The British Metropolitan Police Service has said four Yoruba-speaking officers have joined its fold.

This was contained in a response from the service to an enquiry by our correspondent.

According to the Information Manager of the MPS, Yvette Taylor, the service released the information having observed the 20 working days as stipulated in the United Kingdom's Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Taylor, in the response, said, "You have asked about Yoruba-speaking new police recruits. We currently do not have information regarding candidates who applied for the latest language campaign as we are still at the very early stages of the recruitment process for this campaign.

"However, for your information, we have two Yoruba-speaking officers who joined the MPS in June 2015. We also have one who is due to join in October 2015 and one who is awaiting security clearance. We do not keep records as to whether these candidates are of Nigerian descent. However, we can confirm that they were all born in Nigeria.''

In July, the MPS launched a recruitment programme to employ new officers who can speak Yoruba and other languages.

A total of 14 languages, which have a high prevalence in London's communities, were chosen for what the Met called a month-long pilot recruitment.

The MPS had noted that the move was designed to bring officers into the Met with more of the skills necessary to help police engage with London's diverse communities as effectively as possible.

The chosen languages were Yoruba (Nigeria), Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi, Punjabi, Italian, German, Turkish, Greek, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Sinhala (Sri Lanka) and Bengali.