Thursday, August 20, 2015 10:02 pm
Members of the Police Affairs Commission after meeting President Buhari
There are only 305,579 policemen for the entire 170 million Nigerians, a ratio of one policeman to 560 Nigerians.
The United Nations recommends 222 policemen for 100,000 people, which means that Nigeria will need about 770,000 policemen on its payroll to be able to meet this minimum standard.
The big guns in the Police Affairs Ministry and the Police Service Commission drew President Muhammadu Buhari’s attention to the gross manpower shortage at a meeting on Thursday, making the president order a reduction of policemen attached to VIPsand the redeployment of such officers to regular police duty.
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Police Affairs, Dr James Obiegbu, had listed its problems to include inadequate police personnel, dwindling finances and non-rehabilitation of police training schools.
The Chairman of the Police Service Commission, Sir Mike Okiro, stressed the need for additional police personnel to meet the security challenges in the country.
According to him, the current number of policemen and women is inadequate for effective policing.
Although he thanked President Buhari for approving the recruitment of 10,000 additional policemen and women, he said the police needed additional 20,000 men.
“We briefed the president on the needs and challenges the organisation is facing.
“We briefed him on the successes recorded so far, we briefed him on how and things to be done to ensure that the security of Nigeria is maintained and all are assured.
“We talked about recruitment of police officers.
“Over the years, more than 21,000 police officers have retired, some dismissed, some died between 2010 and today.
“Of this number, only about 1,605 have been replaced giving a deficit of a very large number.’’
On the stagnation of policemen on a rank for many years, President Buhari counselled the Police Service Commission to review the current structure of the police with a view to addressing the problem.
He also enjoined the commission to recommend how the problem could be solved for immediate implementation to boost the morale of serving policemen.
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One Comment
Every community deserves the level of security it can afford. Federal Police is obsolete in the scheme of security in Nigeria. It should be disbanded and LGA’s empowered to fund hire and fire their own force which will be uniformly trained in zonal academies to enforce federal and state laws and local ordinances while cooperating with forces from other local governments.. When a policeman stops you in the US for contravention of a traffic regulation , the said cop will issue you a citation on the spot detailing which aspect of the law you are accused of contravening while at the same time extracting from you your promise to present your self before a judge within a certain date to answer for that charge. In Nigeria when the police stops you for alleged illegal activity he extracts a bribe from.you which he shares with his boss who placed him on the detail. Nigeria police is the anchor of corruption. They make up and interprete laws on the fly and most people who are prosecuted are those who can’t pay
This is not to say there is no corrupt US police just that they are not in your face wholesale corruption like Nigeris.