Senate President Senator Godswill Akpabio has disclosed that the presidency and the National Assembly were working together on a constitutional template to establish state police in Nigeria, saying the framework would include a national state police commission to regulate recruitment, promotion, training, and the operational conduct of state police formations across the country.

Akpabio made the disclosure while speaking to journalists after leading principal officers of the Senate on a Sallah homage to President Bola Tinubu at his Ikoyi, Lagos residence. He said the proposed framework would enable states to participate in securing the lives and property of citizens while maintaining national standards through a central regulatory mechanism.

He said the country’s security situation had improved significantly under the current administration, noting that no part of Nigeria was currently under the control of any insurgent or terrorist group and that the organized bomb blasts that once plagued the country had been brought to an end. However, he acknowledged that attacks on soft targets such as schools, churches, and mosques represented an evolving challenge that required additional collaborative effort between the federal government, states, and local communities.

On police funding, Akpabio said the legislature was considering increasing the allocation to the Police Trust Fund from 0.5 percent to one percent of revenue from the federation’s production account, with additional contributions expected from state governments.

He praised the president’s economic reforms including the removal of fuel subsidies, harmonization of exchange rates, elimination of future crude oil sales arrangements, and the reform of the Ways and Means financing mechanism. He cited the Lagos-Badagry-Sokoto coastal highway and its 74 dams as transformative infrastructure capable of stimulating economic growth and agricultural productivity, and called for increased crude oil production to strengthen foreign exchange earnings.