The Federal Government has approved the reorganization of the Nigeria Police Force, NPF with immediate effect.
The reshaping exercise, according to Frank Mba, the Force Public Relations Officer, FPRO, also a Deputy Commissioner of Police, was aimed at curbing the threats posed by the changing faces of crimes and criminality in the country.
In addition to ensuring the full implementation of the federal government’s community policing initiative, the reorganization, Mba stressed, would include full autonomy of the Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB), creation of five additional Police Zonal Command Headquarters, as well as the decentralization of the Force Criminal Intelligence and Investigations Department, FCIID.
“By this re-organization,” Mba continued, “the FIB, which was previously a section under the FCIID, is now a full-fledged Department of the Force to be headed by a Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG). With this new arrangement, the Nigeria Police Force now has eight (8) Departments and each is headed by a DIG.”
The Departments are:
- Department of Finance and Administration
- Department of Operations
- Department of Logistics and Supply
- Force Criminal Investigations Department (FCID)
- Department of Training and Development
- Department of Research and Planning
- Department of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
- Force Intelligence Department
- Mba also announced that the federal government also approved the further decentralization of the FCID with the establishment of two additional offices in Enugu and Gombe States. And while the Enugu office is expected to take care of investigations of major crimes in the South-East and South-South geo-political zones, the Gombe office will cover the North-East geo-political zone. Each of these Annexes, DCP Mba further in addition to the pre-existing ones in Lagos and Kaduna States, shall be headed by an Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG) who shall report to the DIG in-charge of the FCID, Force Headquarters, Abuja.
Similarly, five new Zonal Command Headquarters have been created to complement the existing 12, making a total of 17 in the country. The 5 new Zonal Commands are: Akure (Ondo/Ekiti Commands), Awka (Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi), Yenagoa (Bayelsa, Rivers Commands), Maiduguri (Yobe, Borno Commands) and Katsina (Katsina, Kaduna Commands).
The Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Mohammed Adamu, thanked President Muhammadu Buhari, who is also the chairman of the Nigeria Police Council, NPC, and enthused that the reorganization would, among others, bring policing closer to the people, improve the response time of officers to incidents across the country and generally promote efficiency in service delivery.