Agenda for Ogbonnaya Onovo
The approval of the appointment of Ogbonnaya Onovo as the new Inspector General of Police by the president was disclosed in a media statement by the presidential media adviser, Mr. Segun Adeniyi, even as the immediate implication of that announcement is that the nation’s new police chief who becomes the first South-Easterner to assume the […]
The approval of the appointment of Ogbonnaya Onovo as the new Inspector General of Police by the president was disclosed in a media statement by the presidential media adviser, Mr. Segun Adeniyi, even as the immediate implication of that announcement is that the nation’s new police chief who becomes the first South-Easterner to assume the very challenging national security position, would be confirmed when the Nigerian police council meets in the coming days.
The appointment was in accordance with the constitutional powers vested on the president by section 216 of the 1999 constitution. Since the relevant constitutional provisions as cited by the presidential media spokesman or indeed since no provision in the constitution provides for an acting Inspector General of police, it is safe to assume that Ogbonnaya Onovo is the new Inspector General of Police in compliance with the sacred commitment made by President Umaru Musa Yar’adua to respect the principle of rule of law and constitutionalism.
It will, therefore, be preposterous and inexplicable if the President in consultation with the Nigeria Police Commission fails to respect the tradition of merit by not confirming the appointment of Ogbonnaya Onovo as the substantive Inspector General of Police. Put differently, the confirmation of the appointment of Ogbonaya Onovo as the Inspector General of Police in the coming days will follow a long tradition of merit, competence and will be in compliance with the principle of rule of law postulated by President Umar Musa Yar’adua.
The Nigeria Police Force has a very interesting and dramatic history with very deep colonial influences. Information pieced together by this writer indicates that the Nigeria police began with a 30- member consular guard formed in Lagos colony in 1861. In 1879, a 1,200-member armed paramilitary Hausa Constabulary was formed. In 1896, the Lagos police was established. A similar force, the Niger Coast Constabulary, was formed in Calabar in 1894 under newly proclaimed Niger Coast protectorate. In the North, the Royal Niger Company set up the Royal Niger Company Constabulary in 1888 with headquarters in Lokoja. When the protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria were proclaimed in the early 1900s, part of the Royal Niger Company Constabulary became the Northern Nigerian police and part of the Niger Coast constabulary became the Southern Nigeria police. Northern and Southern Nigeria were amalgamated in 1914, but their police forces was not merged until 1930, which then formed the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).
During the colonial period, most police were associated with local Government (Native Authorities). In the 1960s, under the first Republic, these forces were first regionalized and then nationalized. The conventional police functions under the Police Act includes providing internal security generally, supporting prison immigration, and custom services, and for performing paramilitary duties within and outside Nigeria as directed.
In contemporary times, the Nigerian police force has come under intense scrutiny because of the situation of near- anarchy that has enveloped the country with organized violent crimes reaching an unprecedented height. Most analysts say that the failure of the Nigerian police force to arrest Nigeria’s slide to the precipice of armed robbery and other violent crimes is a total negation of section 14 [2] [b] of Nigeria’s federal constitution which clearly states that the “Security and welfare of the Nigerian people shall be the primary responsibility/purpose of Government.”
There have been clarion calls from most rational thinkers for the implementation of a comprehensive and workable police reform because the police as presently constituted has become institutionally weak, even as the operatives have become extremely indiscipline and disloyal to their constitutional duties of safe guarding the lives and property of citizens. All previous Inspectors General of police have failed spectacularly to instill discipline, transparency, accountability on its members so much so that the morale of the operatives has reached a historic low.
The job of Ogbonnaya Onovo as the new Inspector General of Police is therefore clearly cut out for him because he needs to first instill and restore discipline on the ranks and file and the high echelons of the Nigerian police. Next, the new Inspector General of police should embrace human capacity development as the core component of his operational mission and vision because it is a notorious fact that majority of the members of the Nigerian police force are largely untrained in the modern techniques and strategies of law enforcement that internalizes and externalizes respect for the human Rights of citizens and the strict obedience to the Rule of law.
The facilities of the various police training institutions ought to be upgraded even as deliberate effort ought to be activated to attract the best minds to these institutions so as to impart the most up to date policing, law enforcement skills to the men/women and officers of the Nigerian police. Crime prevention mechanisms must be introduced because if the greater percentage of violent crimes in Nigeria is nipped in the bud then democracy will take root in Nigeria in no distant time. Ogbonnaya Onovo as the police Inspector General in a country as complex as Nigeria is expected to bring a ‘healing presence’ to a force whose public rating has progressively deteriorated so much so that even in this period of high graduate unemployment not too many good and quality university graduates would ordinarily seek to enlist in the Nigerian Police force.
Onwubiko, a former Federal Human Rights Commissioner in Nigeria, heads the Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria