Police Affairs Minister says N871bn grossly inadequate to execute Mandate

By Christiana Ekpa

The Minister of police affairs Muhammad Dingyadi, on Tuesday said the N871 billion allotted the ministry and its in the 2023 budget was grossly inadequate to execute their mandate.

The Minister who stated this at joint budget defence before the joint House of Representatives and Senate Committee on Police said, despite the outcry for the 2022 budget, there was no significant improvement in the 2023 budgetary provisions.

He said, out of the total budget of N871 billion earmarked for the ministry and its agencies, only N3 billion was given to the ministry, while Nigerian Police Force, and Nigerian Police Trust Fund gets N805 billion and N57 billion respectively.

The minister who also decried the sum of N5 billion allocated to Police Academy Wudil, said for the ministry to carry out its mandate of ensuring adequate security of lives and property in Nigeria, then its budget should be increased.

Speaking on 2022 budget performance, Dingyadi said: “You’re aware of the mandate of the ministry of police affairs. In order to achieve our mandate, resources were provided for us in the 2022 budget for personnel overhead and capital expenditure.

“For purposes of implementation, actual releases in the main ministry for 2022 budget as at date, N1.7 billion. Out of this, the sum of N291 million has been released for overhead and N1.4 billion for capital respectively.

“The released capital funds have largely been utilised to carry out critical programmes while procurement processes for capital projects are still ongoing.

“The ministry to carry out its mandate of ensuring adequate security of lives and property in Nigeria, the provisions proposed for this task in the year 2023 particularly for the main ministry and Police Academy Wudil are considered inadequate.

“While we appreciate the innovation the parliament has taken to fund the police in the areas of fueling of vehicles, and so on, we look up at this point to intervene and improve the funding for the implementation of our mandate.”

Halliru Jika and Bello Kumo, the chairman and co-chairman of the joint committee commended the minister on his efforts to achieve the ministry’s mandate and called for a closed-door sessions, stating that security budget is not subjected to public scrutiny for security reasons.