Following the appointment of Ibrahim Idris as the acting Inspector General of Police by President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday, seven Deputy Inspectors General of the Force as well as several Assistant Inspectors General are to be retired.
By convention, senior officers of the police or other armed step down if a junior colleague is appointed head of the force.
Mr. Idris was an assistant inspector general in charge of operations.
Currently, there are seven deputy inspectors general who worked under the retired IGP, Solomon Arase.
The DIGs are Danazumi Doma, in charge of Finance and Administration, Sotonye Wakama, in charge of Operations and Mamman Tsafe, who is in charge of Logistics and Supplies.
Others include, Kakwe Tsatso, Criminal Investigations and Intelligence; Hashimu Argungu, Training; Jubril Adeniji, Research and Planning; and Chintua Amajor-Onu, in charge of Information and Communication Technologies.
A source at the Force Headquarters, Abuja, told PREMIUM TIMES that apart from the DIGs, several Assistant Inspectors General, AIGs, will also resign.
“You know we have over 30 AIGs and most if not all would definitively go because they were senior to the Acting IG,” he said.
Our source added that most officers were in the dark regarding who will succeed Mr. Arase, including the retired IG himself because “there was no sign or signal as to who would emerge from the presidency as it used to be in the past” he said.
Sources in the presidency said Mr. Idris was selected to take over from Mr. Arase because he came tops in an “integrity check” conducted by the presidency in the quest to name a new IG.
Investigators found out that the new IG was living in a three bedroom mortgage flat in Abuja while the only other house he own was a modest personal house in his village in Niger state.
The new acting IG had on Tuesday, shortly after taking over from Mr. Arase, said the police under him would be guided by internationally acceptable standards.
He said the force will no longer tolerate the handling of complaints by citizens with levity, and will tackle internal corruption as a yardstick for overcoming the war on corruption within the country.
He said the force will provide forensic libraries in all the geopolitical zones of the country, as well as establish joint operation centers with other security agencies at all police commands.
Mr. Idris pledged his administration’s willingness to establish a criminal data base in police commands to enhance investigations into criminal matters and make working uniforms available to staff, in a bid to improve physical comportment of officers.
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