President Bola Tinubu will tomorrow formally swear in Tunji Disu as the substantive Inspector-General of Police (IGP) at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
As the new IGP takes office, the Nigeria Society for Criminology (NSC) urged him to decentralise tactical squads to zonal commands for efficiency and proactive response to crime.
The oath-taking ceremony is scheduled to hold during the weekly meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC), the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, disclosed to State House correspondents, yesterday.
Notably, Disu will not appear before the Senate for confirmation, marking a shift from previous practice.
His inauguration follows yesterday’s unanimous confirmation by the Nigeria Police Council (NPC), which met at the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa under the chairmanship of Tinubu.
The session was convened to formally ratify his appointment after the resignation of Kayode Egbetokun.
The approval is in line with the provisions of the Police Act 2020, which mandate the Council to consider and advise on the President’s appointment of an IGP.
Disu has been serving in an acting capacity since last week and was promoted to the rank of IGP upon his appointment. Before his elevation, he was an Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG).
He will clock 60 years in April 2026, the age of retirement.
The police council meeting was attended by Vice President Kashim Shettima; Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume; National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu; Minister of Police Affairs, Ibrahim Gaidam; Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike; among others.
While expressing readiness to partner with the police in evidence-based research that could improve policing and intelligence, the NSC urged Disu to prioritise the welfare of serving and retired officers, noting that a “motivated police officer will give his best to the service of their fatherland while ill-motivated ones are dangerous to the system and the society”.
The NSC President, Prof Oludayo Tade, noted that empowering zonal commands with the best hands and modern policing gadgets would ensure prompt response time to crime and improve the success rate.
Tade, who congratulated the IGP on his appointment, in a statement, emphasised the need for Disu to deploy his experience to check the rising wave of crimes and criminality in the country.
He also advised the new IGP to ensure that men of the Nigeria police were exposed to contemporary training in modern policing strategies and technology.
Calling on President Tinubu to support the Nigeria police with increased funding to improve their capacity and welfare in order to empower them to protect lives and properties as the leading agency in internal security, Tade described Disu’s track record as stories of expertise and result-oriented policing, adding that “Nigeria needs to experience the security of lives and properties” through the police.
According to the professor of Criminology, Victimology and Security Studies, the IGP needs to deepen inter-agency collaboration to achieve more success, saying that “contemporary national security threats require all security agencies to cooperate, collaborate and coordinate. It is through collaboration that we can end the activities of the criminals threatening Nigeria’s existence. Police must work with other sister agencies and share intelligence.”
He noted that the work of Nigeria’s security agencies would be minimal if the federal and state governments could reduce poverty, unemployment and inequality, which are some of the causes of crime in Nigeria.
