Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde on Thursday criticised the Federal Government’s approach to establishing state police, insisting that the responsibility belongs to state assemblies and not the Inspector General of Police.
Makinde made the remarks during the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) governorship primary held at the Watershed Event Centre on Old Ife Road, Ibadan, where his preferred successor, Bimbo Adekanmbi, was affirmed as the party’s governorship candidate ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Speaking on security, Makinde said Amotekun was established in Oyo State when the nation delayed the creation of state police, noting that the security outfit had been doing its best to secure lives and property in the state. He stressed that the establishment of state police should be the duty of state assemblies, and not the Inspector General of Police, as recently directed by the Federal Government.
“Amotekun was our stop-gap for state police. The FG should stop wasting our time and stop asking the IG of Police to establish state police,” Makinde said.
The governor’s comments come against the backdrop of recent federal efforts to advance a state police framework through the Nigeria Police Force. In March 2026, Inspector General of Police Olatunji Rilwan Disu submitted a 75-page framework for the establishment of state police to the Deputy President of the Senate, Barau Jibrin, who chairs the Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution. The framework was developed by a Steering Committee on the State Police Establishment Framework constituted under the leadership of the Inspector General of Police.
Makinde and several other governors, particularly from the South have long argued that state-controlled security outfits like Amotekun are necessary given what they describe as inadequate federal policing in their regions. However, critics of the IGP led approach argue, as Makinde did on Thursday, that routing the process through the police hierarchy rather than through legislative channels undermines the constitutional intent behind state police devolution.
The APM primary was witnessed by two officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, and the APM State Chairman, Fagbemi Adegbenro, announced that all party members across the state’s 351 wards unanimously supported Adekanmbi’s candidacy. Adegbenro thereafter presented a Certificate of Return to the APM governorship candidate.
Most of the candidates adopting the APM platform are members of the faction of the Peoples Democratic Party loyal to Governor Makinde, following a Memorandum of Understanding between the Makinde-led PDP faction and the national leadership of the APM, which allows the governor’s supporters to contest elections on the APM ticket.
Makinde, who formally declared his intention to contest the 2027 presidential election on the APM platform at a joint PDP-APM mega rally at Mapo Hall in Ibadan earlier this month, used Thursday’s primary to reinforce his security policy record as a key plank of his national political ambitions
