President Bola Tinubu will receive the Executive National Policing Bill on for review on September 3, 2026, the Presidency revealed yesterday.
This was as it unveiled a public information portal, nationalpolicingbill.com, through which Nigerians can submit memoranda and position papers to shape the legislation before it is reviewed by the President and transmitted to the 10th National Assembly.
Chief of Staff to the President and Chairman of the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill, Femi Gbajabiamila, made the disclosures while briefing State House correspondents after convening a meeting of the Working Group at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja.
During the briefing, Gbajabiamila disclosed that the approved work programme was a 7-week, milestone-driven exercise running from July 27 to September 14, 2026. “The resulting Executive Bill package is scheduled for presentation to the President on the 3rd of September. Subject to his approval, and I think we have tweaked that so the national consultation will come before the President’s final approval, after which the text and supporting materials will be revised and prepared for formal transmission to the National Assembly”, he said.
He explained that the final package would comprise schedules, an explanatory memorandum, a legal audit and consequential-amendments matrix, a clause-by-clause analysis, a State readiness framework, a fiscal and implementation note, a validation report, a risk register and a controlled digital archive.
The former Speaker of the House of Representatives further distinguished between the constitutional amendment already passed by both chambers of the National Assembly and the operational legislation his Working Group has been tasked with producing.
He explained that, “The Senate approved the State Police constitutional proposal on June 24, 2026, and the House of Representatives passed the Executive State Police Bill on 23 July 2026.
“The Constitutional amendment is, however, not yet in force. It must obtain the approval required from the State Houses of Assembly as prescribed under the Constitution. Until that process is concluded, there is no operational State Police Service anywhere in Nigeria, and the Nigeria Police Force remains the constitutionally recognised police institution”.
On the guiding philosophy of the reform, Gbajabiamila argued that state policing must not become an instrument of political control. “State Police cannot mean 36 state militias, just as national standards cannot become a disguised method of re-centralising day-to-day State policing.
He revealed that the website: nationalpolicingbill.com went live yesterday, and will give Nigerians a direct channel to submit memoranda for roughly two weeks, with a possible extension.
Responding to a question on the estimated cost of the new policing system, Gbajabiamila declined to offer a figure, saying: “There is no cost that will be too much to secure lives and property”.
On whether national standards undermine the autonomy state police is meant to provide, he said standards exist purely as a safeguard floor, not a ceiling.
