Tinubu Gives Appointment to Popular Scholar, Details Emerge
- Professor Emmanuel Rotimi of Obafemi Awolowo University was appointed to the Policy Advisory Committee of the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill
- The Working Group, chaired by Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila, has seven weeks to deliver a draft Bill to the Federal Ministry of Justice
- Rotimi has spent decades studying Nigeria's history of decentralised policing, including the local police forces abolished under military rule
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Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) historian Professor Emmanuel Olukemi Rotimi has been appointed to the Policy Advisory Committee of the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill, bringing one of Nigeria's leading scholars of police history directly into the country's ongoing security reform process.
Rotimi, who teaches in OAU's Department of History in Ile-Ife, specialises in Nigeria's colonial and postcolonial history, with a particular focus on the origins and development of policing in the country. His research into the subject stretches back to his postgraduate years, when his master's thesis examined the Native Administration Police Forces of Western Nigeria between 1905 and 1951, followed by doctoral research that traced those forces across the country from 1900 to 1970.
Source: Twitter
Rotimi's role in the working group
The Policy Advisory Committee, chaired by retired Justice Mohammed Abdullahi Liman, is responsible for setting policy direction, issuing drafting instructions, and reviewing the content of the proposed legislation. The Bill is expected to lay the legal groundwork for a dual policing structure comprising a Federal Police Service and State Police Services across Nigeria.
The Presidential Working Group itself is led by the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, and is operating under a seven-week timetable to deliver an implementation-ready draft to the Federal Ministry of Justice.
What Rotimi brings to the table
Rotimi's 2001 book, "The Police in a Federal State: The Nigerian Experience," remains a key reference on the rise and eventual abolition of Native Authority and Local Government police forces, making it directly relevant to the current debate over ownership and accountability in a federal policing structure.
In a 2025 media interview, he described the proposed reform as a return to federalist principles that predated military rule, when local police institutions existed alongside the centralised Nigeria Police Force. He has consistently argued that for decentralised policing to succeed, transparent funding, quality training, public accountability and protection against political interference must all be in place.
These concerns sit at the heart of the Working Group's mandate, which covers national standards, state readiness, complaints procedures, firearms regulation, data sharing and institutional oversight, among other issues.
Rotimi is also working on a three-volume history of policing in Nigeria covering 1900 to 1983, a project that places him at the centre of scholarship on the very questions the Working Group must now resolve through legislation.
OAU congratulated Rotimi on the appointment, calling it well-deserved recognition of his long-standing contribution to scholarship and security reform discussions in Nigeria.
APC gives appointment politicians under EFCC probe
Legit.ng earlier reported that the APC named Betta Edu and Ngozi Olejeme to its 2027 presidential campaign council on August 22, 2026.
Edu was suspended by President Tinubu in January 2024 over a N585 million transfer memo, and the EFCC probe report had not been released.
Olejeme faced an active money laundering trial before a federal high court over alleged diversion of NSITF funds.
Source: Legit.ng
