The National Economic Council (NEC) has received reports from 36 state governments endorsing the creation of state police at its 147th meeting chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima.
Stanley Nkwocha, the senior special assistant to the president on media and communications in the vice president’s office, revealed this on Friday in Abuja.
NEC, according to Nkwocha, stood down the matter until its next meeting in January 2025 when it would receive a final report.
The council resolved that there was need for stakeholder engagement to further finetune the submissions so as to make informed judgement towards establishment of state police.
Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State confirmed that 36 states of the federation had endorsed the creation of state police.
Sani stated that many states were in agreement with plans to establish state police in view of the fact that virtually every state had security challenges.
According to him, there are a lot of ungoverned territories in Nigeria, and a deficit in terms of number of security officials.
He added the police, the army and other relevant security agencies had no personnel to cover all the states and the country as a whole.
“That is the reason why most of us agreed that establishment of state police in Nigeria is the way forward to address the problem of insecurity in the country.
“So, today one of the topics of discussion at the NEC meeting is the update on the creation of the State Police.
“And I can say here that from what is available, virtually most of the states are in agreement with the establishment of state police in Nigeria,” said the governor.
He, however, said the council decided to step down the discussion on the state police until the next NEC meeting in January 2025.
“The council decided to step down the discussion until the next council meeting, because we need to come up with a report from the secretariat.
“There will be further stakeholder engagement after the panel and deliberation by the members of the NEC,” Uba said.
NEC had during its 146 meeting held on November 21 mandated Kwara, Adamawa, Kebbi and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to submit their positions on state police within one week.
Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa had explained that 33 states had submitted their positions, except Adamawa, Kebbi and Kwara.
The council had mandated the remaining states and FCT to make their submissions within one week in order to present a consolidated state position on the state police at today’s NEC meeting.
