Egbetokun Appeals to Senate for Private Hearing on 3,907 Missing AK-47s

Kayode Egbetokun, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), has called on the Senate to look into the purported disappearance of 3,907 assault rifles for security-related reasons behind closed doors.
Egbetokun rejected the 2019 Auditor-General for the Federation’s report, which stated that thousands of weapons were missing or unaccounted for in the police arsenal as of January 2020, calling it false in a letter sent to the Senate.
48 hours after a rigorous investigative hearing in which senior police officials, including the IGP himself, appeared before the Senate Committee on Accounts and found it difficult to respond to the Auditor-General’s report on missing firearms, Senate President Godswill Akpabio read the letter following the passage of the 2025 budget.
In order to avoid giving the wrong impression to Nigerians and the foreign community, the letter says, “We appreciate the Senate committee’s investigation into the alleged missing firearms and urge the committee to conduct future hearings on sensitive security issues in camera.”

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Hearings on these delicate security matters should be held behind closed doors in order to preserve national security interests, avoid disinformation, and for more open dialogue and fact-finding.

Additionally, the IGP asked the lawmakers to extend their time so they could look into the issue internally.

Olumuyiwa Adejobi, the force’s spokesperson, told reporters in Abuja in response to the audit report yesterday that every attempt had been made to account for the weapons that were removed, but that many of them had been returned to the force’s current arms holdings.