he Nigeria Police Force and the Police Service Commission promotion list has been padded with strange names who did not take the mandatory Promotion Examination nor go through any assessment using the Annual Performance Evaluation Report (APER), while 17 qualified senior officers were excluded.
OUR Reporters obtained padded names added to the list of the recently promoted Assistant Commissioners of Police to Deputy Commissioners of Police while the 17 excluded ACPs, who were last promoted in 2016 were sidelined for no reason.
It was gathered that the promotion lists were released on December 18, 2020, with 47 serving ACPs who were supposed to have been promoted to the rank of DCP, having successfully undergone the mandatory APERs.
SaharaReporters learnt that the 47 were penciled down for promotions by the PSC, only for the commission to turn around and announce 29 of them as new DCPs, leaving out 17 others.
According to an insider source, to make up for the space, the commission smuggled in eight officers, who are among other padding done to other promotion lists by the police.
He said, “The criminal smuggling of the names of the eight officers into the list of recently promoted ACPs to DCPs only buttresses the primordial ineptitude of the Chairman of the PSC.
“Inconsistencies trail the police promotion and the lists are deeply influenced by nepotism, favoritism and other immoral conducts, including execution of ethnic and religious agenda.
“Apart from padding the list of those made Assistant Inspector Generals and Commissioners of Police, the padding was glaringly the case in the promotion list of the 47 serving ACPs who were supposed to have been promoted to the rank of DCP. To their greatest shock and surprise, when the list came out through the IGP, seven ‘foreign’ names had been added to it.
“It must be made clear that the seven names smuggled into the list were not in the list of the original 47 officers slated for promotion.”
The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, a civil society, confirmed the anomalies in the police promotion, while identifying the names of the sidelined 17 officers.
The society’s Board Chairman, Emeka Umeagbalasi, Head of Democracy and Good Governance, Chinwe Umeche, Head of Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, Obianuju Igboeli, among others in a report stated that the PSC’s claims of sticking to ‘seniority’ are a hoax.
“Otherwise, how can it be validly explained that the same PSC had in its December 18, 2020 promotions elevated CP Joseph Egbunike to Police DIG.
“Going by PSC’s ‘seniority’ claims, if real, CP Egbunike who was ‘junior’ to a number of serving CPs and all the serving AIGs, should not have jumped from the rank of ‘CP’ to the rank of DIG.
“It was also discovered that the PSC’s recent promotions were not entirely based on ‘seniority’ as some were promoted outside the ‘seniority’ lists and at the whims and caprices of the PSC and NPF leaderships. The 18 December, 2020 promotions were padded.
“The 17 ACPs who were shut out despite completing their DCP promotion exams and being penciled down for promotion but dropped are: Eyitayo Olusegun, Abdul Yusuf, Ogbodo Ugbobueze, Nwokolo James, Ogbeun Ibiyinka, Ndukwe Felix, Olarenwaju Lennox, Ismaila Sa’adatu, Asmiya Irmya, Olabode Adeyeye, Udoette Cosmas, Gbiwen Francis, Afolabi Wilfred, Ehiede Ohiozoba, Oyakkhire, Eze Nnanna and Sani Abdul.
“Among the seven ‘junior’ ACPs who had their names smuggled into the list of those made new DCPs are: ACPs Mamman Giwa, Tahir Usman, Hassan K. Umar, Bangs K. Gombit, Echo E. Okpoziakpo, Cyriacus Enechukwu and Rosemary Collins.”
From the official police records sighted by SaharaReporters, Hassan K. Umar was promoted to ACP as recently as on May 30, 2018, before his strange elevation to DCP on December 18, 2020, while the rest were promoted to ACPs in various dates in 2017.
Meanwhile, the 17 officers that were shut out had their last promotions to ACP on separate dates in 2016.
“We demand, therefore, that the 17 officers in question (Eyitayo Omosayin and 16 others) should be captured for promotion,” the civil society noted.
The ‘NPF Senior Staff List: ACP-IGP’ of Wednesday, November 11, 2020, showed that those who were captured for promotion were not all given promotion allegedly due to the nepotism, bribery and corruption rocking the police headquarters and the PSC.
