The Police Service Commission has denied marginalisation in police promotion.

The PSC claimed that no part of Nigeria was marginalised in promoting officers of the Nigeria Police Force.

The Head of Press and Public Relations of the commission, Ikechukwu Ani, disclosed this in a statement.

He said promotion in the police was guided by defined rules and regulations that had nothing to do with ethnic or religious considerations.

Mr. Ani said the commission had sanitised recruitment, promotion, and discipline in the force and ensured that established rules and regulations govern the process.

According to him, it is on record that the commission contributed to ensuring sanity in the recruitment of qualified Nigerians into the police where the principle of federal character is considered alongside merit.

“The commission is a product of the 1999 Constitution as amended and further consolidated by the Police Service Commission (Establishment) Act, 2001.

“It met, at inception in 2001, a recruitment process that needed to be made more transparent and inclusive through respect for the federal character principles,” he said.

In December, Peoples Gazette reported President Muhammadu Buhari’s plot to deprive a southern police officer Moses Jitoboh of assuming the inspector-general position, which he had reserved for northerners since 2015.

The Gazette cited plots by the president to appoint Dasuki Galadanchi from Kano instead. 

The report said Mr. Galadanchi, a police commissioner at the time of the report, would be promoted to the position of AIG to favour him for the position of inspector-general.

Mr. Galadanchi was suddenly promoted as an AIG in January to make him a qualified candidate to rival Mr. Jitoboh, who is from Bayelsa.

Although only Messrs, Jitoboh and Galandachi meet the legal requirement of having four years left in service and being of AIG’s rank, some other police chiefs were rumoured to be in contention.

A police source told the Gazette that AIGs Umar Garba, Ali Janga, Habu Sani and Zaki Ahmed were in the race. 

Dan-Mallam Mohammed was the only DIG said to be in the race, although both he and the four other AIGs have less than four years to retirement, which is a ground for disqualification under the amended police law.