Senate Committee Grills IGP Over 3907 Missing Rifles, N1bn Contract Splitting

The Senate Public Account Committee (SPAC), has asked the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, to account for missing 3907 AK-47 rifles from various police formations across the country.

The IGP is also being asked to explain the circumstances leading to contract splitting and irregular award of procurement contracts to companies owned by a single individual, to the tune of N1.1 billion.

Documents revealed that the award of the contracts for the procurement or security equipment, violated provisions of the Public Procurement Act.

These and other infractions were contained in the annual audit report of the Auditor General for the Federation, which is being reviewed by the committee.

During the committee’s investigative hearing on Tuesday, presided over by Senator Peter Nwaebonyi, audit documents also revealed that the police paid for N924 million for contracts that were not executed.

Apart from the missing 3907 AK-47 police riffles, there were also 178,459 cases of missing ammunition to be accounted for.

However, IGP Egbetokun, who appeared before the committee, had to excuse himself to attend other “urgent security assignments” elsewhere, leaving behind AIG Abdul Suleiman to face the grill.

Citing security concerns, AIG Suleiman requested for the hearing to be conducted in private, a request the senators flatly turned down.

Senate members of the committee were alarmed by the missing forearms, amid the growing cases of armed attacks nationwide by non state actors and other criminal elements.

While reacting to the missing rifles, Senator Adams Oshiomhole (Edo North) said it’s dangerous to have that number of rifles in the hands of criminals, recalling the brutal killing of his Private Secretary when he was governor of Edo State.

According to him, investigation eventually revealed that the weapon that was used in killing the said aide was taken from police armoury.

Oshiomhole insisted that the police authorities must be ready to account for the missing firearms and to reveal the identities of police officers under whose custody the weapons got missing, stolen “or distributed to criminals.”

The senators said there might be a need to invite a former IGP Mohammed Abubakar Adamu, under whose watch most of the infractions took place between 2019 and 2020.

The committee also said it was not satisfied with the explanations offered by AIG Suleiman and his team, who claimed that they were not in their present positions at the time the infractions were committed.

Consequently, the committee ordered IGP Egbetokun to appear before it in person at 12pm on Monday, to offer detailed explanations on the anomalies, especially the missing rifles and how to trace them.

Senate Committee Grills IGP Over 3907 Missing Rifles, N1bn Contract Splitting is first published on The Whistler Newspaper