ABUJA — The era of the “unaccountable” super-cop is officially hitting a brick wall. In a move that has sent shockwaves through the barracks, Inspector-General of Police Tunji Disu has ordered a ruthless pruning of the nation’s tactical landscape, scrapping a “wild” proliferation of specialized squads that have long operated like law unto themselves.
The directive effectively executes a “delete” command on scores of ad-hoc units that have sprouted across the country under aggressive titles like the Scorpion Squad, Tiger Squad, and various localized Monitoring Units. For years, these shadowy teams have been accused of “Wild West” policing, often straying from their mandates to harass the very citizens they were meant to protect. Under Disu’s new iron-clad rules, State and Zonal Commands are now strictly capped at just five authorized tactical teams, while local Area Commands and Divisions are restricted to a maximum of three.
“We are killing off the ‘freelance’ tactical culture,” a senior police source noted. “If it’s not one of the authorized elite teams, it’s being collapsed back into the regular force.”
The fallout from this “slimming down” will see thousands of officers—formerly accustomed to the “special status” of these elite squads—stripped of their tactical badges and redeployed to the front desks of regular police stations. This massive shift aims to fix the chronic manpower shortages in Divisional Crime Branches (DCB) and Juvenile and Women Centres (JWC), trading “tacticool” optics for actual boots on the ground for everyday Nigerians.
This reform is the first major power move by IGP Disu since taking the reins on February 24, 2026. Having famously led the Lagos Rapid Response Squad (RRS), Disu is betting that by scrapping the “rogue” local squads, he can rebuild a shattered public trust. While high-profile, state-backed outfits like the RRS remain untouched, the message to the rest of the force is clear: the party is over for unsupervised “special” squads.
