DEVELOPMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

At inception, the Enabling Act of the Commission provides for the establishment of a Governing Council while the Corps was headed by a Director of Organization and Chief Executive who oversees the day to day administration of the Corps.  This designation was to change to Corps Marshal and Chief Executive through statutory amendments.

The Commission had its first National Headquarters at Ibadan, later at Gbagada, Lagos. It was moved to Abuja in 1992. At inception, the Commission had 5 Zonal Commands located in Kaduna, Bauchi, Benin, Aba and Ibadan. These Commands were meant to coordinate the activities of the Commission in the various States (Sector Commands). In about 2 years of establishment, the Commission created few Units for greater spread and impact on its activities. Also at inception, the major Departments of the Commission included Departments of Admin and Finance, Operations, Public Education (PE) and Technical.

To maximally utilize organizational resources, the Commission has over the years carried out several restructuring of its Organizational Structure to achieve greater productivity and to respond to the prevailing exigencies of the day. Thus, the structure of the Commission has metamorphosed from six (6) Directorates, to eleven (11) Departments in 2003 and finally down to eight (8) Departments as presently constituted with the nomenclature changing from Directorates to Departments. The number of the present Departments was reduced to eight (8) in the year 2005. In a similar vein, the number of the Zones grew from the initial five (5) to ten (10), later back to eight (8) and rose again to the present twelve (12) Zonal structure in 2000. this structure was later realigned after the period of de-merger from the Nigeria Police which resulted in the relocation of some Zonal Command Headquarters in line with the Commission’s requirements. In the same vein, the number of Sector Commands has continued to increase in tandem with State creation.  Today, the number of Unit Commands has grown from less than 20 in 1994 to 72 in 2005.

For effective performance the Commission created a number of Specialized Units known as Corps Offices. These include the Public Education, Intelligence, Provost, Legal, Corps Secretary, Audit, and Corps Protocol as well as Rescue which carry out specialized functions for the effective administration of the organization. (See Figure 1).