The Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), has said the Federal Government requires a minimum national policing standard to guarantee equal protection for Nigerians irrespective of where they reside.

The AGF made the clarification on Monday at the State House during a media briefing by the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill, chaired by the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila.

He maintained that the irreducible minimum standard is to guarantee the continued existence and operation of the proposed state police commissions once established.

He said, “The main thrust of this bill is to ensure security of lives and property, and it is also important that we do not make state policing a weapon of political persecution or oppression.

“There must be standards. There must be the minimum threshold to guarantee the continued existence and operation of society.”

The Minister of Justice maintained that once it becomes operational, the standards would conform with globally recognised policing practices.

 “If you are onboarding from the federal to the state police, it is important that the same benefit you derive must not be any less. The only difference will be that one is by the federal and the other by the state. If you leave the door open, then all sorts of situations will come in, and this will not be good enough for society.”

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He further revealed that in a situation where a state was not prepared to establish its own Police Service Commission, the Nigeria Police Force would continue to provide policing.

“Law abhors a vacuum, so the federal presence will continue to dominate in that area,” Fagbemi emphasised.

Ogun State governor and representative of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum on the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill, Dapo Abiodun, said the assignment of the PWG was to produce the detailed implementation framework that would guide the operation of State Policing.

He said, “What we’ve seen and witnessed is the amendment of the Constitution, and we’ve seen a groundswell of support by the entirety of Nigerians with a very high level of expectation that once the amendment was completed by the National Assembly, the next thing is for states to begin to implement their various state policing systems.

“The truth is that what this working group is working on is what would allow for the details of that implementation, which will be reflected in the bill.”