Police Officers Willingly Bought Shares From Police Mortgage Bank, No Ex-IGP Interfered In Our Operations – Bank MD

The management of Nigeria Police Mortgage Bank, on Tuesday dismissed insinuations from various quarters that former Inspectors-General of Police interfered with its operation when it took off in 2012 with subsequent full operation in 2015.

The Managing Director of the Bank, Abubakar Suleiman, in an interview with journalists in Abuja, explained that as a corporate entity, authority of the Nigeria Police Force has distanced itself from the organisation.

“We are corporate organisation, and as such, no Inspector-General of Police whether serving or former, has influenced any of our decisions or operations for close to 5 years I had been here because I resumed in 2017. In fact, the police should be commended for that. They are doing their job and we are doing ours”, Suleiman said.

A report had recently surfaced online that officers of the force were coerced by the then IGP, Mohammed Dikko Abubakar, who took over from Hafiz Ringim, that the officers should part with N11,000 out of their salaries in 2012 to fund the bank.

Daily Trust reports that Abubakar, the 16th IGP of the force in 2012, who retired in 2014, was the Chairman of the NPF Pension Board between 2014 and 2018.

Speaking on how everything went at the inception, the bank’s CEO, Suleiman stated that police officers willingly bought shares from the bank when it commenced operation fully in line with its policy documents.

He said the plan for the officers was in order to have opportunities to access National Housing Fund domiciled with the Federal Mortgage Bank.

According to him, those who filled the forms given to them were issued share certificates as the shareholders in the bank, saying at least, 164,384 certificates have been printed while 124,893 shares have been collected by its holders.

He said, “After the acquisition, before the commencement of the business, Central Bank came with a new policy of recapitalization of all primary mortgage institutions putting their minimum share capital at N2.5 billion for just operating state licence and also the National licence, minimum of N5 billion.

“Now, we had to go back to the drawing boards again, how do we raise this fund? Initially, the police cooperative had purchased the entire share capital which was just N25 million at that point in time. So, you can see the gap, N25 million to N2.5 billion. That was about 100 times increase, that was how a decision was taken.

“We said okay, fine, since it is for everybody, and for everybody to have a sense of ownership, each police officer, serving police officer should have at least 10,000 shares of the bank at N2 each which was a premium at N1.10k premium, which people were paid N11,000 for 10,000 but some people took more, extra, some took 500,000; some 2 million, some six, depending on their capacity that was how it started.”