Police Need 250,000 Rifles, 1,000 APCs, 774 Drones – IG

The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, says the Nigeria Police Force need over 1,000 armoured personnel carriers and 250,000 assault rifles with corresponding ammunition, among other factors to tackle insecurity in Nigeria. The IG stated this at a public hearing organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Police Affairs. The IG said the country needed more personnel and about 2,000,000 tear gas canisters and smoke grenades. Other equipment the IG said the force required included 200,000 riot gunners and smoke pistols, 1,000 tracking devices, and 774 operational drones, among others.

At the event tagged ‘Repositioning the Nigeria Police for an Enhanced Delivery’, Mohammed Adamu who was represented by the Deputy Inspector-General of Police (Operations), Abdulmajid Ali, decried the poor personnel strength of the Force cannot cope with the current security challenges facing the country.

He noted that an a aggregation of the reports of the various Police Reform Committees under the current democratic dispensation indicated that the major challenges inhibiting optimal police service delivery included gross under-funding, inadequate personnel, poor remuneration and welfare regime, among others. Adamu said: “Inadequate personnel to cope with the expanding and increasingly complex requirements of policing Nigeria’s growing population and crime profile. A strength of a about 302,000 police officers police a population of about 200,000,000 is definitely inadequate.”

Adamu further called for “a sustainable recruitment of at least 50,000 personnel every year for the next 10 years to address the manpower inadequacy.”