Investigations reveal that at least, N2.04bn has been budgeted for police colleges across the country for the upgrade of their facilities in the budget years of 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 in police colleges and training institutions located in eight states: Lagos, Oyo, Ondo, Osun, Enugu, Rivers, Kaduna, and Borno States.
Despite these allocations, the conditions of living in the colleges remain deplorable. The Kaduna college, for instance, is uninhabitable.
Police authorities were shifting blames when our correspondent inquired about the whereabouts of the funds meant for the maintenance of police colleges nationwide.
Meanwhile, the Senate has summoned the police authorities to give account of the monies allocated to the police colleges, while opposition parties have called on the Federal Government not to victimize anyone in an effort to allocate blame.
The breakdown of the budgetary allocation show A breakdown of budgetary allocation to the Nigerian Police for the yearly upgrade of police colleges and training institutions between 2009 and 2012 is as follows: 2009 – N700 million, 2010 – N759 million, 2011 – N291 million, 2012 – N296 million, bringing it to a total of N2.046 billion.
In the 2012 budget, N52 million was provided for motorcycles, N203 million for vehicles, N310 million for vans, and N596 million for armoured personnel carriers.
The police command also proposed N431 million for arms and ammunition, N84 million for video security surveillance systems in Borno, Kano, Oyo, Edo and Anambra states, N52 million for automatic fingerprint identification system, N84 million for forensic and DNA test laboratory, and N241 million for explosive ordinance disposal equipment for the anti-bomb squad.
Other items of expenditure in the 2012 budget include N295 million for anti-riot equipment, N450 million for bullet-proof vests gear, N243 million for “anti-terrorism equipment”, N165 million for security intelligence equipment, and N271 million for UHF walkie-talkies and rehabilitation of its outdated analog UHF communications system. The budget for barracks’ rehabilitation and construction is N585 million.
The can of worms over the deplorable state of the police training institutions was blown open following a report on the Nigeria Police College, Ikeja, Lagos, by Channels Television recently.