeria’s police-to-citizen ratio lags far behind global benchmarks and that state-run outfits like Amotekun could be scaled up rapidly if the constitutional bottleneck were removed.

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The proposed amendment would move policing from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent List, allowing states to legally establish and run their own police services alongside the existing federal force.

What Osun’s deliberation means

Constitutional alterations of this kind require ratification by at least 24 of Nigeria’s 36 state Houses of Assembly, which is why simultaneous consideration by individual state legislatures, including Osun’s, matters as much as what happens at the National Assembly.

ValidViewNetwork can confirm that lawmakers in Osogbo are expected to continue deliberations in subsequent sittings before a vote is taken on the bill.

What comes after passage

Even if Osun and enough other states ratify the amendment, stakeholders agree that the harder work lies ahead: drafting the enabling legislation that would govern how state police forces are funded, commanded and held accountable, to avoid the reform becoming a tool for gubernatorial overreach rather than genuine security decentralisation. ValidViewNetwork reports.