By Augustine Ehikioya
The Inspector General of Police (IGP), IGP Usman Alkali Baba, on Wednesday said all arrangement has been made to release the promotion list for junior officers in the Nigeria Police Force between Wednesday and Thursday.
He spoke exclusively with Security Watch Africa (SWA) in his office at the Force Headquarters in Abuja.
According to him, the Nigeria Police Force was already working on the promotion of officers and men before the issue of strike action came up.
He said “We are processing promotions as at when due. I’m assuring you between today (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday), I’m releasing the promotion of junior officers from the rank of sergeant, that is PC to Corporal, Corporal to Sergeant and Sergeant to Inspector.
“This thing was ongoing before the issue of striking came in,” he added.
He also told Security Watch Africa that the moles making mischief about the purported strike action have been identified and disciplined.
The IGP said “One of the things that I got disappointed was when I heard the issue of Police strike. I started seeing the grievances. I feel this government and the leadership of the Nigeria Police have done much to address almost all the issues that have been stated as problem.
“Throughout our intervention to see that this thing is not actualized, we were able to discover that Policemen were not involved. Policemen were not involved seriously
“Some that we have been able to get were involved, and we took proper action, proper discipline on them.
“We were able to arrest Policemen who were involved in advocating or sending those kinds of messages
“In fact we have been able to get the originator of the message. This is a Policeman, who has about 40 Facebook pages, over 20 WhatsApp groups, and so forth.
“So, the mole in us, we have been able to get and discipline them. I’m happy to discover that most of the Policemen do not even know what they are talking about. If it is welfare, our welfare, salary increase has been done. It is remaining actualization.
According to him, politicians and other disgruntled people were behind the failed purported strike action.
“So, it is a false assertion and my disappointment became not quite disappointment, I now believe there are some mischief makers, who wanted to use Police to extend their grievances, disgruntled politicians and so forth, to extend their mischief activities to the government. And some of our Policemen are being used, we have been able to discover and we have actually taken care of that,” he stated.