•HURIWA tackles IGP on under-policing
The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and the Police Service Commission (PSC) are on a collision course over the outcome of the 2022 recruitment exercise of constables.
While the force rejected the entire process for alleged irregularities and sharp practices, the PSC, on the other hand, insisted that police authorities were crying wolf where none existed, adding that the exercise was rigorous, as candidates were made to go undertake aptitude test, medical examination and Computer Based Test (CBT).
It added that a solid board, made up of senior police officers, officials of the PSC, the Police Affairs Ministry and members of the National Assembly was in place to ensure only credible hands were engaged.
The commission is further accusing the police of raising an unwarranted alarm, “because some of their candidates, who fell short of requisite qualifications, could not make the final list.
But the Human Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has described as unnecessary the brouhaha generated by the recruitment of 10,000 constables for the NPF.
It advised the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, to comply with the constitutional provisions conferring on the PSC the powers to recruit police officers.
The group lamented that cops in the country are unable to police most rural parts of the nation, thus creating a huge expanse of territorial areas as ungoverned spaces for armed non-state actors.
The group, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said: “We think the IGP should be concerned about correcting the inability of his police operatives to adequately protect Nigerians from criminals of all dimensions.
“We know it as a fact that 75 per cent landmass of Okigwe and Onuimo local government areas in Imo State and Ihiala Local Council Area of Anambra State are massive ungoverned spaces because there are virtually no significant activities of policing in these areas, thus allowing well-armed non-state actors to take over the governance of these massive areas and yet we have a Police Inspector General whose focus is on who should be recruited or who should conduct recruitment exercise into the police even when the Constitution and a decided case by the Supreme Court of Nigeria have answered such questions in support of the Police Service Commission.”
