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By Ebube Egbufor
A former Inspector General of Police, Mr. Mike Okiro, says the proposed recruitment of ten thousand police officers by the Federal Government of Nigeria should be done every six months and not yearly as the Nigerian Police Force “is grossly understaffed.”
Okiro who spoke recently to news men at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa noted that the 10,000 officers to be recruited yearly would not be enough to police Nigerians considering the security situation in the country now.
He expressed hope that the directive from the Federal Government should be sustained, pointing out that from his experience as the Police IG during Nigeria’s transition to democracy in 1999, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo instructed the police to recruit about 40,000 officers every year. He however noted that they could not keep it up because there was no funding to train the men.
“By the time I became chairman, Police Service Commission,” he added, “I found out that the Nigerian Police have not recruited for five years and within these five years, police lost 59,000 people due to retirement, death among others. So I wrote a passionate letter to the president then who approved 10,000 people to be recruited and after that, it still could not be kept.
“So I hope this 10,000 will be enough and that they should keep to it and also recruitment should be done every six months, not yearly because the Nigerian Police is understaffed and Nigerians under policed.”
On the issue of state police, the former IGP noted that to establish such police formation, the lawmakers should amend the constitution which he said does not make allowance for state police now, stressing that even if there is state police and they are still under-equipped and lack manpower like the federal police, “we’ll still go back to square one.”
Speaking also on ethnic/regional security apparatus to complement the efforts of the police, Okiro said that inasmuch as he is not advocating for alternative security outfits, anybody that is threatened should look for a way to defend himself, adding that it is the failure of the security agencies to protect lives and properties that is making people to think of alternative means of securing themselves.
