The Police Service Commission (PSC) has condemned in strong terms the lopsided posting of commissioners of Police by the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).
The commission said the Nigeria Police Force should be guided by the principle of federal character in both recruitment (at all levels) and deployment of its personnel at management and tactical levels to ensure balance, equity and fairness in the system.
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The spokesperson of the PSC, Ikechukwu Ani, said, “The commission observed the disproportional distribution and lopsided deployment of command commissioners and noted that it has become extremely important that a fair representation of all geo-political zones is always reflected in these deployments to eschew and address the feeling and sense of marginalisation and injustice by certain zones of the country in the Nigeria Police Force.”
He stated that the PSC observed that the current deployment of commissioners of police to state commands leaves much to be desired in reflecting the principle of equity and fairness to all geo-political zones of the country, stressing that the current statistics of such deployments was against the North East and South East geopolitical zones.
The PSC has also approved that “at least three state commands out of the 37 commands must have female Police officers as their commissioners of police and out of the 17 zonal headquarters, at least one zone must have a female AIG to head the zone.”
Ani said, “The commission at plenary and relying on Section 6(e) and (7) of the Police Service Commission Act which empowers the commission to ‘formulate and implement policies aimed at the efficiency and discipline in the Nigeria Police Force; and perform such other functions which in the opinion of the commission are required to ensure the optimal efficiency of the Nigeria Police Force considered and approved the new policy guidelines.
“Henceforth request for deployment of commissioners of police to state commands must ensure that the disadvantaged zones are considered first in the proposals to the commission in order to redress the present imbalance and lopsided deployments skewed against the North-East and South-East regions of the country.
“All geo-political zones of the country must now have at least 15 per cent representation in the deployment of assistant inspectors-general of police to zones, commissioners of police to state commands and posting of commanding officers of Police Mobile Force, Counter-Terrorism CTU and Special Protection Unit (SPU).
“That all Police deployments to zones and commands at both management (deputy commissioners of police and assistant commissioners of police and tactical levels commanding officers of PMF/SPU/CTU), must recognise our heterogeneity and reflect fairness and equity in terms of ethnicity and religion. The commission advised the inspector-general to be guided appropriately by these policy guidelines founded on principles of fairness and justice to all members of the NPF.”