Abia CP wants to deny us promotion, rage senior police officers

Senior police officers attached to the Abia State Police Command have lamented the delay by the state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Anthony Ogbizi, in signing their Annual Performance Evaluation Report (APER) Forms for their due promotion.

This is even as they alleged that Ogbizi was trying to deny them the promotion with the delay. 

The policemen said the promotion was meant for those confirmed as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) in 2014, promoted as Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in 2015, and those promoted to Superintendent of Police (SP) in 2014 respectively. 

They alleged that their APER Forms were supposed to be signed and submitted to Force Headquarters, Abuja on or before March 30, but with Ogbizi seeming reluctance to pen his signatures to the forms, they feared they might miss this opportunity.

Some of  the policemen, who spoke with our correspondent on condition of anonymity, claimed that their  forms had been sent to Ogbizi since October last year, even before the arrival of the signal from Abuja, warning that the forms be submitted on March 30. 

One of the policemen noted: “Signal was brought since the first of this month that Abia State Police Command should bring its APER Forms before 30th of March. Since that day, we have been going to the command, to ensure the forms were signed, but the CP just dumped them somewhere. He needs to sign and send them to the Assistant-Inspector-General of Police (AIG), to sign before sending same to Force Headquarters, Abuja. His delay in signing is causing us a lot of anxieties. Other commands have done something about this, but our CP just sat on our forms. 

"This is something that deals with the welfare of his personnel. Every day he keeps saying that he was in one conference or another. He said he would take his time, we shouldn’t disturb him. Soon, this month will come to an end. The forms have been with him since October 2017, but he refused to attend to them. Why does he want to deprive us of our promotion? Didn't we work for it? Are we supposed to beg for what is due to us? We want the highest authorities to hear us and come to our aid.”

When contacted on the issue via text message, Ogbizi said that the APER Forms will be ready by Friday (today) as he has given directives to the Deputy Commissioner of Police, in charge of Administration (DC Admin), on the matter. 

He said: “I have delegated the DCP Admin to sign them, and he said he will be through with them by Friday. You can meet him for further information please."