The Senate has passed for second reading a bill proposing to allocate one per cent of total revenue accruals in the Federation Account to fund the operations of the Nigeria Police Force.
The bill, an executive proposal, also lists four other funding sources for the police as part of measures to address the funding challenges in order to shore up equipment procurement, training, welfare, and other operational demands.
The title reads, “A Bill for an Act to Repeal the Nigeria Police Trust Fund (Establishment) Act, 2019 as amended and Enact the Nigeria Police Trust Fund, 2026, to provide for the Equipment, Training and Welfare of the Nigeria Police Force and for Other Related Matters, 2026 (SB. 1030).”
In the extant legislation, 0.5% is recommended for withdrawal from the Federation Account to augment the trust fund, an amount said to have now proven to be inadequate in view of the expanding nature of policing and insecurity in the country.
In the past, state governors had opposed the 0.5%. Some states said they were already funding the police through various interventions like procurement of vehicles and security gadgets.
Senate Leader, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, while opening the debate on the bill on Tuesday, listed four other sources of funding for the police in the proposed law.
They are: allocated development levies under relevant tax laws; grants and interventions from federal, state, and local governments; donations and international support from bilateral and multilateral partners; and private sector contributions and endowments.
According to Bamidele, the diversified funding mechanism will not only reduce the overreliance on the annual budget by the police but also go a long way in addressing equipment, training, welfare, accommodation, technology-deployment, and intelligence-gathering drawbacks faced by the Force.
He said, “The proposed bill ensures operational independence within a clearly-defined legal framework as well as sustainable and diversified funding sources, which are the backbone of the contemplated intervention…”
Several senators, including the Deputy Senate President, Barau Jibrin, Adamu Aliero, Abdul Ningi and Mohammed Monguno, supported the bill, arguing that the police were overwhelmed in the light of increasing internal security challenges and could do better with improved funding.
Calling for more equipment and personnel, Aliero noted that Nigeria needed up to 2 million police officers but only had about 371,800 for now.
Out of the figure, he said over half were deployed to guard political office holders and heads of agencies, which meant that only about 185,000 were available to service over 200 million other Nigerians.
Nonetheless, he advised that care must be taken to avoid any conflict with the Constitution by passing the bill.
The President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, expressed reservations over the bill, asking that there should be a thorough understanding of how the police utilised the 0.5% currently provided.
He also observed that there could be abuses and leakages if agency after agency was being allocated 1% from the Federation Account.
Akpabio also suggested a further examination of the bill at a public hearing to ensure there would be no conflicts with the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
A former governor of Gombe State, Senator Ibrahim Dankwambo, on his part, queried the relevance of continuing to legalise funding of the central police at a time when the government had already given its nod to state police.
“Now that Mr President is thinking of state police too, I don’t know how these two will be put together.
“Let’s wait till we see the bill on state police and see how we can harmonise them,” he recommended.
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