As the Nigeria Police Force commences its nationwide recruitment, former Commissioner of Police in Rivers State and now an Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Joseph Mbu, is appealing to the Federal Government to rehabilitate police colleges.
This, he believes, would assist the new recruits in proper training ahead of the challenges they would meet in the course of their duties and responsibilities.
Mbu is remembered for giving former Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers and now Minister of Transport a tough time in the state while Amaechi had a running battle with former President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Patience.
The AIG made this appeal on Sunday arguing that the recruitment is worthless without sound facilities for the beneficiaries to train.
Over the years, there had been several appeals for the police colleges to be upgraded and strengthened, but successive governments had done only little or nothing in this regard.
With the recruitment process for 10,000 new police officers, Mbu, who said the police colleges are in utter decay’, thinks the colleges should be renovated.
He said hostels, lecture halls and other necessary facilities in the colleges were in very poor conditions, adding that the there are not enough teaching and non-teaching staff in the colleges.
He said the problems are in all the police colleges in the country.
"Our police colleges, both senior and junior are in very bad state. Most of the structures you see there are dilapidated and the issue of poor staffing is also there.
"Recruitment exercise into various cadres in the force has begun, but the major lacuna will be where to train the recruits;
"We need good facilities and atmosphere to make them better policemen.
"You cannot start exposing recruits by making them pay money indirectly for one thing or the other when ideally the government is supposed to provide everything for them," he said while appealing to the President to set up a special committee to examine the problems and put the colleges in sound shape.
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