FREEPRESS – Former Inspector General of Police Mr. Solomon Arase, in a press statement said the new shift work arrangement for the Nigeria Police might need additional manpower to succeed, adding that about 300,000 officers might have to be recruited for the eight-hour shift.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with one of our correspondents in Abuja on Friday, the retired police boss said, “The figure is difficult to prescribe because if you have a strength of 300,000, you are looking at having additional 300,000 again and that’s not feasible within the space of four years, because you have to start recruiting about 10,000 officers per recruitment exercise over a period of time. Even if you recruit 10,000 men each time, how long will that take you and the (training) schools can’t accommodate the recruits.
“The main thing is thinking outside the box, having more of technical platform, using intelligence, using motorised patrols. All these are the issues they should be talking about.”
He suggested redeployment of redundant officers at Force Headquarters, the zonal formations and other commands to fill the quota for the new shift work proposed by Adamu.
Arase added, “They could push them into operations. He (Adamu) can take them to areas of need. That could be an interim arrangement.”
According to the lawyer, the police have about 350,000 operational personnel, a percentage of which protects private individuals.
Arase said modern policing was not about numerical strength, but the deployment of technology.
He said, “If you look at most of the crises that have happened across the world, the detection of those crises was dependent on how robust the technical platform is.
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