Too many cooks in the Nigeria police kitchen

The history of the Nigeria Police is indeed replete with several panels set up ostensibly to reform it. There was the Admiral Murtala Nyako’s committee on the police in 1989. In 1995, General Abacha’s regime, willfully discountenanced the report of a panel which government had set up supposedly to reform the force. Another report on […]

The history of the Nigeria Police is indeed replete with several panels set up ostensibly to reform it. There was the Admiral Murtala Nyako’s committee on the police in 1989. In 1995, General Abacha’s regime, willfully discountenanced the report of a panel which government had set up supposedly to reform the force. Another report on police reforms by the Committee on Vision 2010 was similarly discarded.  In 2000, the Ministry of Police Affairs released a five-year development plan which outlined strategies for transforming the police. Two years later, the Presidential Panel on National Security, headed by Professor Tekena Tamuno submitted a report that was never considered by Government. In 2006, there was another panel set up by President Obasanjo and chaired by former Inspector General of Police-Muhammad Danmadami.  In 2008, a fresh committee of experts led by another former Inspector General of Police, M.D.Yusuf, submitted a well articulated report with 125 recommendations. Not having done anything of note with the recommendations, it appears that we have, as a nation, developed a purposeless penchant for setting up panels on the police as if the mere setting up of a panel can on its own, reform the organization. In other words, the police sector is one area where government has been doing the same thing while expecting different results.

In any case, the nation cannot feign ignorance of the problems of the police by setting up several panels to examine the force because the failure of the police has for long been a notorious fact. In addition, there is evidence that the Nigeria Police has been despised, over-regulated, dismembered and intimidated. First, Nigeria Policemen are reportedly the least paid in West Africa. Second, with poor funding and inadequate tools, a typical police station till date still demands from complainants, basic implements like pen and paper to record statements. It is also alleged that when new operational vehicles and equipment are procured for the police; they resort to illegal toll collections at check points to maintain them. There is also the issue of dismemberment of the police force occasioned by gradual derogation from its functions. The vibrant Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) is ordinarily no more than the motor division of the police. The FRSC has been equipped to perform well only because it is no longer part of the police. No one would have given the police the same budget to do the same work. Another vibrant body-the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is similarly doing nothing more than police duties. While it is generally believed that the police would fail in those same duties, all the chairmen of the EFCC have interestingly been selected from the police! Even in election matters, the police that should take full charge of mal-practices is made to play a second fiddle as an electoral officer is expected to direct him to arrest any criminal at an election venue. Worse still, the arrangement does not explain who should direct the police when it is the electoral officer himself that commits a crime.

As for control and regulation, it is not too easy to know who is in charge of the police which has a Police Council, a Police Service Commission (PSC), a Ministry of Police Affairs and the Police Force itself.  As we opined in this column a year ago, no one knew for instance who sent Nuhu Ribadu during the Yar’Adua days, from the anti corruption body he was heading for training at the National institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru or who later sought to stop his graduation at the end of the course. Although the PSC claimed to have first demoted him and later dismissed him from service for good reasons, the body was perhaps on sabbatical leave when he was recalled and his rank restored for another set of good reasons before he retired.  That in roughly 2 years, we have had Navy Captain Caleb Olubolade, Humphrey Abah, Adamu Maina Waziri, and Senator Ibrahim Yakubu Lame as Police Affairs ministers is perhaps another piece of evidence that there have been too many cooks in the police kitchen.

Also significant is the contributory negligence of the police to its own dilemma. The indictment of analysts that the Nigeria Police is the nation’s most corrupt institution is no less disturbing than the admission of the newly appointed acting IGP that “it is an incontrovertible fact that discipline which is the bedrock for the force has been on steady decline for a while”.  But what can he do about it when police discipline is under the PSC? Does he have the powers to reverse the current trend of supercession in the force where an officer is elevated above his professional superiors? Considering that the focus of police reforms has always been to change the IGP, is it not time to try other reforms? For us, it appears timely to scrap the ministry of police affairs and the PSC which run duplicated functions. It is also time to strengthen the IGP to run the force effectively and among other things, reverse the situation where over one hundred thousand policemen are engaged in guarding only the high and the mighty while the majority of our people and institutions are under-policed. We need an IGP that can remove the police from its current menial posture so that it can embrace best practices in the industry which are currently intelligence and technology based. The new IGP must be properly targeted and not pampered like his predecessor who got national honours after his headquarters was bombed.