The Presidency has said it has not fixed any date for the appointment of a new Inspector General of Police to succeed the current holder of the office, Mohammed Adamu who, Monday, reached the mandatory 60-year-retirement age.
There have been various calls from Nigerians to announce a new IGP in line with the Police Act, just as others believed the president has the prerogative to extend its tenure.
But featuring on Channels Television programme Monday and monitored by our reporter in Abuja, presidential spokesman, Malam Garba Shehu, said he wasn’t aware of any imminent announcement, saying however that the appointment of the next IGP would be devoid of ethnic or tribal coloration.
He said: “The President returns to Abuja on Tuesday. He should be on his desk by Wednesday. I don’t know when he will do this.
“One thing I can assure you is that in places sensitive like that, there is no vacuum that will subsist, so therefore the system will take care of itself.
“The President will rather have an Inspector-General of Police who will make you and I safer, protect life and property than one who is more pronounced by his tribal marks.
“If you are going to appoint the service chiefs from every ethnic group in this country, you are going to have more than 250 Inspectors-General of Police, 250 Chief of Army Staff, 250 Chief of Naval Staff. It’s not going to work like that. And they have their own systems of producing leadership.
“If we say we are going to use ethnicity or region as the basis, then we have lost it. This is about law and order; it is not about ethnic identity. This country finished with tribalism in the 1960s, why are we back to it now?
“But if you have two, three positions – look at what happened with the Service Chiefs just appointed: two from the South, two from the North. If you are talking about religion, two Muslims, two Christians. So what do you want again?” Shehu queried.
The presidential spokesman further assured the appointment would be strictly based on competence and merit.
