Police officers and men fighting insurgency in the North East, under the code name Operation Lafyia Doyle, are grumbling and flexing muscles over the refusal of the police authorities to pay their six months outstanding hazard allowances running into hundreds of millions of naira.
The fear in police cycle is that the money may have been embezzled by top police authorities, as no one seemed to be talking about any possible payment of the allowances despite promises to have the money paid.
A top police source who is conversant with the development, in the region, told our correspondent, on Monday that since January 2018, no police officer or personnel of the Police Mobile Unit deploy in the theatre of war has received any out of station or hazard allowance.
But in a swift reaction, Force Public Relations Officer (FPRO) Mr. Jimoh Moshood dismissed the claims saying that no police officer or personnel who served or serving in the counter insurgency team, in the North East was been owned a kobo.
“As far as I know, no police personnel who served or is serving in the North East is been owned any allowance,” he told our correspondent, in a telephone interview, on Monday.
He however promised to make further inquiries on the issue and furnish our correspondent more on the situation but never did up to the time of filling this report.
The source, who spoke to our correspondent, on the condition of anonymity, said that in March 2018, following complaints and grumbling by the police personnel in the North East, over apparent neglect by the police authorities, “the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Idris visited Maiduguri and promised to pay all outstanding allowances immediately but three months after the visit by the IGP, nothing has been paid”.
Our correspondent’s investigations revealed that some of the police officers and men who have served in the counter-insurgency team and redeployed out of the zone have also not been paid.
It was further gathered that even families of officers and men of the force who have been felled by the bullets of Boko Haram have also been left unattended to despite the hue and cries from family members of the diseased.
“We may never get our money,” one of the affected officers told our correspondent, last week adding that “throughout the period they served in Maiduguri and environs, our welfare was poor and no one really cared about us,” he said.
Besides the non-payment of the outstanding allowances, police sources said the food rations and other provisions supplied to the police at the battle ground are insufficient.
“Sometimes we have to augment our food supplies from our pockets because what is given to us by the police authorities is not enough. This kill our morale because we risk our lives to protect this nation and yet those who are supposed to appreciate what we do sit down in Abuja and care less about what happen to us. This is not right,” one of the sources said.
