This is coming after Fatai Owoseni, the ex Lagos state commissioner of police, says a police station in Nigeria gets N45,000 in three months as running cost, going down to N15,000 per month. Owoseni said this while addressing members of the Human Rights Defenders and Advocacy Centre, a civil society organisation, who staged a protest to his office in Ikeja. The group urged the federal government to probe the embezzlement of funds meant for fuelling of patrol vehicles, stationeries, uniforms and allowance for the Nigerian Police Force. The group had placards with inscriptions such as ‘No More Embezzlement of Police Funds’, ‘Why are Police Officers buying Uniforms by themselves?’ and ‘Junior Officers dey work, Senior Officers dey chop’.

Owoseni, who denied the embezzlement of police fund, said the group was protesting on the basis of ignorance. He said government could not be blamed for the low budgetary allocation to the police, as there were many other competing sectors to be catered to. “As a civil society organisation, you need to get your facts right and stop making false accusation or fight on the basis of ignorance,” he said. “Nobody is siphoning police fund, the budget is open. By the time you divide what is appropriated to the police force, it will amount to N45,000 to a police station in three months. What can N45,000 do to fund an Ikeja police station in three months? And you cannot blame government because there are other competing needs such as education, health, infrastructure and so on. It is difficult to fund security anywhere in the country; so, within what is available to the country as revenue, government will have to prioritise and we have been using our resources as best as we can to discharge our duties. So, it is a wrong accusation to say that the IG or the commissioners are siphoning police fund. We should be working to orientate the public on how to boost government revenue, so that allocations can come up.”