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Nigeria’s newly confirmed Inspector-General of Police Tunji Disu moved within hours of taking formal office on Wednesday to establish the institutional machinery for state policing, inaugurating an eight-member implementation committee and outlining a policing philosophy built on accountability, human rights, and decentralisation, signals that the administration regards the new police chief’s appointment as an opportunity to advance one of its most contested security reform commitments.
Professor Olu Ogunsakin, the pioneer Director-General of the National Institute of Police Studies in Kano, was named to chair the committee. Its terms of reference include proposing an operational framework for the establishment and coordination of state police structures, reviewing issues relating to training, recruitment, resource allocation, and oversight mechanisms, and drafting guidelines for how state-level forces would interact with the federal command. Disu described the committee’s task as responding directly to a demand that had grown more urgent across successive administrations.
“It is my greatest privilege to formally inaugurate this committee on state policing. The task before this committee is both significant and timely, as it speaks directly to the demand to strengthen Nigeria’s internal security and ensure that policing remains responsive to the realities of our communities,” he said.
The inauguration was Disu’s first formal engagement with the senior hierarchy of the Nigeria Police Force since the Nigeria Police Council unanimously ratified his appointment on Tuesday. The council meeting, attended by governors from Kwara, Ogun, Lagos, Ondo, Enugu, and Plateau states alongside the ministers of police affairs, the FCT, and the interior, cleared the constitutional path to his swearing-in by President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, a ceremony expected to take place during the Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday.
The committee’s work will unfold against a legal and political landscape that has been shifting since the Nigerian constitution was amended in 2024 to permit the establishment of state-level police forces. Calls for state police had intensified across at least a decade of worsening security conditions in which a centralised federal police model was seen by many governors as structurally incapable of responding with sufficient speed, local knowledge, or manpower to threats that were geographically diverse and operationally distinct, from kidnapping networks active in the North-West to herders-farmers violence in the North-Central, Boko Haram and ISWAP operations in the North-East, and communal and cultism-related violence in the South. President Tinubu had on multiple occasions told European Union and US representatives that his administration would implement state police as a cornerstone of its security sector reform. Thirty-six states and the FCT have already submitted compliance reports on the establishment of their state police structures to the federal government.
Read Also: Nigeria’s Police Council Endorses Disu As New Chief
Disu addressed the top hierarchy on the principles that would define his tenure before turning to the structural announcements. Leadership, he said, was “not about position but responsibility.” Professionalism and accountability were not slogans, he said, but standards that would shape conduct and operations in every command. He emphasised human rights as a foundational rather than peripheral concern: every Nigerian, regardless of status, background, or the nature of the offence for which they were stopped, detained, or arrested, was entitled to dignity, fairness, and justice. Authority, he added, was strongest when exercised with restraint, a formulation whose implicit critique of policing practice in Nigeria was not difficult to read.
On internal oversight, Disu announced that the Public Complaint Unit and the X-Squad, the two principal mechanisms through which members of the public and the force itself are supposed to hold police officers to account, would be empowered to operate with genuine independence. Both units have historically struggled to function as effective accountability instruments, with the X-Squad in particular carrying a legacy of being used selectively against officers who fell out of favour with senior leadership rather than as a systematic disciplinary mechanism. Directing them to operate independently signals an intent to convert them into functional tools, though the institutional dynamics that have historically limited their effectiveness have not changed overnight.
On decentralisation, Disu said the state police model would allow state governments and local authorities to respond directly to security challenges specific to their jurisdictions, improving intelligence gathering and response times and building the community relationships that federal policing at scale had struggled to sustain. He was careful to reassure officers that the federal police’s constitutional role as the primary national law enforcement institution remained intact.
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The federal force would concentrate on complex and transnational crimes, terrorism, organised crime, cybercrime, and trafficking networks, that required national coordination and specialised capacity. “The vision we seek is one of synergy, not competition; partnership, not duplication,” he said.
Disu was appointed acting IGP on February 24 following the removal of his predecessor Kayode Egbetokun, whose tenure had been mired in a controversy over an extension beyond the mandatory retirement age of 60, an allegation linking his son’s bank account to a state security vote, and legal proceedings against journalists and activists who reported critically on his tenure. Egbetokun submitted a resignation letter citing family reasons, but multiple presidency sources said he was directed to leave at a meeting with President Tinubu the previous evening. Disu, who joined the force in 1992, was promoted to AIG in March 2025 and had been heading the Force Criminal Investigation Department Annex in Alagbon, Lagos, for only weeks before his elevation. His appointment bypassed all officers holding the rank of Deputy Inspector-General, and between 15 and 20 such officers were expected to submit resignation letters in accordance with established police convention.
Disu’s name will be transmitted to the Senate for confirmation as substantive IGP following the Police Council ratification. No timeline was given for the state police implementation committee’s first report.
