Wednesday, November 29, 2017

BETWEEN THE POLICE SERVICE COMMISSION AND THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON POLICE AFFAIRS




               The recruitment of 10,000 police officers by the Buhari administration which comprises of 500 Cadet Assistant Superintendent of Police, 500 Cadet Inspectors, 1500 Specialist Officers and 7500 Constables commenced on 24th April 2016, but was stalled due to a disagreement between the Police Service Commission (PSC) and the Senate Committee on Police Affairs, over which criteria was to be used to select the 10,000 new officers nationwide. While the PSC argued that State criteria be used, the Senate Committee on Police Affairs wanted the PSC to use the local government area as criteria. This resulted in a stalemate which was eventually resolved after a long wait by adopting the local government area as criteria.

                The implication of this is that, the north which already has an advantage in the Nigerian Police Force due to having more states than the south will be given more advantage to the detriment of the south who are already out-numbered in the current set-up in the Nigerian Police Force.

                A simply arithmetic calculation shows that:
Number of Local Governments in Nigeria= 774
Number of States= 36
Number of Police Officers to be recruited= 10,000

Number of Police Officers per State10,000/36= 277

Using Kano (44 LGAs) and Bayelsa (6 LGAs) as example, we have:
Kano = 277/44 = 6 (Officers per LGA)   and Bayelsa = 277/6 = 46 (Officers per LGA) 

Number of Police Officers per Local Government Area 10,000/774 = 12

Using Kano (44 LGAs) and Bayelsa (6 LGAs) as example, we have:
Kano = 44*12 = 528 (Officers for Kano State)   and Bayelsa = 6*12 = 72 (Officers for Bayelsa State)


Recruitment based on Local Government Area will favour States like: Kastina, Kano, Borno, Jigawa, Imo, Osun and Akwa Ibom due to their having high number of Local Governments.
Recruitment based on State will favour: FCT, Bayelsa, Gombe, Ebonyi, Nassarawa, Lagos, Ogun etc.