Obinna Odogwu, Abakaliki

The Ebonyi State Police Command, on Wednesday, disclosed that cases of certificate forgery, age falsification, and other similar crimes have been recorded in the ongoing police recruitment screening exercise going on in the command headquarters, Abakaliki.

The command’s spokesperson, Mrs Loveth Odah, an Assistant Superintendent of Police, made this disclosure at the Officers’ Mess, venue of the screening exercise while fielding questions from newsmen shortly after the inspection exercise carried out by the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Research and Planning (South East zone), DIG Val Ntomchukwu.

This was even as the Police Service Commission (PSC) vowed to prosecute all suspects who’re found wanting in the ignoble act as soon as the screening exercise and all others processes were concluded.

Odah, however lamented that there was poor turnout of the prospective candidates for the job especially the females, revealing that out of 1,303 candidates allotted to the state, a very few had come forward.

“There is poor turnout of candidates; people are not coming out. On Monday which was the beginning about 262 were screened. But I think we were able to screen only 180 because the people are not coming. They keep on calling their names but they’re not there.

“Sometimes we see people with falsified, cheap certificates; some people with overage, differences in their date of birth in their certificates. Again, I found out that most of the girls here are short. Height matters here”, she said.

The Deputy Director of Police Service Commission, Mr Brighten Saagwe, a lawyer, assured that the commission will not tolerate any form of comprise on the laid down standard.

“At this stage, we always give the certificate the face value. When they have written their exams and are successful, while they are in the training school, we do certificate verification behind them and the moment we discover, we don’t just take you out, we will prosecute you.

“If you have been following the trend of the previous police recruitments, you will discover that those that are caught in the certificate scam are prosecuted. We don’t make noise about it because if we tell them now, they will run away”, he said.

Meanwile, DIG Ntomchukwu, assured that merit would be enthroned in the entire processes assuring that there would be no preferential treatment on any candidate irrespective the social standing of their family.