Security experts have frowned on a report by the Auditor-General that 178,459 firearms and ammunition had gone missing from the police armoury in 2019 without explanation.
They described the development as scandalous, stressing that the allegations must be investigated and those culpable sanctioned.
A retired Commissioner of Police, Emmanuel Ojukwu, said the police must be accountable to Nigerians by ensuring a proper return on the alleged missing weapons.
He stated, “My take is that such a report is scandalous, it is embarrassing. It is expected in a democracy that the police should account annually, regularly to the people. What the auditor-general has done is in line with his duty; it is to raise a query, which is a question to the police to account for the guns.
‘’In that report, they said the procedure was not followed, returns were not properly rendered, there were gaps here and there. It does not mean that those weapons are missing; all it means is that the police did not do what they ought to do or they have not done what they ought to do.’’
A security analyst, Ben Okezie, stated that the police authorities should not keep mum on the revelations by the AuGF.
He said, ‘’I don’t think it is good for the police not to address this allegation; they have to confirm or deny the report. The Auditor-General cannot just wake up and pass this kind of judgment on the police. It is an indictment on the police leadership. If the IG (Inspector-General of Police) does not say something before the weekend, it means something is amiss.’’
Okezie recalled that former President Olusegun Obasanjo once raised the alarm about the influx of suspected armed robbers and cultists into the police, noting that the force leadership failed to flush out the miscreants – many of who he said later dominated the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad.
He said, “The auditor-general report is an indictment but it needs to be re-investigated so we don’t give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. The police need to carry out internal auditing of their men. We have to decentralise the police; state police would address this issue.’’
Describing the firearms as a trust given to the police, the former force spokesman urged the police authorities to clear the doubts on the missing arms as raised by the AuGF.
But the Commissioner representing the media in the Police Service Commission, Austin Braimoh, said it would be wrong to assume that the missing weapons were all stolen, arguing that the report failed to disclose the circumstances behind the reported loss.
He added, ‘’During EndSARS protests, we lost so many police stations where arms and ammunition were burnt down and many stations were looted. I don’t think it would be right to blame the police for that.
‘’We have to be careful; that’s why you cannot treat that report the way it is. The loss should be clarified and the circumstances of the loss before you can say someone should be punished. The police did not lose the firearms carelessly. There are few isolated cases of people responsible for losses and they were duly punished and the records are before us.
‘’Loss of firearms by officers during operations attracts punishment, including dismissal or reduction in rank. But when you talk of these massive losses, most of them are the result of attacks by bandits or during the protests. The audit report may seem to have indicted the police but it is not exactly so. Many arms have been lost but it is not the fault of the police.” ,,
