The Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, came under fire on Tuesday when the Senate vehemently expressed dissatisfaction with the Force’s inability to adequately explain 178,459 firearms, assault rifles and pistols missing from its armoury.
The Auditor-General’s report also disclosed that a total of 178,459 firearms were missing as at December 2018, out of which 88,078 were AK-47 riffles.
The Senate is insisting that the police must account for the arms and ammunition.
The Senate expressed dismay at the loss of such a huge number of assault rifles across police formations nationwide when Egbetokun appeared before the Senate Public Accounts Committee (SPAC) to answer the Auditor-General for the Federation (AuGF) on “loss of firearms and ammunition” could not give satisfactory answers to the audit query.
Matters went south for the police boss when the representative of the AuGF, Olu Samuel Godwin, opened up on the audit report for 2019.
Godwin reported: “The review of arms movement register, monthly returns of arms and ammunition and ammunition register at the armoury section revealed that the total number of lost firearms as reported as at December 2018 stood at 178,459 pieces.”
The Auditor-General’s report also disclosed that a total of 178,459 firearms were missing as at December 2018, out of which 88,078 were AK-47 riffles.
According to the Auditor-General, records obtained from Force Armament at the Force headquarters showed that 21 Police Mobile Force Squadron, Abuja did not report a single case of missing firearms whereas schedule obtained from the same police department showed a total number of 46 missing arms between 2000 and 2019.
In response, the police instead accounted for missing rifles as far back as 1998.
The police could not go beyond providing convincing answers for 15 out of the missing 3,907 riffles contained in the Auditor-General’s report.
After the police plea for a closed session failed to impress the Senate Committee, the team pleaded for more time to conduct a thorough investigation.
