An investigation is revealing that thousands of police recruits who were trained at police colleges in Lagos, Kaduna and Oji River might have lost as much as N2.92bn in fraudulent schemes.
A total of 2,900 recruits were trained at the Police College, Ikeja, 1,900 at the Orji River Police College, Enugu State and 3,000 at the Police College, Kaduna.These last set of recruits were trained for 15 months at the three police colleges from between October 2011 to December 2012.
Investigations show that though N25,000 was approved as the allowances for the recruits, only N3000 was being paid to them.
The police authorities in charge of training did not explain to the recruits how the N25,000 was spent and how they came to the decision to pay N3,000 per month as allowances.
The claim was that N22, 000 was being deducted from each of the trainees on the grounds that they were not supposed to cook in the hostels, even though they were to feed themselves.
As a result of the law against cooking in the hostels, the police authorities were said to have organised a central cooking arrangement to feed the trainees. Yet, it was learnt that the recruits were poorly fed while undergoing the training programme.
Beyond that, checks revealed a scheme going as far as back as 1999 when fresh recruits were being paid N2500 as salary rather than the N5000 due to them.
A recent television documentary on the Ikeja Police College aired on Channels Television revealed the scandalous poor feeding arrangement of police trainees.
It was learnt that a former Inspector General of Police changed the erstwhile arrangement where trainees were fed by the government to the present arrangement where money for recruits are deducted from source without their knowledge and consent, under the guise of feeding them.
Police sources could not explain why the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, had not changed the current arrangement which dupes the cops of their funds.
A recruit who recently graduated from Police College, Kaduna, said, “Throughout our stay in the college, we were paid N3,000 every month and I learnt that, that was the amount given to other recruits in other police colleges. But if indeed it is true that we were supposed to get N25,000 , it means the officials have really short-changed us and the IG should probe the matter.
“At times they would pay us N3,200, N3,300 but the highest they paid was N3,400.”
This ongoing sleaze in the police colleges may not be unknown to senior police officers and officials at the Ministry of Police Affairs, it has been gathered. A source in the ministry who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the Police Force and the Police Service Commission should be held responsible for the fraud.
“The Police Affairs Ministry doesn’t have anything to do with recruitment or payment of police officers; that is between the Nigeria Police and the PSC which recruits, promotes and disciplines policemen,” the source said.
However, a senior PSC official speaking anonymously claimed that the payment of policemen was purely the business of the ministry, adding that the cheating of police recruits should be blamed entirely on the ministry.
Efforts made to contact the Deputy Force Public Relations Officer, Mr. Frank Mba, were not successful as the calls placed to his mobile telephone line indicated that it was switched off.
Also, Mba did not respond to text messages sent to him.