Police, try hyenas and snakes

I was intrigued by a small story in Daily Trust last Friday which quoted Inspector-General of Police (IG) Solomon Arase as saying  the Nigeria Police Force spent over N600 million on the procurement and maintenance of foreign dogs in the last few years. Chei! So all this while when we were looking for undue fat […]

I was intrigued by a small story in Daily Trust last Friday which quoted Inspector-General of Police (IG) Solomon Arase as saying  the Nigeria Police Force spent over N600 million on the procurement and maintenance of foreign dogs in the last few years. Chei! So all this while when we were looking for undue fat in the government’s budget in order to apply the knife, the police kept quiet when they had a frivolous item like this one hidden in their well-padded budget?
Arase, who spoke at the inauguration of the Police Dog Breeding Centre and Ultra-Modern Mounted Troop in Abuja on Thursday, was quoted as saying that “so much money was being spent on the importation of dogs from foreign countries that rarely adapted to the country’s policing objective.” He added that the Force Animal Branch remained under-utilised in the past while the force continued to rely on importation of dogs and other animals.
My first question is, if the police bought dogs worth N600 million, where are they? There are many markets in Nigeria that sell dogs and one adult dog costs about N6,000. N600 million would therefore give you 100,000 dogs, enough to fill up all the police barracks in Nigeria. I concede however that imported dogs would cost more per unit than local dogs depending on their country of origin, the breed, their level of training, transportation, insurance, import duty, value added tax, contractor’s margin, cost of funds and whatever margin is added for the approving authority.
But all to what end? Arase has just admitted that the imported dogs “rarely adapted to the country’s policing objectives.” Indeed they can’t. First of all there is the weather. A dog born and bred in Scotland would be panting no end in Lagos’ hot and humid weather. If it is deployed to Kano, the exotic Scottish dog may not be able to venture out into the open during the hot dry season when the weather tops 40 degrees Celsius. I am surprised that anyone thought of importing European dogs into Nigeria without reviewing the case of Central African Empire’s Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa, who imported French horses into Bangui for his coronation in 1977. Most of the horses died during the parade when they drew horse-drawn carriages on Bangui streets.
Arase said these imported dogs failed to meet our local policing needs. Was that surprising? The crime environment in Europe is neater than our own here. There in Europe, police dogs lazily lie down in airports waiting for planes to arrive from Colombia and Nigeria, so they can sniff bags to detect cocaine and heroin. Here in Nigeria where marijuana is buried under 100 sacks of onions and pepper, which Great Dane or German shepherd dog can ever find it? Even American criminals have borrowed from us. You see in films that when a prisoner makes a jail break, knowing that police sniffer dogs will soon be on his trail, the jail breaker spills pepper along the route as he runs. The dog’s extremely sensitive nose is turned off by the pepper and he breaks off the chase.
So from the beginning, the police should have conserved foreign exchange by sourcing their dogs locally from our hunters. In my hometown alone there was a skilled hunter called Dan Lanso alias Mai Kamar Wawaye, who had nearly two dozen dogs. He spoke a special language to them which they comprehended very well. He regularly took them out on hunting expeditions. The dogs caught hares, deers and antelopes and they brought them intact to Dan Lanso. Which other training are you talking about? His dogs darted through bushes and thorns, they scaled fences, dodged bushfires and they swam across streams and rivers just to enrich Dan Lanso’s cooking pot. Nor did Dan Lanso squander any scarce foreign exchange to procure, feed or train his dogs, yet they fully served his purposes.
I was surprised when the IG spoke about the police’s Animal Branch. I thought they phased it out many years ago. In the olden days we used to see policemen riding horses and holding dogs’ collars at October 1 parades. The alleged purpose was to cow rowdy spectators and force them to behave. Nigeria Police has long since abandoned such civil methods. Cops now sport AK-47s at sports events, marriage receptions and school graduations. Who needs a dog when the Army has a method of clearing blocked routes, as in Zaria? Nigerian demonstrators, too, do not know civility and may therefore not deserve civil treatment. Where European protesters hurl tomatoes and eggs at leaders they are protesting against, protesters here quickly resort to stones and broken bottles. A police dog imported from Bavaria will be at its wit’s end in such a situation.
IG Arase said the new breeding center he inaugurated last week, when producing at optimal capacity, can produce 200 dogs per year, “enough to supply police dogs to the entire West African sub-region.” I urge Nigeria Police not to waste its time producing these dogs because they no longer fit into our policing needs. When Boko Haram took over the Mobile Police Training School at Gwoza, hundreds of policemen fled and released their dogs in the bushes. Dogs are not fierce enough for Nigeria’s current criminal environment. That is why I urge the police to try other types of animals for security and crowd control duties in Nigeria.
They should throw away the dogs and try hyenas. If policemen appear at crowded events holding hyenas by the collar, every rowdy Nigerian will behave himself or herself. Even if the hyena’s mouth is covered, all that the police handler has to do when the crowd is misbehaving is to pretend to remove the gag. A hyena’s jaws can crush a man’s arm bone as easily as biscuit. If hyenas are posted around our Maximum Security Prisons, no one will attempt a jail break. Besides, hyenas are entirely native to Africa and no forex will be needed to procure or feed them.
There is yet another, locally available animal fiercer than a dog that will enhance Nigeria Police duties. I am talking about snakes. The police can easily procure night adders, black mambas, Egyptian cobras and kraits. They are very cheap; all you need is to send local snake charmers through our farms and bushes and they will quickly assemble a boxful of them. Their training will also be entirely local. In Northern Nigeria, we once had the great snake charmer Garba Nakande who wore a turban of cobras. If the police had deployed a wooden boxful of cobras at the Presidential Election Collation Centre, would Orubebe have sat there on the dais?
In these lean times when the Central Bank is struggling to conserve foreign exchange without sacrificing essential services, I urge national agencies such as the police to stop their copycat methods and instead source all their animals locally. If we do a good job of it, after some years you will see European police forces coming here to buy hyenas and cobras.