*BIG EXCLUSIVE:-HOW NIGERIA’S MULTI-BILLION NAIRA POLICE COMMUNICATION EMPIRE BUILT BY JONATHAN WAS DELIBERATELY ABANDONED UNDER BUHARI,TO ASSIST BANDITS TO KILL NIGERIANS.
-A Nationwide Investigation has uncovered the shocking truth behind the collapse of Nigeria’s National Public Security Communication System (NPSCS),a $470 million (over N700 billion at current rates) state-of-the-art police communication network built between 2010 and 2015 under President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and completed during the tenure of former Inspector-General of Police,Late IGP Solomon Arase.
From Lagos to Maiduguri,Kano to Port Harcourt,Enugu to Sokoto and the FCT,Gleaming,Fully Air-Conditioned Communication Command Centres,Giant Radio Masts,Tracking Systems,emergency call centres,and digital Trunking Networks were Commissioned with fanfare. Over 2,000 specialist Cadet Inspectors and Assistant Superintendents of Police (ASPs) were Recruited and Trained specifically to man these facilities.
Yet today, less than a decade later, every single one of these centres across the 36 states and the FCT lies abandoned, vandalised, or turned into ghost buildings. Billions of naira worth of equipment – servers, consoles, Tracking Devices, Solar Power Systems,and Long-Range Communication Towers–Rot away under the sun while Bandits, kidnappers, and Terrorists operate with near-total impunity.
Sources inside the Nigeria Police Force and the Ministry of Police Affairs who spoke on condition of anonymity revealed that the entire system was deliberately switched off and starved of funds immediately the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC Government took power in 2015.
“The day Buhari was sworn in, the instruction came from above: shut it down,”a senior police officer attached to the Force Communications Department in Abuja told this reporter. “Annual maintenance fees to ZTE,the Chinese company that built the system, were stopped. The tracking platform in the IGP’s office that could trace kidnap calls in real time was cut off by 2017. That was when banditry exploded.”
Another officer in Zamfara State lamented: “We had everything–live Tracking, Instant Radio communication between stations,emergency lines, CCTV feeds. One political change and everything died. They wanted us blind so their people could operate freely.”
Multiple sources confirmed that the decision to abandon the project was not due to lack of funds–the Buhari administration continued to collect and spend the monthly N100–N200 million security votes that were meant to keep the system running–but a deliberate political choice.
The Result? From 2016 onwards, Fulani Banditry, Kidnapping, and Rural Terrorism skyrocketed across the North-West and North-Central, with security forces often arriving hours or days after attacks because they had no functional communication or tracking system.
Even Late Solomon Arase,Former Inspector General of Police as at when the order was given and who served as Police Service Commission Chairman under Tinubu, repeatedly cried out in public that the communication assets he left behind were deliberately killed, rendering the police “deaf and dumb” in the face of insecurity.
While the Buhari Government made several public announcements between 2016 and 2022 about “reviving” the NPSCS, not a single kobo was released for maintenance or reactivation. Instead, the same abandoned buildings were repainted and relaunched for media optics while the core systems remained dead.
*Today, Nigeria is paying the price:*
• Over 20,000 Nigerians killed by bandits and terrorists since 2016.
• Billions paid in ransoms because police could no longer trace kidnap calls.
• Entire communities displaced because rapid-response communication is non-existent.
As Nigeria battles a new surge in kidnapping and banditry,the abandoned Multibillion Naira communication towers stand as silent monuments to how political vendetta and ethnic agenda were placed above national security.
*The question millions of Nigerians are asking is simple:*
*Who ordered the deliberate shutdown of Jonathan’s police communication empire,and why were bandits allowed to thrive in the darkness that followed?*
Meanwhile while inaugurating a committee to rescue the equipment in 2023, it was disclosed that FG commenced repayment of loan for the project in 2020.
According to the Permanent Secretary Police Affairs Ministry, the project was jointly funded under counterpart funding with the Federal Government of Nigeria contributing 15%, in the sum of US70.5Million through the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, while the China Export-Import (EXIM) Bank provided the 85% balance in the sum of USD399.5Million as a loan with a ten-year moratorium, with repayment commencing in August 2020.
