President Bola Tinubu has admitted that the creation of state police is now “unavoidable” if Nigeria is to defeat the escalating wave of insecurity, particularly in the North-West.
Speaking at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, while receiving a delegation of prominent Katsina indigenes led by Governor Dikko Radda, Tinubu admitted that the Nigerian government had inherited “weaknesses” in security architecture but vowed to fix them.
According to him, advanced military hardware, drones, surveillance gadgets, and more forest guards will be deployed to Katsina, a state that has remained a hotbed of banditry and mass killings.
“The security challenges that we are facing are surmountable.
“Yes, we have porous borders. We inherited weaknesses that could have been addressed earlier. It is a challenge that we must fix, and we are facing it,” Tinubu said.
“I have today directed all the security agencies to energise further and look at the strategies.
“We have approved the additional acquisition of drones,” the President added.
Tinubu said daily operational feedback from Katsina must now reach his desk, stressing that the federal government would no longer allow criminals to terrorise communities.
“I am reviewing all the aspects of security; I have to create a state police. We are looking at that holistically. We will defeat insecurity. We must protect our children, people, livelihood, places of worship, and recreational spaces. They can’t intimidate us,” he said.
The President, however, accused politicians of frustrating the state police proposal, insisting that peculiar local conditions demand security outfits that understand both the terrain and the culture of the people.
Tinubu had in June called for an urgent overhaul of Nigeria’s security framework through constitutional reform, declaring that the establishment of state police is now a necessity given the country’s deepening security challenges.
He spoke in Abuja during a one-day legislative dialogue on constitutional review and national security architecture, organised by the House Committee on Constitution Review in collaboration with the Office of the National Security Adviser.
Tinubu, who was represented by the Minister of Defence, Mohammed Abubakar Badaru, at the high-level Legislative Dialogue on Nigeria’s National Security Architecture, said the current centralised security system need reform to address evolving security challenges.
“The debate over State Police is no longer theoretical. It is grounded in the daily fears and live anxieties of Nigerians: farmers afraid to tend their fields, traders unsure of safe passage, and communities abandoned to self-help,” Tinubu said.
The President described Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution as foundational to its democracy but outdated in dealing with modern security threats. He cited the rising complexity of terrorism, cybercrime, farmer-herder conflicts, piracy, and separatist agitations as clear indicators that the current legal framework is inadequate to secure Nigeria’s vast and diverse territory.
“The pace of change in technology, in the complexity of security threats, and in the dynamics of our federal structure has far outstripped the capacity of some constitutional provisions. Our Constitution must evolve or risk becoming a danger to the very unity it was meant to protect,” he said.
Tinubu called for bold constitutional amendments that would move policing from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent List, enabling states with capacity and political will to establish their own police forces. He said such a move would ensure more accountable, community-based policing while preserving federal coordination and oversight.
“We must learn from global best practices, adapting decentralised policing models that enhance local accountability without sacrificing national oversight,” the President noted.