Shortage of Funds Grounds Police

Posted by admin Latest Politics, Nigerian Police Saturday, July 9th, 2011

With the high rate of insecurity of lives and property in the country, the agency empowered with the maintenance of law and order in the country, the Nigeria Police is said to be broke and lacks adequate fund to operate.

The fund for the day- to-day running of the force and fuelling of patrol vehicles in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory is said to be exhausted and as such, the force is handicapped and cannot operate.

Informed sources disclosed to Saturday Tribune that this development arose as a result of the slashing of the police recurrent expenditure to N5 billion in the 2011 fiscal year.

Saturday Tribune gathered that as of today, the police has spent over N7 billion in the recurrent expenditure and can no longer borrow as all doors have been shut against it.

The source revealed that in 2007, the police was allocated the sum of N11 billion for recurrent, N12 billion in 2008; N10.8 billion, 2009; N5.68 billion in 2010 and N5.5 billion in 2011, which is a far cry from what was initially budgeted for it in 2011.

According to the source, trouble erupted when President Goodluck Jonathan refused to sign into law the 2011 appropriation bill as passed by the National Assembly.

He, however, returned the budget to the National Assembly for amendments. But instead of the National Assembly cutting down on its expenditure, they decided to tinker with those of the ministries, parastatals and agencies, which made the president to sign the budget.

The source said, “they are blaming the police, we are helpless, we cannot fight crime any longer, as we cannot fuel our patrol vehicles, unless the government intervenes and do something urgently to salvage the situation.”

It was also gathered that the 2011 Capital Expenditure for the police was N8 billion as against N39 billion in 2010, out of which only N11 billion was released to the police.

According to the source, based on the expected N39 billion, the police had awarded contracts for procurement of equipment, vehicles and renovation of barracks. But this was later slashed to N11 billion, which now left the police with a debt of N28 billion to be paid to contractors for jobs carried out in 2010.

-Tribunewp_posts