Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Alkali Usman, says the disbandment of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) has created a vacuum in the effort of the police to tackle criminality in the country.

He stated this at the Presidential Villa on Thursday during a briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team.

He also said that the aftermath of the #EndSARS protest dampened the morale of the personnel of the force.

According to the police boss, the regular policemen and women have not been able to immediately fill the vacuum created by the SARS disbandment even though efforts are ongoing to train them for the new role.

Usman said that the police had recorded successes against secessionists and criminals in the South-East but they could not be prosecuted and brought to justice because of the ongoing strike by judiciary workers.

On the plan to recruit 10,000 new police personnel, he said the process had reached 70 per cent, stressing that the exercise would stick to the federal character principle.

Speaking on the effort to check insecurity in zones, he said, “The security situation of the country has been significantly stabilised from time to time. But you see, if it is stabilised for a week, then there are isolated disturbances coming from this zone in terms of either attack on police facilities or police personnel or even all law enforcement agencies including the military.

“And therefore, we decided to one, ‘rejig’ the morale of our personnel, which has been a little bit dampened since the #EndSARS came and went away.

“With the proscription of SARS and the establishment of SWAT which has not been able to take off fully, we had a vacuum in tackling most of the violent crime from a position of strength in terms of having a strike force that is dedicated for that, rather than having our conventional police doing the policing in a conventional way.

“So, therefore, we try to marshal back this courage of our personnel who have been involved in violent crimes and they lecture them and posted them to the anti-robbery sections, for anti-robbery patrols and the investigation of violent-related crime which involved of course robbery, kidnapping, banditry, and cultism.

“Secondly, we decided to launch an operation which is tagged Operation Restore Peace and we targeted the South-East and South-South for the first phase of our operation.”

The acting IGP disclosed that the South-East and South-South zones had been reinforced with about 3,700 police personnel to tackle insecurity in the regions, which led to the recent launch of Operation Restore Peace.

He said, “We involved reinforcing these two zones with a total number of about 3,700 policemen drawn from our various units which include, police mobile force, the strike force, counterterrorism, the STS, IRT and these commands were imposed with this personnel with specific instructions, with an operation order that is targeted at stabilising the incessant attacks on police facilities, personnel, military and other violent crimes.

“The first operation in the South-East was done on the 18th of this month (May) in Enugu and we clearly stated our mission. We clearly stated our vision. And the six states in the South-East geopolitical zone came to Enugu.

“All the governors were represented by the deputy governors except one of Enugu, who personally participated. And we launched the operation.”

Usman disclosed that a total of 1,176 high profile criminals were arrested by the police from April 7, 2021 to date with a number of arms and ammunition recovered.

He said: “For record purpose, I can briefly mention our recoveries and the successes. They go as follows: in terms of recovery after the launching of this operation, we’ve been able to recover the following weapons and arms from secessionist and the armed insurgents.

“One general-purpose machine gun, 10 AK-47 rifles, nine locally-made fabricated rifles, four locally-fabricated pistols in 19 AK-47 magazines.

“We have recovered over 5,419 live ammunition with 10 improvised explosive devices.

“In terms of arrest, we have 398 armed robbery suspects in our custody, 258 cult-related offenders, 222 murder suspects, 202 bandits related matters and the 86 suspects involved in case of kidnapping.”