Nigeria’s top cop Mohammed Dahiru Abubakar has fallen out of favour with the Presidency and may not be allowed to remain on the job till July when he is supposed to retire from the service, News Express has learnt.

Abubakar has been lobbying for the extension of his service till after the 2015 general elections but well-connected police sources revealed to News Express that he may not even be allowed to stay beyond next month.

“There will be a tsunami in the police soon. The IGP may be removed in March,” a source told News Express.

The source said it was instructive that the statement announcing last week’s redeployment of 13 Commissioners of Police was issued by the Police Service Commission and not by the Police Headquarters. “In normal times, the statement should have come from the IGP’s office,” the source said.

News Express reports that Abubakar stands accused of ethnicising the force by favouring northern Muslim officers while tactfully weeding out Igbo officers, in particular. Just last Monday, a frontline rights group, the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Intersociety), had petitioned President Goodluck Jonathan, the National Assembly and the Federal Character Commission on the dangers posed by Abubakar’s deliberate exclusion of Ndigbo from producing police top officers in the next 10 years.

“In view of the foregoing Mr. President, we demand for your immediate intervention and ordering of full scale and conclusive investigation into the promotion and posting policy of the present Nigeria Police Force,” Intersociety had said in its explosive petition, adding:

“On account of our demand for Mr. President’s full scale investigation, it is our further demand that a thorough shake up should be carried out in the NPF command hierarchy, which will include mass retirement of all serving DIGs and AIGs so as not only to pave way for injection of new blood in the NPF command hierarchy, but also to put in place geopolitically oriented policy for future promotions and postings.”

•Photo shows IGP Abubakar.

Update news