Hyacinth Chinweuba
In a major restructuring and in line with efforts at addressing threats posed by the dynamics of crimes in the country and the full implementation of the Federal Government Community Policing initiative, the Federal Government has approved the reorganization of the Nigeria Police Force.
This reorganization includes full autonomy of the Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB), creation of five additional Police Zonal Command Headquarters and the decentralization of the Force Criminal Intelligence and Investigations Department (FCIID).
According to Frank Mba, Force Public Relations Officer, “By this re-organization, 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 and Force Criminal Investigations.
Others are Department (FCID), Department of Training and Development, Department of Research and Planning, Department of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Force Intelligence Department.
The Federal Government also approved the further decentralization of the FCID with the establishment of two additional offices in Enugu and Gombe States. While the office in Enugu is expected to take care of investigations of major crimes emanating from the South-East and South-South geo-political zones, the office in Gombe will take care of the North-East geo-political zone. Each of these Annexes, 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.
In a similar vein, five (5) new Police Zonal Command Headquarters have been created for the Nigeria Police Force in addition to the hitherto existing twelve (12) Zonal Command Headquarters. This makes a total of seventeen (17) Zonal Command Headquarters in the country. The five (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, IGP M.A Adamu, while thanking President, Muhammadu Buhari, who is also the Chairman of the Nigeria Police Council, expressed confidence that the reorganization will further bring policing closer to the people, improve the response time of the Police to incidents across the country and generally promote efficiency in service delivery.