Centre for the Vulnerable and Underprivileged (CENTREP), Warri, Delta State, weekend, faulted the assertion by the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase, that lack of increase in the funding of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) was the chief impediment to effective policing nationwide.
In a statement by the executive director of the group, Mr. Oghenejabor Ikimi, the organisation argued that the statement by Mr. Arase at the National Security Conference jointly organized by the NPF and the Sun Newspaper in Abuja was far from the truth.
“The major obstacle to effective policing in the Nigeria State is the monstrous level of corruption presently ravaging the institution and not the level of funding per se,” the group said.
“We posit that corruption has dealt a cruel blow to the police institution in Nigeria such that it has not only eroded professionalism but smeared its mage and prestige to the extent that an increase in funding without commensurate effort at checking the menace, will only transform the worsening level of corruption in the institution into a tsunami.
“We submit further that an increase funding of the Nigerian Police Force would not by any iota of imagination reduce corruption in the Force, as claimed by the police boss but would inflame the vice, hence our call on the police boss to furnish Nigerians with the measures he has put in place to check corruption in the Police Force. “This is because we are not oblivious of the fact that every police institution worldwide requires effective funding devoid of corruption ethics for effective policing,” the group asserted.
“The call by the police boss on the National Assembly to pass into law the Police Trust Fund bill was a needless one, as we are all witnesses to a similar body that was set up under ex- President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration.”
