The House of Representatives, has ordered an investigation into the alleged missing 178,459 firearms and ammunition from the armoury of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).
To this end, the House’s Ad hoc committee investigating the reported release of arrested criminals by the police, was on Thursday given the additional mandate of urgently carrying out the investigation with a view to establishing the veracity of the allegation, conduct conduct due diligence of the control processes of armoury in the NPF, and report back its findings within four weeks.
The House has further called on the Inspector General of Police to take urgent actions towards apprehending those culpable for the depletion of the armoury of the Force.
The recently released 2019 report of the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation had suggested that disappearance of the said number of different firearms and ammunition, indicating that the audit of Arms Movement Register, Monthly Returns of Arms and Ammunition and Ammunition Register at the Armoury Section of the NPF showing that a total number of lost firearms as at December 2018 stood at 178,459 pieces.
Attention of the House was drawn to the report on Thursday, by Deputy Minority Leader, Toby Okechukwu, who in a motion under matters of urgent public importance, prayed the House to cause an investigation into the allegation.
Citing the report, the lawmaker noted that out of this number, 88,078 were AK-47 rifles, and 3,907 assorted rifles and pistols across different police formations, which could not be accounted for as at January 2020.
Accordng to him, findings in the report showed that “the police high command failed to keep record of unserviceable and expired firearms and ammunition; owing to non-compliance to the internal control system of the Nigeria Police Force.”
He said records of the total number of unserviceable firearms were not produced for examinations and there were no returns from Adamawa state Command, Police Mobile Force (PMF) 46, 56, 64 and 68 for the period under review.
“Records obtained from force armament at Force Headquarters showed 21 Police Mobile Force (PMF) Squadron, Abuja did not report a single case of missing firearm, whereas schedule of missing arms obtained from the same PMF showed a total of 46 missing arms between year 2000 and February 2019,” he said.
He also expressed worry that the missing arms could have found their ways into the wrong hands.
