Recruit 50,000 Policemen Annually, Shekarau Tells FG

Former Kano State governor, Ibrahim Shekarau has bemoaned the lack of up to a million police officers in Nigeria, a country with a population of over 200 million, and has proposed hiring 50,000 additional officers annually.

In response to the growing level of insecurity in the nation, Shekarau, as a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday, discussed the recent consideration by the federal and state governments of establishing state police.

He said, “(Ex-President Muhammadu) Buhari promised to recruit 10,000 every year but my committee in the Senate was in charge of pension and from the police pension record, on the average every year, 5,000 policemen leave the service either by death, retirement or whatever means.

“So, if you are recruiting 10,000 every year you are only recruiting 5,000. So, I made a submission, I have a document, I gave it to the government, that let us have a proper plan of 50,000 and 60,000 recruitment drive nonstop.”

Naija News reports that he claimed that 300,000 police officers would not be able to adequately patrol all of Nigeria.

The former governor added that if traditional institutions are not included in the process, Nigeria’s state police apparatus will fail.

If the government is serious about putting an end to the plague of insecurity, community monitoring and intelligence collecting are crucial, according to Shekarau.