IG bars SPY policemen from wearing uniform

The Inspector-General of Police, Solomon Arase, has directed companies using Supernumerary Police nationwide to stop the use of police uniform for their operations on or before January 1, 2016.

This followed reports that Bassey Edet, the official driver of Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State, was wearing police uniform and posing as a police officer.

The state government had insisted that Edet was a SPY policeman, having attended Police Training School, Ikeja, Lagos State, with Force identification number, 1522.

The state Commissioner for Information and Communications, Mr. Aniekan Umanah, who displayed photocopies of Edet’s police identity card and certificates to journalists, argued   that he was a duly trained personnel of the police working with the state government.

But the IG, who gave the directive on Thursday at a meeting with security managers of firms using SPY Police for their internal security, said the measure was part of his administration’s renewed crime fighting strategy.

This, the IG said, was “aimed at curtailing the activities of criminally-minded persons who disguise in police uniform to perpetrate their nefarious activities.”

Arase said he had approved the use of a newly-designed grey and black trousers pair as the new uniform to be worn by SPY police officers nationwide, according to a statement by the Force Public Relations Officer, Olabisi Kolawole.

Meanwhile, the Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Boboye Oyeyemi, has assured that Nigeria will work towards the implementation of the Economic Community of West African States’s policy on axle load control not only in the country, but in other member countries.

Oyeyemi, who is the Chairman of the National Committee on the implementation of the ECOWAS policy on axle load control, said Nigeria would ensure that conducive environment for its implementation was created in the country to properly address issues of overloading both within and across the sub-regional roads.

“Nigeria is one of the signatories to the ECOWAS protocol on the implementation of the policy on axle load control; We must therefore make concerted efforts to ensure that the policy is effectively enforced in the country,” he stated at a stakeholders meeting in Abuja.