Dele Ogbodo in Abuja
The Police Service Commission (PSC), on Friday, said 800, 969 applicants who applied for openings in the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) failed the screening exercise across the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
A total of 911, 438 applicants applied for various positions in the 10, 000 advertised openings declared by government in May.
Briefing journalists in Abuja on the outcome of the screening test, the Chairman of the Commission, Mr. Mike Okiro, said 110, 469 applicants had been shortlisted to write aptitude tests on Monday August 22nd through Wednesday 24th next week.
He however said 115 applicants were arrested for breaches ranging from forged documents and impersonation, adding that they would be further interrogated and prosecuted in due course.
According to him, some applicants took the commission for granted as there were so many mis-match between date of births, year of graduation from secondary schools and University and certificates presented.
On the criteria used in screening, he said: “The commission adhered strictly to the requirements needed from the applicants in terms of qualifications and physical features as many of them fail to meet these requirements were therefore dropped.
“The reasons why some of the candidates were screened out include overage, alteration and falsification of forged documents, physical features, e.g height, chest, eye, bow/k-leg, tattoo marks, year of graduation, class of degree of diploma, certificate of origin of local government/state and first leaving certificate.”
According to him, the break-down of the 110, 469 applicants scheduled for the test are made up of 44,684 shortlisted for Cadet ASPs, 87, 736 for Cadet Inspectors and 205,830 for Constables.
Okiro said the recruitment would be transparent so as to give equal opportunities to all Nigerians who were desirous of pursuing a career in the NPF, adding further, that the commission would be guided by the rules to ensure that the process was merit driven.
In order to sustain integrity in the exercise, he said the commission had decided that questions for the aptitude tests would be known to the State Coordinators in the morning of each examination date.
He warned that state coordinators would be held responsible for any breach of conduct during the examination.
He said: “The commission has sent emails inviting all shortlisted applicants for the test. The master list for each state has also been sent to the State Commands and to be pasted at the Command Headquarters and the examination venues.”
