Nigeria Police budget can’t pay salaries of officers, IG laments

The IG decried the decrease in police allocation despite the security challenges

The Inspector-General of Police, IGP, Mohammed Abubakar, says the Nigeria Police may not be able to pay the salaries of its personnel in 2014 due to a shortfall of N14.4 billion in the  personnel cost.

Speaking on Tuesday in Abuja at the 2014 budget Defence in the Senate, the IG said the budget office earmarked N279 billion for personnel cost against N293 billion required to pay the police personnel.

Mr. Abubakar lamented the steady decline in budgetary allocations for overhead to the police in spite of the increasing security challenges it had to contend with.

The IG added that the slight increase in the capital expenditure in the 2013 budget was because of the injection of constituency projects.

He, however, noted that out of the N14 billion appropriated for capital expenditure in 2013, only N10.9 billion was released.

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Police, Paulinus Igwe (PDP- Ebonyi) expressed concerns over the reduction in the budgetary allocation for personnel cost particularly at this time of growing insecurity in the country.

He said the committee would assist the police in any way it could.

(NAN)