Ohanaeze Calls For Review Of Recent Police Promotion

The Ohanaeze Ndigbo, on Christmas day, says the recent promotion into various echelons of the Nigeria Police, especially the rank of police commissioner, where Southeast got one slot out of thirty-seven, makes ‘the Southeast the whipping-boy of the country’. The apex Igbo socio-cultural organization therefore called for a review of the promotions ‘in the spirit of fair play, equity and justice’.

The organization, in a release by Chief Emeka Attamah, special adviser on media to the president general of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, also regretted that all police commissioners serving in the region came from the North.

According to the release, made available to THE WHISTLER in Awka, “A cursory look at the list shows that Northwest zone has 12 new commissioners of police, Northeast, eight; Southwest, seven; Southsouth, five; Northcentral, four, while predictably Southeast brought up the rear with just one new commissioner.

“Ohanaeze Ndigbo observes that the already existing imbalance in the force exemplified in the fact that all police commissioners in the Southeast come from the North; and [that] not many Igbo officers are in the high echelon of the force should have made it imperative that more slots be given to the Southeast.

“Ohanaeze Ndigbo is irked that the already depleted Southeast population in the force deserved only one slot, and unequivocally condemns and rejects this provocative act of marginalization. Ohanaeze frowns at this propensity of ensuring that Igbo land is constantly under siege by having security heads from zones other than the Southeast in charge of security in the zone. It also rejects the unending and unnerving tendency of making the Southeast the whipping-boy of the country in all matters of recruitments and appointments at the federal level.

“Ohanaeze Ndigbo notes that while this habit of exclusion and denial has been the stock in trade of successive governments over the years, the preponderance of the marginalization in the present dispensation is unimaginable. What is more worrisome is the gross impunity with which these despicable acts are being perpetrated towards a people that are the mainstay of Nigeria’s unity and development.”