After months of rising insecurity, the House of Reps just shook-up Nigeria’s policing system in one dramatic sitting — and only one lawmaker said no.

Here’s the gist, via cbinews.tv:

Big move out of Abuja today. The House of Representatives has given the green light to the state police bill, opening the door for a proper shake-up of how Nigeria is policed.

It all went down during Thursday’s plenary, with Speaker Tajudeen Abbas at the helm. When the votes were counted, 289 lawmakers backed state police. Just one voted against. The Speaker didn’t vote.

This vote didn’t come out of nowhere. The House had set aside Thursday specifically to decide on the bill, following a grim few months of killings, kidnappings and banditry across the country.

Not that it was all smooth sailing. Things got a bit spicy early on. Kaduna lawmaker Bashir Zubairu of the African Democratic Congress raised a point of order, saying lawmakers only got the Constitution Review Committee’s document on the proposed state police that same 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 House.

He was ruled out of order, though, and the process rolled on. As Speaker Abbas went through the clauses, you could hear shouts of “Point of Order” in the chamber — but they were ignored.

There was another hiccup before voting started. Abbas announced the electronic voting system had packed up, so they’d do it the old-school way — based on attendance.

Final tally: 290 members present, 289 in favour, 1 against.

Details to follow…

Source: cbinews.tv

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