By George Mgbeleke<\/p>\n
The National Assembly has received approvals from 30 State Houses of Assembly for the proposed constitutional amendment seeking the establishment of State Police Services, with the remaining six states expected to communicate their positions before Monday, the deadline given for the exercise.<\/p>\n
The development means that the proposed amendment has already exceeded the constitutionally required two-thirds majority of the 36 State Houses of Assembly, representing 24 states, although the National Assembly is still awaiting the outstanding approvals before proceeding with the final stage of the constitutional amendment process.<\/p>\n
The Senate Leader, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, disclosed this on Wednesday during plenary, where he read out the names of the 30 states that had so far approved the bill, to provide clarity on the progress of the exercise.<\/p>\n
Bamidele explained that the remaining six states had until next Monday to complete the process and communicate their resolutions to the National Assembly before the bill could proceed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for assent.<\/p>\n
He said the National Assembly had fulfilled its constitutional responsibility by passing the bill and transmitting it to the 36 State Houses of Assembly for consideration and approval.<\/p>\n
The 30 states that have approved the proposed amendment are Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Borno, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara.<\/p>\n
Explaining the constitutional procedure for amending the 1999 Constitution, Bamidele identified three critical stages: passage by the National Assembly, approval by at least two-thirds of the State Houses of Assembly and presidential assent.<\/p>\n
“Let me explain again, for the avoidance of doubt, three keywords are used in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, as amended. The first word is passage, the second word is approval and the third word is assent,” he said.<\/p>\n
According to him, while passage of the bill is the responsibility of the National Assembly, approval must be secured from at least 24 of the 36 State Houses of Assembly, after which the President is required to give assent to complete the constitutional amendment process.<\/p>\n
He noted that the constitutional requirements were deliberately designed to ensure that amendments to the nation’s supreme law enjoyed broad support across the different levels of government.<\/p>\n
“The reason the writers of our Constitution, our forefathers, put all these specific words is to ensure that no part of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria can be easily amended without the buying in of all the critical stakeholders at all levels of governance,” Bamidele stated.<\/p>\n
The Senate Leader expressed satisfaction that 30 states had already approved the proposed amendment, describing the development as an indication of the level of support the initiative had received from elected representatives across the country.<\/p>\n
“Two things that need to be emphasised here is that we needed two-thirds of the states at the very least for this to pass, and already two-thirds will be 24. So, as of yet, we already got 30 states, showing the popularity of this bill among Nigerians through the elected representatives in the State Houses of Assembly,” he said.<\/p>\n
He, however, stressed that the National Assembly was still expecting the remaining six states to communicate their approvals before the Monday deadline.<\/p>\n
“We believe that the remaining six states will still get back to the National Assembly before next week Monday, which is the deadline,” he added.<\/p>\n
Bamidele described the development as an important moment for Nigeria’s constitutional and democratic process, expressing optimism that the outstanding states would complete the exercise within the stipulated period.<\/p>\n
“But so far, I want to say that this is a very happy development for our democracy and for the government and people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he said.<\/p>\n
Earlier, a notice from the Clerk to the National Assembly, Kamoru Ogunlana, had been read on the floor of the Senate by the Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Jibrin Barau, indicating that the National Assembly had received approvals from 29 State Houses of Assembly as of the close of business on Tuesday, November 3, 2026.<\/p>\n
The notice stated that the leadership of the National Assembly was monitoring the submissions from the state legislatures as part of the constitutional amendment process.<\/p>\n
The subsequent announcement by Bamidele brought the number of approving states to 30.<\/p>\n
The proposed State Police amendment is aimed at decentralising Nigeria’s policing architecture by creating room for the establishment of police services at the state level, complementing the existing federal policing structure.<\/p>\n
The proposed reform is expected to provide a constitutional framework for state governments to establish and manage their respective police services, subject to the safeguards and regulatory provisions to be contained in the amended Constitution.<\/p>\n
The initiative has remained a major subject of national debate, particularly against the backdrop of persistent security challenges, including banditry, kidnapping, terrorism and other forms of criminality across different parts of the country.<\/p>\n
With 30 states having already approved the amendment, the National Assembly is now awaiting the remaining six states to complete the required constitutional process before the bill is formally transmitted to President Tinubu for assent.<\/p>\n
The President’s assent will constitute the final stage of the amendment process, after which the necessary legal and institutional arrangements for the establishment of State Police Services can proceed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By George Mgbeleke The National Assembly has received approvals from 30 State Houses of Assembly for the proposed constitutional amendment seeking the establishment of State Police Services, with the remaining six states expected to communicate their positions before Monday, the deadline given for the exercise. The development means that the proposed amendment has already exceeded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19395"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19397,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19395\/revisions\/19397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}