Olusegun Lawrence The Senate has lamented decrease in allocation to the Nigeria Police in the 2014 budget, noting that it poses threat to the conduct of hitch-free elections in Ekiti and Osun states.
Speaking at the budget defence by the Ministry of Police Affairs on Tuesday, the chairman, committee on police affairs, Paulinus Nwagwu, said the decrease was not justifiable in an election year.
Nwagwu, noted that the ministry of police affairs got N292 billion in 2013, but now allocated N279 billion in the 2014 budget even when there would be additional responsibilities.
According tom him, “As I am talking to you, this quarter, the police is unable to pay salaries, don’t forget that we are the people who oversight them and we meet with them from time to time.
“People who received N292 billion to pay for their salary last year is getting N279 billion, which means that roughly you are telling us that two thousand or three thousand police men have been killed or have died within one year.
“I don’t want a situation where police officers may go on strike. Things that are not supposed to happen in this country is happening because of our enemies or perceived enemies of government. We in this committee will not sit back and be looking at it happen like that. The issue of their salary is key. Personnel cost is key in government and it has to be corrected immediately otherwise, it will delay your budget.
“If last year when we did not have any major election, the police formation and command was given N7.6 billion as overhead cost and if you look at the proposal of 2014 budget it is N1.2 billion less than what was given to the police last year and looking at the year we are in, the election year when we expect the police performing in all the states of the federation in making sure they provide enough security for Nigerian to have a free movement, is there any assurances to Nigerians that you are ready to provide security to them for the elections.?”
The chairman advised the Supervising Minister of Police Affairs, Olajumoke Akinjide, to liaise with the budget office for possible increase.
Responding, Akinjide said the ministry has made representation to the the minister of finance to complain about the shortfalls in the ministry’s budgetary allocations particularly as regards the drop in personnel costs.
Her words, “It is something that worries us and we have made representation to the ministry of finance. There is no reason to justify the decrease, at worse; we should maintain last year’s amount. The ministry is looking at it and I believe this will be rectified very soon”.
While assuring that the police are ready for the 2015 general elections, the minister said additional police would be recruited to the existing 370, 000 personnel ahead of the elections.
“We are ready to deliver on free, fair and credible elections because it is a cardinal policy of the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, she said”.
On zero budget allocation for police reform programmes, Akinjide explained that the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting chaired by the Vice President and attended by all the 36 states governors, had agreed that one percent of the consolidated revenue funds would be devoted for the funding of the police reform programmes, which would be distributed in the proportion that is due to the three arms of governments.
