Yawa! Nigerian Police Gone Broke?

According to reports, recruitment into the Nigerian police force may have been forestalled over the lack of funds.

 

With a total of 400,000 policemen and policewomen last recruited into the Police Force in 2011, the government only approved 10,000 men into the force in 2014 and no money was released for the exercise until the general election was concluded, reports revealed.

 

It was also gathered that the former police boss, Mohammed Abubakar, in 2014 tried to recruit 30,000 personnel, a plan that didn't materialize owing to the paucity of funds.

 

The Punch reports that the money for the suspended recruitment was later used to pay salaries and other incidental expenses.

 

The NPF had proposed N329,669,237,019 in the 2015 budget, comprising N306,773,439,285 for personnel and N5,895,797,734 for overheads while it had a total budget allocation of N292.35bn.

 

“With the increasing rate of crime in the country, we need more policemen, but we have not been able to recruit because of paucity of funds,” a top police officer revealed.

 

 

It was also reported that the force has resorted to borrowing money from commercial banks since October, 2014, to pay the salaries of its personnel.

 

In addition, reports revealed that just before the 2015 elections the Police Management Team reportedly obtained a bank loan to avert a mutiny from police personnel following a complaints about the non-payment of promotion arrears and other emoluments by some officers.