Police To Get N420b Annually For Five Years

The three tiers of government have agreed to contribute N420 billion yearly for a period of five years from the federation account to equip and train policemen.

The Chairman, Police Service Commission, Mr Parry Osayande, announced this in Enugu during his inspection of police formations and assessment of the performances of policemen.

Osayande said under the arrangement, monies to be deducted at source from the accounts of all tiers of government for disbursement to the police would be supervised by the Acting President Goodluck Jonathan.

The chairman also announced that plans had been concluded to upgrade the Police Academy, Kano, to a degree awarding institution.

Osayande said that preliminary preparations had already taken off to enable the degree programme to commence soon at the academy.

The chairman said that plans were also on to build two more police colleges in Benin and Nassarawa in Nasarawa State.

Osayande said that the Enugu and Ikeja Police Colleges would soon be upgraded to international standards.

He said that negotiations were on to hire the services of foreign security experts to train police officers on modern techniques of policing.

According to him, promotions in the police will now be based on performance, adding that the commission would no longer tolerate in-service training.

Mr Hafiz Ringim, Assistant Inspector-General of Police in charge of Zone 9, explained that the new funding arrangement would help to revitalise the declining standards in the police force.

“Strong policing is all about tenable manpower, proper training and re-training of officers and funding. We are ready to take the bull by the horn, to turn around declining situation in the police.

“This administration has shown maximum interest to re-position the police force and that we must do, because we have qualified hands at the commission to pilot this project and it is achievable.

 “We are going round the states of the federation to interact with policemen to ascertain their problems and also tell them that the music has changed, either you dance to it correctly or you dance out,’’ he said.