Nigeria’s House of Representatives has passed the State Police Bill after a manual vote during Thursday’s plenary session, with 289 of the 290 lawmakers present voting in favour of the landmark security reform legislation.
Only four members opposed the bill, which seeks to establish a state-level policing structure and has been among the most closely watched proposals before the National Assembly.
The passage came despite an early procedural objection from Kaduna lawmaker Bashir Zubairu of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), who raised a point of order arguing that the document prepared by the House Committee on Constitution Review had only been made available to members that afternoon.
“Mr Speaker, this document was only made available to lawmakers in the chambers, and we are yet to go through it. We cannot do justice to it because we have not gone through it,” Zubairu told the chamber.
The Speaker, however, ruled him out of order and continued with proceedings. As clauses were being taken, further cries of “Point of Order” rang out from the floor but were similarly ignored by the presiding officer.
Voting was conducted manually after Speaker Abbas announced that the electronic voting system had developed a fault, with the exercise instead based on attendance.
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