B’Haram: Police to stop salaries of 30 missing policemen

Salaries of the missing 30 mobile policemen in Borno State would be stopped by April 2015, if the men failed to show up at their squadron units, sources told our correspondent. The policemen were declared missing in August after an attack on the Police Training School, Gwoza, Borno State, by Boko Haram insurgents. Investigations by our correspondent indicated that the missing personnel might be given up for dead if they did not report to their commanding officers by the end of the first quarter of the New Year. It was however learnt that the missing police personnel would be declared dead formally after seven years. About 159 personnel drawn from Mopol 50, Abuja; Mopol 38, Akwanga and Mopol 58, Lafia, Nasarawa State, were undergoing training at the school when Boko Haram gunmen attacked them on August 20,2014, killing some and seizing their arms and ammunition. A number of the policemen escaped but 30 of them are yet to be accounted for, three months after the incident. Though the Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, had expressed hope that the men might be alive but he was silent on the efforts being made to search for them. Our correspondent learnt that the salaries of the affected personnel might be suspended if their emolument forms were not submitted to the officers-in-charge of the Mechanised Salary Sections, who process police salaries. It was learnt that the emolument forms had been given to the rank and file to be filled and submitted before the end of the year. Findings indicated that any backlog salaries of the missing officers would be paid the moment they show up to fill the emolument form. “The salaries of the missing officers are still being paid for now, but by April next year, it would be stopped because they did not fill the emolument forms that would ensure the continuous payment of their salaries,” a police source said. One of the MOPOL commandants in Abuja was said to have giving money to family members of some of the missing policemen recently when they complained of hardships they encountered in accessing the bank accounts of their missing breadwinners. “I was there when the commander gave out N50,000 to each of the women to assist them because of the hardship they are facing since their husband went missing at Gwoza; you know that some men don’t open up to their wives about their finances, so you can understand what the women are going through,” the source stated. But the Force Public Relations Officer, Emmanuel Ojukwu, in a text message, said it was not true that the salaries of the personnel would be stopped, noting that “they are only presumed dead after seven years.”