The Senate Committee on Police Affairs stressed on Friday that nobody is on trial as far as the question of missing rifles in 2019 audit report to that effect is concerned.

In an expanded BBC Hausa Service interview, (https://www.bbc.com/hausa/bbc_hausa_radio/programmes/p030s4mp) Senator Abdulhamid Ahmed Mallam-Madori, the Chairman of the committee said such a statement is important from the point of view of institutional integrity of the Nigerian Police especially in view of the security challenges facing the country.

Mallam-Madori explained that it is the standard procedure for the head of any institution connected with such an audit report to appear before the public accounts committee of the Senate.

“It is, therefore, neither about the arithmetical accuracy of missing or not missing rifles nor about the current IGP, Kayode Egbetokun who was not even the IGP in 2019 when the audit report was undertaken,” he said.

Mallam-Madori insisted that the background is important so that the issue about the audit report is not reduced to any individual office holders or a particular institution but about standard procedures in dealing with such reports.

He argued that the Nigerian Police is doing its best with very limited resources and commended IGP Kayode Egbetokun for reforms being carried out. The committee chairman insisted that it is not possible for such a number of rifles to be said to be missing and nobody is called from the institution involved to explain what might have happened.

“The procedure has been there and will always be there and it cannot be reduced to the moment when it is being applied”, he also said.

He cautioned against wild interpretations that could produce unintended consequences for larger national security dynamics, adding that this is the moment in Nigeria when everyone must be concerned and mindful of national integrity.