— Says force can’t pay salary
The Senate Committee on Police Affairs has said that the cut in budgetary allocations to the Nigeria Police in the 2014 budget proposal is a potential threat to the forthcoming general elections scheduled for 2015, as same may affect the state of preparedness of the force to carry out its duties.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Paulinus Nwagwu, who stated this yesterday during the budget defence by the Police Affairs Ministry, also echoed the fears of lawmakers on the committee that if the salaries of police men are left unpaid, same may lead to strike action by the personnel.
Nwagwu observed, for instance, that allocation for personnel cost nose-dived from N292 billion in 2013 to N279 billion in 2014.
“As I am talking to you, this quarter, the police is unable to pay salaries, don’t forget that we are the people who oversight them and we meet with them from time to time”, he added.
The lawmaker further said, “People who received N292 billion to pay for their salary last year are getting N279 billion this year, which means that roughly you are telling us that 2,000 or 3,000 policemen have been killed or have died within one year.
“I don’t want a situation where police officers may go on strike. Things that are not supposed to happen in this country are happening because of enemies or perceived enemies of government. We in this committee will not sit back and be looking at it happen like that. The issue of their salary is key; personnel cost is key in government and it has to be corrected immediately, otherwise it will delay your budget.
“If last year when we did not have any major election, the police formation and command was given N7.6 billion as overhead cost and if you look at the proposal of 2014 budget it is N1.2 billion less than what was given to the police last year and looking at the year we are in, the election year when we expect the police performing in all the states of the federation in making sure they provide enough security for Nigerian to have a free movement, is there any assurances to Nigerians that you are ready to provide security to them for the elections?”
He therefore asked the Supervising Minister of Police Affairs, Olajumoke Akinjide, if the ministry could guarantee hitch-free exercise during the conduct of the 2015 elections. “Do you think you can comfortably provide security for next year’s election and if you cannot, what is the next line of action? We are going into elections and I do not want my brothers from the APC to complain that PDP refused to give them security?”
Responding, Akinjide told the lawmakers that already her ministry had led a delegation to the minister of finance to complain about the shortfalls in the ministry’s budgetary allocations, particularly as regards the drop in personnel costs.
“It is something that worries us and we have made a representation to the ministry of finance. There is no reason to justify the decrease, at worse; we should maintain last year’s amount. The ministry is looking at it and I believe this will be rectified very soon”, she said.
The minister also put the current strength of the Nigeria Police Force at about 370,000 men and women and told the lawmakers that her ministry was mulling the idea of making additional recruitment into the force, assuring that the police was ready for the 2015 elections.
According to her, “we are ready to deliver on free, fair and credible elections because it is a cardinal policy of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration.”
