By Nasir Dambatta
One officer for every 600 Nigerians? That’s the number Governor Uba Sani has been talking about for 10 years, and it explains why he wants state police.
Right now Nigeria has between 370,000 and 400,000 police officers for more than 220 million people. That means 1 officer for every 600 people, according to the last Inspector-General of Police. Police chiefs often say the target should be 1 officer for every 450 people. They call it a “UN standard,” but fact-checkers say that’s not true. The 1:450 figure came from a policing rule used in Germany after World War II, not from the United Nations. Still, our security chiefs keep using it. Even if you forget where 1:450 came from, the math is simple. By the IGP’s own 1:600 count, Nigeria is short by about 190,000 officers to even get to the 1:450.
Governor Sani started making this case when he was in the Senate. In the 9th National Assembly he put forward two bills: the Constitution Alteration Bill, SB. 592, and the Police Service Commission Act Bill, SB. 594. Both said the same thing in different words: fewer than 400,000 officers cannot protect 220 million people spread across 36 states. Those bills didn’t pass. But the numbers behind them never changed.
The national average also hides how bad things are in the states. A study found that more than 80% of states fall below the 1:400 mark that police leaders used to quote. Look at the extremes. In Bayelsa it’s roughly 1 officer to over 2,300 people. In Kano it’s about 1 officer to 1,600 people, even though Kano is Nigeria’s most populous state. In the FCT, Abuja, it’s 1 officer to 117 people, which makes it the most heavily policed place in the country. That spread is Sani’s point. One police headquarters in Abuja cannot share people fairly. States like Kaduna in the North-west, where banditry is worst, are competing for the same few officers with a capital city that has a much smaller security load.
The military is stretched too. Nigeria has about 223,000 soldiers. That’s around 1 soldier for every 1,000 citizens. Security officials say that’s thinner than most of our neighbors, except Niger Republic.
Nigeria isn’t the first country to think about this. Out of Africa’s 54 countries, only three are long-standing federations: Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa. Somalia is now joining them as a fourth. Ethiopia’s 1995 constitution lets its regions run their own special police forces alongside the federal police. Somalia’s 2012 constitution goes further and puts policing in the hands of its Federal Member States. Puntland already runs its own regional force. South Africa chose the opposite path. Its 1996 constitution keeps policing national. Provinces can only watch and check on the police, they can’t run their own.
Sani’s idea sits closer to Ethiopia and Somalia, real state policing, but with more checks. Under the bill the Senate passed on June 24, 2026, a governor can appoint a state police commissioner, but he can’t sack one without approval from the Police Service Commission, the Police Council, the National Assembly, and the State House of Assembly.
For Sani, these are not just figures on paper. Nigeria doesn’t only have a quality problem with policing, it has a numbers problem, and a sharing problem that a single command in Abuja was never built to fix. Ethiopia and Somalia show that African federations can hand policing to their states. South Africa shows what happens when they don’t. The Senate has passed its bill. Now it needs two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 State Houses of Assembly to agree. If they do, the numbers Sani has been quoting in quiet Senate rooms for a decade will finally become law.
*Dambatta is Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Print Media
