Ondo 2020: Again, police officers lament non-payment of allowances

Some police officers that participated in the gubernatorial election that was held in Ondo state on October 10, 2020 have called on President Muhammadu Buhari, the governors in the Southwest and members of  the National Assembly to prevail on the Inspector General of Police, Mr Muhammed Adamu and other top police authority to pay their allowances for the said election without further delay.

The affected officers are those that were deployed as supplementary officers from the Southwest states including Oyo, Ogun, Ekiti, Osun and Lagos, to assist those that had earlier been deployed and categorized as Batch ‘A’ for the said election.

This will be the second time within two months after the Ondo governorship election was held that the affected officers would be lamenting over non-payment of their allowances.

The officers , who confided in Mega Icon Magazine, were surprised that despite repeated demands and appeal made to the police headquarters, no signal whatsoever on when the allowances would be paid and the reason for the delay in the payment.

Their spokesperson who has just been promoted to the rank of Superitendent of Police and spoke on condition of anonymity disclosed that the affected officers were subjected to a lot of hardship before, during and after the said election as a result of non payment of their allowances.

According to him, “all of us that were affected were deployed to Ondo as supplementary officers to those that were in Batch ‘A’ recruited for that election. Before we went for this special assignment, we were asked to submit our individual account number with code number which we did with a promise to credit our account.

“When we got to Ondo, we spent our personal money to eat, securing hotel accommodation and all sort of things, while those of us who could not afford hotel accommodation had to sleep outside. Some of our colleagues had an accident on the road and died. Some had health challenges and could not afford medical bills. Yet, our boss at the headquarters are not ready to listen to our plight. Is this not part of the corruption we are talking about in this country”, the officer queried.

On the claim by the police authority that those that have not been paid their allowances had discrepancies in their account details, the spokesperson described the claim as blatant lie, stressing that they were only saying that as an excuse not to pay their allowances when they know that they could not speak because they don’t have union that would fight for them.

Meanwhile, efforts made by our reporter to reach the Force Public Relations Officer (FPRO), Mr. Frank Mba for comments were unsuccessful as messages to his phone via WhatsApp were not responded to.