By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
The South east is currently at its lowest ebb in the Nigerian police. Before now, of the 36 state police commands and the FCT, the zone was in charge of only two state commands-Imo and Borno. However, with the removal of Chris Ezike as the Imo state Commissioner of Police, the South east is now left with only Damian Chukwu, who heads the Borno state Command.
Also, keen followers of the ongoing recruitment into the Nigerian Police by the police Service Commission, PSC, lament that the exercise has further exposed and reinforced the skewed nature-in favour of the North-of the current political structure of Nigeria which they argue is utterly stacked against the South, particularly South east.
This magazine gathered that the exercise was to be conducted based on the equality of states, that is, candidates equally selected from the 36 states of the federation but intense pressure was to force the PSC to adopt local governments as units of recruitments thus giving the North undue advantage over the South, particularly South east which has least number of local governments among the six geographical zones.
For example Kano with 44 local governments has the lion share of the 6,000 candidates so far recruited. Kano is followed by Jigawa and other North west and North east states in that order. A retired Police Commissioner of Enugu state extraction who spoke to this Magazine on basis of anonymity bemoaned the fate of the South east in the force, alerting the region’s political leaders that the number of new police
intakes recruited from Kano, Jigawa and Sokoto alone far outnumber that of the five South east states combined. In the South South, Bayelsa is at the rear in the South with the lowest number of intakes. The imbalance in the police recruitment has prompted many in the South and Midldle Belt to demand a return to regional system of government in which each region will establish, recruit and fund its own police force.
Meanwhile, the PSC has announced the short listing of 37,062 candidates for examination in the ongoing recruitment out of 133,324.
