The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, and Speaker, Yakubu Dogara-led National Assembly, has rejected the moved by the State Governors, to establish State Police.
The Governors made the demand on Thursday, at a meeting with the Inspector-General of Police, IGP, Ibrahim Idris, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
They then set up a six-man Committee of Governors, to recommend ways of achieving that objective.
The Committee is made up of Governors from the six geo-political zones, namely: Kwara, Imo, Delta, Ekiti, Bauchi, and Sokoto States.
The two Chambers of the National Assembly, have jettisoned a bill seeking to allow the 36 States of the Federation to have their independent Police.
Recall, that the State Police bill which was passed for second reading at the House of Representatives, on September 27 2016, could not make it to the Joint Committee session.
The bill was thrown out by the Committee, as it was not part of the report of the Panel presented on the floor of the House, on Thursday.
It was gathered that majority of members of the Joint Senate and House Committee on Constitution review, rejected it.
House Spokesman, Abdulrazak Namdas, confirmed that the bill was not part of what was presented on the floor of the House, on Thursday.
Asked why the bill was omitted, Namdas, who is also a member of the Ad-hoc Panel, said it was at the harmonization stage with the Senators that it was rejected.
“It’s not every bill that comes to the floor of the House and passes second reading, that ends up seeing the light of the day.
“We also have other bills that could not make it into the process. For example, there is a bill on the separation of the office of the Attorney General from that of the Minister of Justice, but it didn’t make it into our report,” Namdas said.
Spokesperson of the Senate, Senator Aliyu Abdullahi, also confirmed the creation of State Police was not part of issues to be considered during the amendment of the 1999 Constitution.
In an interview, he said in all the bills that were considered at the just concluded retreat of the Senate/House Joint Committee on Constitutional amendment in Lagos, none was for State Police.
“There is no such bill in the Senate, and as far I know, we were in Lagos for retreat, in all the bills we considered, there was no any for State Police,” he said.
In July 2016, Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, declared total support of the establishment of State Police, saying as the Attorney General of Lagos State, he had approached the Supreme Court on the issue, about 10 times.
