More than 3,907 firearms and ammunition have been declared missing from the armouries of the Nigeria Police Force.
This came to fore on Tuesday as the Senate Public Accounts Committee grilled the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun on the failure of the police authorities to respond to queries contained in the Auditor General’s Report 2019.
The Senators have therefore ordered the Nigeria Police Force to account for the missing arms and ammunitions.
The report had it that over 3,907 firearms, mostly assault rifles were unaccounted for despite attempts by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation (AuGoF) to get explanations from the police authorities.
Vice Chairman, Senate Public Accounts Committee, Senator Onyekachi Nwaebonyi, who presided over the session, said the response given by the police during the meeting was unsatisfactory.
Nwaebonyi observed that the issue of missing arms and ammunitions was a serious one because the firearms were purchased with public funds and the least the Police should do is to account for the missing items properly.
He asked the IGP and his team to go back and do a proper audit of their armoury with a view to tracking down the missing arms and identifying who took them and under what circumstances.
He charged the police team to return to the committee on a Monday at 12 noon with a comprehensive report on the missing firearms.
Nwaebonyi said that given the state of insecurity in the country, the report that such a large cache of arns and ammunition were missing was worrisome. He said that even the Police should be worried as such arns nay have ended up in the hands of criminals, thereby compounding the challenge of insecurity.
Earlier, the Public Accounts Committee had deliberated on two other querries lodged against the Nigeria Police Force. These included the query on irregularities in the award abd execution of contract for the procurement of security equipment worth N1.136 bn and payment of the sum of N924, 985, 000 for contracts not executed.
The committee took time to grill the police team on both counts but later discharged them after they offered sone explanations.