Solomon Arase, former Inspector-General of Police (IGP) has disclosed that over 200,000 of the 400,000 Nigerian police officers are attached to political elites in the country.
He made this known while speaking on Monday at the second edition of the national dialogue series of the Political Leadership and Training Institute (POLA), organized by former governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital.
While faulting the practice of ‘policing the elites’, Solomon Arase lamented that the police were not policing the security space in Nigeria.
Arase said: “We have about 400,000 police personnel in Nigeria, and 200,000 of those officers are with the political elites.
“What we are doing in this country is that we are policing the elites, we are not policing security spaces, and this is an issue we have to look into.”
He also blamed the lack of political will to implement past reports on how to reform the security outfit as part of the challenges facing the police.
The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Adamu Mohammed had earlier in the aftermath of the #EndSARS protests, in a police wireless message dated October 21, 2020 ordered all State Commissioners of Police to withdraw police escorts and personnel attached to personalities without constitutional provision.
