2015 elections: Nigeria needs 500,000 policemen – Acting IG

 

The Acting Inspector-General of Police, IGP, Suleiman Abba, has said that the federal government has approved the recruitment of 10,000 police personnel across the nation ahead of the 2015 general elections.
The police boss made this disclosure yesterday during his visit to the Leadership Group headquarters, in Abuja.
Abba however, said he wished the figure could be increased to 500,000, noting that the current figure was enough.
He said, “I chaired the 2015 election planning committee and I made a recommendation therein, that we should have a certain number of policemen recruited ahead of the election. And we came in and found out that government had approved 10,000 more to be recruited.
“As I speak to you, the funds are getting close into our own hand and the recruitment will begin. So, we are making effort to reach the required number. We wish we could get up to 500,000 but, then, remember that we are not doing it alone. There are other services and the other services are helping us,” he said.
“You would have witnessed what happened to the intelligence department of the police. We used to have a very, very effective intelligence department of the police. They call it the E-department. And you all know what happened. In a reorganisation, it was carved out of the police. Since then, the Police Force has been struggling to establish that department,” he said.

The IGP called on Nigerians to imbibe the culture of having the numbers of the control rooms of the police command in their locality, or the numbers of operatives in police stations in their neighbourhood