<\/p>\n
By Emmanuel Oloniruha<\/p>\n
Director-General, National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), Prof. Abubakar Sulaiman, has warned that the political culture and temperament of some state governors may pose a major threat to the successful implementation of state police.<\/p>\n
Sulaiman bared his mind while featuring on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Personality Interview Series on Sunday in Abuja.<\/p>\n
He said \u200c\u200c\u200d\u2060\u2060\u200d\u2060\u2060\u200c\u200d\u200d\u2060\u200c\u200d\u200c\u200cthat in spite of the laudable intentions behind the country\u2019s policing reform, some state governors have the potential to abuse the state police.<\/p>\n
The director-general particularly cited what he called total disregard by state governors to the Supreme Court judgment granting financial autonomy to local governments as a disturbing pattern of how the sub-national police forces might be handled by them with impunity.<\/p>\n
He said that while the institute believed that state police was in order and remained a way of addressing insecurity facing Nigeria, the issues of timing and potential abuse by governors remained major worries to stakeholders.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the control of state police will be under the governors at the state level, with due respect, how mature and politically cultured are our governors? How enabled are they in terms of their psyche, their temperament? These are worries.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the governors have not really convinced Nigerians on the issue of Supreme Court ruling regarding local government financial autonomy which they have refused up till today and nobody is talking. If they could violate a pronouncement, or ruling of the Supreme Court, maybe the only person they cannot violate His directive is God,\u2019\u2019 he stated.<\/p>\n
The NILDS boss also referenced instances where incumbent governors consistently denied opposition parties a level-playing field during the conduct of local government elections across states.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me one state where state governors have allowed opposition to have their way when it comes to local government election, up till today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a state in this country where a sitting governor then denied opposition campaigning and nothing happened! So, should such a state governor now be given control of the police?\u201d he queried.<\/p>\n
Sulaiman noted that while President Bola Tinubu\u2019s commitment to restructuring Nigeria\u2019s security architecture was commendable, the legislation must be crafted with the future in mind rather than short-term political expediency.<\/p>\n
He also observed that while advanced countries were centralising policing system, Nigeria was moving toward devolving policing the institution to sub-nationals without adequate institutional safeguards against possible overreach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should not make law for today; we should make law for tomorrow. We tend to be worried and we don\u2019t want to get carried away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can achieve security; we can protect lives and property, not only through the instrumentality of policing. There are so many ways we can address it.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom our own research outputs, we are worried that as laudable, as plausible as state police is, we are worried about the character at the state level that they might abuse the privilege,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Sulaiman maintained that as the primary research arm of the National Assembly, NILDS would continue to supply raw data, policy briefs and legislative frameworks to ensure that constitutional amendments prioritised long-term national stability over regional political control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Director-General, National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), Prof. Abubakar Sulaiman, has warned that the political culture and temperament of some state governors may pose a major threat to the successful implementation of state police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[509,502,508,507,19],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-dg","tag-governors","tag-nilds","tag-political-culture","tag-statepolice"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG-20260828-WA0054.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":814,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions\/814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}