N2.7 million bribe recovered from as­sistant commissioner

The fight against impu­nity and misconduct among men and offic­ers of the Nigeria Police Force by the Complaint Response Unit (CRU) has taken a new dimension.

This is even as the unit has arrested a serving As­sistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) for receiving bribe to the tune of N2.7 million.

The money was recovered from him.

The Officer in Charge of the CRU, Abayomi Shogunle, an Assistant Commissioner of Police, disclosed this while pre­senting the third quarter report of the unit in Abuja.

Even though the head of the CRU did not mention the name of the arrested ACP, he explained that the recovery of the money and subsequent ar­rest of the suspect followed a complaint made to his unit through a telephone call.

While reiterating that nec­essary disciplinary procedures were currently ongoing against the arrested officer, Shogun­le disclosed that the case had since been handed over to the relevant anti-corruption agen­cies for thorough investigation and subsequent prosecution.

“The bribe money was re­covered from the ACP after the case was referred to the X-Squad for necessary action in line with the directive issued by the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, that X-Squad be included as part of CRU re­sponding agents,’’ he said.

He, however, disclosed that between July and September this year, the unit resolved 324 cases out of the 405 complaints it received from members of the public against the police.

According to him, 51 of the cases reported during the peri­od under review were found to be false, while 30 are still pend­ing.

Shogunle further revealed that the Rivers State Police Command topped the state ranking with a total of 78 cas­es, followed by Lagos with 72 and FCT with 48 cases.

“The Quarter 3 report shows that over half of the com­plaints against the police came from four state commands – Rivers, Lagos, FCT and Anam­bra, which accounts for 55.06 percent of complaints during the period under review,” he explained.

Six states including Bauchi, Jigawa, Katsina, Kebbi, Osun and Sokoto, he revealed, had no single complaint reported against the police, reiterating that, “Kebbi had continued to remain the only command with no complaint made against the police since the inception of the unit in November 2015.

“The sharp reduction in complaints against the police during the period under review was linked to the fact that Ni­gerian Police officers were be­coming more professional,” he disclosed.