Afenifere rejects local council as basis for recruitment of police personnel
The Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, has raised the alarm over the danger in using local council as basis for recruitment into the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).
It said recruitment into the armed forces must follow the laid-down Principle of Federal Character, which is the basis.
The group’s reaction cameon the heels of the simmering crisis between the Senate Committee on Police Affairs and the Police Service Commission (PSC), which ultimately led to the suspension of the recruitment of 10,000 personnel into the force in September.
The National Publicity Secretary of the group, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, noted that while the PSC was insisting that the process should follow the constitutional provision of equality of states in line with the Principle of Federal Character, the Senator Abu Ibrahim-led committee wanted the recruitment to be done on the basis of local councils. He also said that the Senate committee insisted that the police force should supervise the exercise as against the service commission, which is statutorily saddled with such responsibility.
He said: “The suspension of the exercise was to allow President Muhammadu Buhari mediate in the dispute between the two bodies but to the consternation of all, the Senate committee recently announced that the President has ruled in its favour.
“We reject this blatant violation of the Principle of Federal Character and the constitutional process on the alter of political and sectional expediency.”
The group said the implication of what is about to happen is that Lagos State having just 20 local councils with a bigger population than Kano State, which has 44, will have fewer representatives in the force.
It also observed that an oil-bearing state like Bayelsa State contributing substantially to the federation pool from which the recruited officers would be paid has only eight local councils and will have just 72 men against Jigawa State, which hardly contributes to the pool but will have 234 men based on its 26 local councils.
It added: “There is nothing that justifies the disparities than the politics of domination and conquest that is at the heart of the volatile injustice embedded in our prebendal politics in Nigeria.”
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2 Comments
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Surely the correct interpretation of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs position is that the recruitment of the 10,000 personnel into the police force must be done on an equal allocation between the states in line with the constitutional provision of equality of
states in the Principle of Federal Character, but that within each state, the recruitment must be done on the basis of equality between the local councils of the state. Thus each of the 36 states should recruit 10,000/36 = 277.78, which would be rounded up to 278 recruits for each state, and each state would then divide these 278 recruits equally among whatever number of local councils are defined for each state.
I would want to believe that this is in fact what PMB approved – but if it is not, then Afenifere should immediately take the Federal
Government and the Federal Character Commission to court to ensure that the recruitment does follow the Principle of Federal Character!!!
We will review and take appropriate action.