Suspend police recruitment, Senate writes commission

The recruitment of 10,000 personnel into the police force has been suspended over alleged irregularity, reliable sources told Daily Trust.

The recruitment was already underway when it was discovered that the criteria set for the exercise had been jettisoned.

The Police Service Commission which is coordinating the recruitment put it on hold based on an order from the Senate Police Committee.

The committee gave the suspension order in a letter it wrote to the commission on Thursday, sources said.

Sources said the letter was also copied to President Muhammadu Buhari to draw his attention to the situation.

The president gave the order for the recruitment of 10,000 policemen over a year ago. But the exercise ran into a number of problems over the past year.

It took a series of meetings by the Senate Committee, the Police Commission and the Force Headquarters to get past the problems.

The recruitment finally took off in August but soon after, other hitches developed.

The stakeholders had agreed that the recruitment would be based on local government areas.

But sources said trouble began when the commission decided to base the exercise on equal number per state, citing orders from above.

Now, other stakeholders are demanding that the commission restrict itself to the recruitment of cadet ASPs, which is its statutory responsibility.

The said Force Headquarters should handle the enlistment of those on inspectorate cadre and below.

But when contacted yesterday, the spokesman of the Police Service Commission (PSC) Ikechukwu Ani, said the recruitment exercise had not been suspended.

He added that the exercise was still on, explaining that the officials of the commission just finished a field exercise on the recruitment process.

He also noted that the commission had been partnering with the police on the recruitment into both the constable and senior officers cadre.

They shortlisted 110, 469 applicants for police recruitment aptitude tests across the country, he said.

The Chairman of the Commission, Mike Okiro, at a recent press conference in Abuja, said applicants to write the exams included Cadet ASPs, 22,454, comprising 10,290 general duties and 12,164 specialists.