The Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, has attributed the inability of the Force to pay rent and duty tour allowances and other benefits to policemen to the paltry allocation to the Nigeria Police.

Abba stated that in 2014, N287bn was appropriated for personnel cost, but the money suffered a shortfall of N6.5bn and many police commands were unable to conclude payment of salaries, rent allowances, tax and cooperative deductions.

This, he noted, made it impossible to conclude the payment of personnel emolument in 2014.

This was contained in a document on the 2015 budget Defence presented by the IG to the Senate Committee on Police Affairs obtained by our correspondent in Abuja on Friday.

He said, “With respect to personnel cost, the reduction of the initial sum of N293,526,624,260 to N287,061,950,723 which gave rise to a shortfall of N6,464673,537 has made it impossible to successfully conclude the payment of personnel emolument in 2014.

“The 42 salary payment centres nationwide are having issues remitting on-payment deductions such as tax, cooperative deduction and also payment of rent allowances.”

According to him, out of N8.5bn appropriated for overheads expenditure in 2014, only N5.7bn was released and cash-backed out of which N500m was deducted at source for electricity bills.

The outstanding balance amounting to N2.7bn representing 33 per cent of the appropriation for overhead cost was not released, he added.