Over 100,000 policemen assigned to VIPs — EU report

More than 100,000 officers of the Nigeria Police Force are currently deployed to protect politicians and other Very Important Persons, raising concerns over inadequate security coverage for ordinary citizens, a new report has revealed.

The report, published in November 2025 by the European Union Agency for Asylum, noted that the Nigeria Police Force has an estimated strength of 371,800 officers serving a population of about 236.7 million people.

It stated that the country’s policing deficits are worsened by the diversion of a significant portion of available personnel to VIP protection rather than community policing and crime prevention.

The report said, “Both recent sources and sources dating back as far as 2007 claimed that the NPF had an estimated strength of 371,800, serving a total population estimated in 2024 at 236,747,130.

“The resulting shortage in police personnel was compounded by the fact that more than 100,000 police officers were assigned to the protection of politicians and VIPs, rather than to tasks serving the general population.”

The EU agency said manpower shortages, corruption, and limited resources have led to slow emergency response times and left many communities with little or no police presence.

“This shortage in manpower, as well as corruption and insufficient resources, has resulted in delayed responses to crimes and numerous communities being left without protection,” the report stated.

It further noted that weak accountability mechanisms have enabled unprofessional conduct among some officers, including arbitrary arrests, extortion, and excessive use of force.

“With reliable accountability mechanisms lacking, there were reports of police officers engaging in misconduct, including arbitrary arrests, extortion of money and excessive use of violence,” it added.

Efforts to reach the Force Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin, for comment were unsuccessful, as calls and messages sent to him were not responded to at the time of filing this report.

The deployment of police officers to private individuals and political office holders has remained a longstanding concern.

In June 2023, shortly after assuming office, the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, ordered the withdrawal of Police Mobile Force operatives from VIP duties, saying the tactical unit would be reserved strictly for strategic national operations.

He issued a similar directive in April 2025, ordering a nationwide withdrawal of mobile police officers attached to VIPs.

Despite these directives, the report indicates that a significant portion of police manpower continues to be used for VIP protection.

In August, President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Policy and Coordination and Head of the Central Delivery Coordination Unit, Hadiza Bala-Usman, called for an end to the deployment of policemen as personal guards to VIPs.

Bala-Usman argued that elite protection should no longer come at the expense of national security.

 “One of the most disturbing things for me is when VIPs arrive somewhere with so many policemen trailing them, while the areas that actually need security are left unattended,” she said. “We cannot continue to deploy police trained for anti-terrorism operations just to guard individuals in Ikoyi. That is completely wrong.”

“We must free our policemen to do national security as required. Whoever feels too important and wants machine gun-wielding personnel protecting him should go and hire a private security company with the necessary documentation, not take our mobile policemen,” she added.

She called for a review of the Police Act to enable private security to take up “some of the work we are forcing our security agencies to do.”

“We must free our security agencies to do what they need to do. So that Act needs to be amended. I’ve put it among the deliverables that we need to track, because VIP protection, there’s a wide gamut of security deployment that really should not be done by our security personnel. We must free them for them to do national security as required,” she declared.(Punch)