IN five weeks after the commencement of the recruitment of applicants into the Nigerian, approximately 295,000 applications have been received for 10,000 available spaces.
This was made known in a statement issued on Thursday by Ikechukwu Ani, spokesperson of the Police Service Commission, which is in charge of the recruitment exercise.
Ani stated that the online portal for the online recruitment exercise opened on November 30, 2018, and so far, a total of 294,851 applications have been received. The portal will be closed on Friday, January 11, 2019, “in line with the Federal Character requirement of six weeks to allow applicants time to apply.”
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A further breakdown, as given by the PSC spokesperson, showed that Niger State has the highest number of applicants of 17, 790, Kano has 16, 800 applicants, Katsina – 16, 666, Kaduna – 13, 882, Bauchi – 12, 652, and Adamawa – 11, 449. Bayelsa has a total of 1,797 applicants, Lagos State – 1,720 and Ebonyi – 2, 218.
The total number of male applicants was put at 255,189 while female applicants were 39,662.
Shortlisting of candidates that made it through the first round of screening will commence immediately the recruitment portal is closed. The shortlisted candidates will then be notified for further screening.
The massive number of applicants for police recruitment is not surprising given the increasing unemployment rate in Nigeria.
Latest figures by the National Bureau of Statistics put the unemployment rate in the country at 23.10 percent in the third quarter of 2018, up from 22.7 percent in the second quarter. Nigeria’s unemployment rate in 2015 when President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office was about 8.2 percent.
In 2017, Buhari directed the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris to recruit 10,000 fresh policemen and women every year, but Idris says Nigeria ought to be taking in at least 31,000 new personnel annually to be able to function optimally.