The Inspectors, Rank and File of the Nigeria Police, Imo state command, may commence strike action in November if their demands are not addressed.
Rising from a crucial meeting in Benin, Edo State, some delegates of the officers said if their requests were not addressed by the police authorities, they would commence an indefinite strike action, adding that they would have commenced the action this October, but for the Muslim celebrations of Ei –del- Kabir.
Their demands include the reversion of the mass recent transfer of officers, numbering about 100 from the cadre of Inspectors, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) and the Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) to the troubled areas in the far north on what they called “Political reasons”, allegedly master minded by the compilation done by the Imo state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Muhammad Musa Katsina.
They also alleged that some Inspectors had spent about eight years and 30 years without promotion, a situation they regarded as “Monkey dey work, Baboon de chop”, warning that they were tired of the sufferings.
Said one of the aggrieved officers: “Since the Presidency, the Chairman of the Police Service Commission, Mr. Mike Okiro, the Minister of Police Affairs, Caleb Olubolade and Inspector General of Police, Abubakar Mohammed, refused to listen to us we are going to fight for ourselves by resolving to embark on strike in November”.
They said the mass transfer of the officers from Imo has left the state to be porous resulting in armed robbers and criminals attacking their members in the state with ease, regretting that recently, three officers were attacked in Ngor Opkala Local Council of the state, sustaining various degrees of injuries as there were no enough man power to guide them. “We are now vulnerable to criminals,” they said.