Kidnapping: Senate mulls direct funding for Police

The Senate is set to consider a Bill to push for direct funding for the Nigerian Police to tackle kidnapping and other security challenges in the country.

 

The lawmakers also tasked the police special forces to end armed robbery and kidnapping along Kaduna-Abuja highway.

 

Chairman, Senate Committee on Police Affairs, Senator Abu Ibrahim, said this yesterday during an assessment tour of Police deployed toKaduna-Abuja Expressway.

 

Abu, who was guided on the tour by Kaduna state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Agyole Abeh, lamented what he described as “poor funding of police operations”.

 

He vowed that his committee would push for the adoption of a Bill that “will ensure that at least one per cent of the federal allocation is set aside for security operations of the police”.

He added that a situation where police use funds meant for purchasing of equipment and welfare of its personnel for special operations, was unacceptable.

 

He noted that his committee will soon take a tour of six states of Nasarawa, Kano, Kaduna, Niger, Kogi, Zamfara and Katsina to solicit the state governments’ commitment to the security operations around their state, by providing funds to assist the operations.

 

The committee chairman, however, charged the Special Forces on the Kaduna-Abuja highway to go into the forest and rout out the kidnappers, saying that “staying only on the highway will amount to cosmetics, rather than wiping out the criminals holistically”.

 

The Kaduna state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Agyole Abeh, in his remarks said officers and men of the Special Forces deployed on Kaduna-Abuja highway were the best in the “Police force because of the series of trainings they have undergone”.

 

He, therefore, assured that with proper equipment and welfare, “they will not only comb the forests, they will equally rid Kaduna-Abuja highway of kidnappers”.

 

 

 

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