The Senate on Tuesday expressed dissatisfaction over a total of 3,907 assault riffles and pistols allegedly missing from the amoury of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), telling the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, that the Police must account for the missing arms and ammunition.
The Senate expressed dismay that IGP Egbetokun could not give satisfactory answers to the audit query on the 3,907 assault rifles declared missing across Police formations throughout Nigeria. Egbetokun appeared on Tuesday before the Senate Public Accounts Committee (SPAC) to answer the Auditor General for the Federation (AuGF) on “loss of firearms and ammunition.”
The query was raised by the Auditor-General of the Federation in the 2019 Annual audited report. The Auditor-General’s report also disclosed that a total of 178,459 firearms were missing as at December 2018, out of which 88, 078 were AK-47 riffles.
According to the representative of the AuGF, Olu Samuel Godwin, the audit report for 2019 observed from “the review of arms movement register, monthly returns of arms and ammunition and ammunition register at the armoury section revealed that the total number of lost firearms as reported as at December 2018 stood at 178,459 pieces.”
The Auditor-General said records obtained from Force Armament at the Force Headquarters showed that 21 Police Mobile Force (MPF) Squadron, Abuja did not report a single case of missing firearms whereas schedule obtained from the same Police department showed a total number of forty six missing arms between 2000 and 2019.
In response , the Police instead accounted for missing rifles as far back as 1998, and couldn’t go beyond providing convincing answers for 15 out of the missing 3,907 riffles contained in the Auditor-General’s report.
The Police subsequently pleaded for a closed session, a request that was roundly turned down by the Senate Committee.
The Police then pleaded for more time to conduct a thorough investigation into the matter and revert to it.
