Panic in Police Academy over Boko Haram threat• Training programme for MOPOL commanders cancelled

Posted by admin Boko Haram, Headlines, Nigerian Police Monday, February 6th, 2012

Cadet officers comprising Inspectors and Assistant Superintendents who
reported for training early last month at the Police Academy [POLAC] in Wudil,
near Kano, have been thrown into panic as a result of intelligence reports which
indicated plans by members of Boko Haram, to attack the institution.

Also
penciled down for attack by the sect is an unnamed hotel in Kano. The city
recently came under heavy bombardment by the Boko Haram with no fewer than 185
dead.

The development has heightened tension at the POLAC, where staff
and cadet officers who resumed on January 9 for the current session are gripped
by fear of the unknown, and now sleep with their two eyes open.
Consequently,
the acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Abubakar, has moved to
checkmate the alleged plot with a directive for an immediate beef-up of security
around the institution, as well as the hotel marked for attack.
Daily Sun
learnt that the commanders of 25 out of a total number of 57 Police Mobile Force
(PMF) squadrons across the country have been directed to deploy one personnel
each for special duty at the POLAC, to compliment other PMF units already
dispatched to step up security in Kano.

Checks revealed that the mobile
policemen deployed to the institution had arrived weekend, and would be
coordinated by Mr. Bello, an Assistant Commissioner of police (ACP) in the PMF
who was on special assignment in Jos, Plateau State, but has been drafted to
Kano, following the fresh threat by Boko Haram.
Meanwhile, the police high
command has put on hold a three-week training programme for commanders of the 57
PMF Squadrons which was scheduled to commence February 1, in Borno
State.
Daily Sun had exclusively reported that, following the sustained
attacks on police and other security formations, especially in the North East,
some Squadron Commanders had kicked against the exercise slated for the PMF
Training School in Gwoza, Borno State.

The police authorities had through a wireless message signed by the
Commissioner of Police in charge of the PMF, Mr. Philemon Leha, directed all
squadron commanders across the country to report at the Gwoza training camp on
February 1, for the 21-day training programme.
But some of the commanders had
described the move as packaging the officers on a suicide mission, citing the
recent killing in Yobe State, of two senior officers, including one of their
colleagues and an assistant commissioner of police in charge of operations, both
of whom hailed from Katsina State, as a serious operational blunder.
Rather
than assembling them for training in Borno State, where Boko Haram had stepped
up attacks in the wake of the state of emergency declared by President Jonathan
in some parts of the country, the officers had expressed their preference to
undergo the programme at the PMF Training School at Ila-Oragun, in Osun
State.
Sources hinted that in a bid to avert an untoward development amid
protests from some of the officers, the immediate past IGP, Hafiz Ringim,
directed that the programme be cancelled. No new date or venue was fixed.