Police trainees alleged being extorted, phones collected

Juliana Francis

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The Executive Director of Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULACC), Okechukwu Nwanguma, has accused authorities at Police Training College, Nekede, Owerri, Imo State, of extorting the trainees.

Nwanguma got to know about this through a series of complaints received from some of the trainees.

The trainees were allegedly asked to pay for items, which were believed to have been taken care of by the federal government. According to them, those that dared to complain were punished.

Other security stakeholders and human rights activists, just like Nwanguma, said that training schools were the foundation for inculcating sound morale into the trainees, but that the place had turned into where corruption takes place.

Nwanguma said: “According to them, authorities at the Force Headquarters are not aware of what is going on and they want this brought to their attention for urgent intervention to save them from the oppressive and exploitative activities of the authorities of the Training school. According to the trainees, they had never received any kind of allowance but are still being extorted. At the last count, according to them, they are 445 in total.”

The trainees reportedly alleged: “Immediately we reported to the training school, we were ordered to drop our phones to the school authorities. That's the instruction across all the training schools, because of the insecurity. As such, the school now took advantage of the fact that we can't have access to our phones, which is a means of communication, to extort the trainees.”

They further alleged that they were asked to contribute N100 each for light, N100 each for water, N25,000 each for textbooks, N5000 each for trainees’ uniforms (Green and White), and N4000 each for fencing of the school, N1700 for Belt and Beret.

“All these payments were compulsory for all trainees,” they further alleged. “We have also been asked to prepare to pay for Handouts, Examination, Passing out, Police uniforms, Police accouterments, Shoes, Headgear, Belt, amongst others. The few of us that reported to our families when our families visited were severely punished.”

Nwanguma said: "The thing is clearly illegai and criminal, if the police authorities want to find out, they can,"