Katsina State Governor, Aminu Bello Masari has asserted that the Nigerian police does not have an adequate number of personnel to effectively police the State with presently has a population of about eight million people.
Masari Thursday when the Inspector General of Police, Alkali Usman Baba, visited the Government House on a courtesy call.
According to the governor, ‘Katsina State has a population of about eight million people and how many policemen do we have in Katsina State?
‘From my assessment of policemen in the local government areas, I don’t think we have up to 3,000 policemen in the entire state.
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‘Let us assume that they are up to 3,000, what it means is that we have a policeman for every 200,000 people. How effective can that policeman be? Then we come to arms and ammunition, what do the police have?
‘And when it comes to modern equipment for combating criminality, how much of it do the police have?
‘And the same thing goes for all other security agencies. They are in South-South battling militants, they are in the South East battling IPOB, they are in North East battling Boko Haram and ISWAP and insurgents and they are in the North West battling bandits.
‘Here, the bandits have infiltrated the communities recruiting young men with as low as ₦5,000 along with drugs and other intoxicants.
‘We must stop the culture of not reporting criminals because of tribal or family affiliations.’
Speaking earlier, the IGP said that they were in the process of recruiting additional 20,000 policemen from across the country.
The IGP said, ‘I am in Katsina on a working visit and I will also meet with other arms of security services to see how best to tackle the security situation in the states.
‘I came in as IGP at a very difficult time. When I came in, it was in the South East and South-South that there were series of killings including the killing of security personnel and our places of work destroyed.
‘While the South-South and South East are stabilising, the situation in the North Central and the North West is getting worse.
‘We are going to work harder to see that citizens go about their lawful businesses unmolested.
‘Very soon, we will start our recruitment process. With security policing and fresh recruitment, we hope that the strength of the Nigerian police will be reinforced.
‘We will recruit from every local government in the country. It is the directive of the President that we should recruit 10,000 for 2020 and another 10,000 for 2021. From across all the 771 local government areas. We are going to redeploy these policemen to their local government areas to fight crime.’
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK