IGNORING OUR MUDDY POLICING FRONT; IGNITING A MODERN POLICE FORCE

 

It’s time to ‘think aloud’ against Nigeria’s pervading insecurity that has nearly collapsed our social architecture. Check it - our children can no longer just socialize with other children in the neighbour’s house without parental anxiety over their safety. To even have them ride their bicycles within your well-fenced and gated compound makes you pray, fast, pant and keep vigil an extra minute. It feels like the next person is until proven otherwise, either the kidnappers’ informant or the unknown captor. Sadly, armed robbers, ritual killers, bandits, insurgents and other clusters of non-State actors appear to have the leeway and ‘master key’ to lock or unlock, truncate or elongate, and wage or cage at will, our public peace & security under the watch of security agencies. Here’s an urgent brainstorming effort at security restoration and the implied “recovery of our social architecture”.

Of course, to fight insecurity, please tell the 2023 Presidential candidates in Nigeria to think, talk and tackle population explosion; youth unemployment; influx & use of hard drugs; porosity of the country’s borders; over-centralized, poorly motivated & ill-equipped Police; lowly motivated & poorly equipped Military etc. during their electioneering campaigns. To have them each mount the campaign podium and loosely chant “I’ll fix insecurity; We’ll strengthen the Nigerian Police; My administration will buy more ammunition for the Army”; bla bla bla like their ilk did in the past, would be another round of hollow, disconnected and mediocre talks. However, the compatriot in me offers to secure pro-bono, an intellectual deep-dive into the seemingly intractable security fiasco with a prime focus on the institution that ought to man our internal security and civil authority – the Nigeria Police Force (NPF). Apart from the NPF’s poor policing outcomes that unnecessarily stretch and shift the primary attention of our Armed Forces (Army, Navy & Airforce) from national protection against external aggression, I shall cite two recent instances that propelled my exigent scrutiny of our inefficient Police formation.

 

First on the list is the Owo bloodbath at a Catholic Church in Owo Local Government Area of Ondo State. We do not need another Owo-like bloodbath as a wake-up call to fix our sloppy policing framework. The second is a personal experience in Akure, Ondo State. A young man rammed into my parents' perimeter fence on the 2^nd day of May, 2022 and a team of fairly responsive policemen on patrol were notified. I met a cop assessing the damaged car & driver. Suspecting alcohol influence, I said; “the @PoliceNG needs to lead an alcohol-free driving”. She innocently replied; “We can’t go to beer parlors to stop road-users from drinking”. In other words, she just didn’t know what a standard and modern Police outfit feels or looks like. Without denigrating anyone, I won’t be surprised if many of the Senior Police Officials in Nigeria are also in the dark like this junior officer.

 

In seeking a way out, we must be careful where we look. Nigerians born within the last 35-40 years are largely ignorant of the norms and modern ways of doing virtually everything. The depressing part is that most of us don’t even know that we don’t know, save for some who have had the opportunity of crisscrossing the globe either physically or via virtual connections. Thus, if one is not deliberately looking elsewhere for standards and rightful benchmarks, the tendency is very rife to wrongly assume that for instance, a dirty-looking wooden stick, terrifying & rust-bearing AK-47 rifle, and uncouth commands of “hey, stop there” by Nigerian Policemen are the standard policing tools and operational modalities everywhere across the world. Let’s therefore pontificate a modern Police institution under three subheads.

 

1. OPERATIONAL POLICING FRAMEWORK                                        

i. Decentralized: The 50 States that make up the United States of America (USA) – a Democratic, Federalism-practicing country with 334 million inhabitants - have their corresponding Police Forces (e.g., NYPD - New York Police Department) formed and funded based on State legislations and budgets respectively. State Police ought to have begun operations in Nigeria years ago. Of what policing use is the bogus title and over-centralized (in Abuja) office of the Inspector General of Police (IGP) in a Federation of about 206 million residents?

ii. Funded:  According to the New York Times in its 20^th June, 2020 publication, “In its 2019 fiscal year, the [New York] Police Department spent nearly $6 billion, which amounted to about 6 percent of the city’s $95 billion total spending.” Both the current Federal Police and recommended State Police structures should commit not less than 5% of their respective budgets to Police funding.

iii. Motivated, Trained, Disciplined & Intelligence-fortified: The huge disparity in the remuneration package between the high-ranking Police officers locked up in air-conditioned rooms and those under the sun along the highways needs to be urgently addressed to motivate the larger number on the lowest rump. Motivation also includes insurance cover (health & life), please. Furthermore, the average Nigerian Policeman lacks courtesy in addressing you on the road or even at the Police Station and it takes regular training and enforcement of sanctions to entrench the “Police is your friend” chant as a culture and not a rhetoric. Lastly, security intelligence is the live wire of policing and the typical police stations in the 21^st century Nigeria that are without ICT gadgets (hardware, software, internet connectivity, forensic gadgets etc.) for collection, storage and timely & scientific analysis of “Police reports” and sensitive information can never lay claim to the efficient gathering or use of intelligence.

iv. VIPs-starved: In the first world, save for Presidents, Vice Presidents and a few other public officials, Policemen meant for everybody’s protection are not reserved for Very Important Persons (VIPs). Rather, bigwigs spend a fortune to procure the services of licensed private security guards. Dear Nigerians, at my last count, a whopping 10,950 Police officers are attached to Nigeria’s President and his Vice, members of the Federal Executive Council, Governors and their deputies, and Federal and State legislators! Add this bogus figure to the thousands of policemen attached to Nigerian businessmen, contractors, captains of Industries, top-rated entertainers, rich clerics and other dignitaries and mull deeply over this irrational distribution of our already-inadequate police officers among less than say 100,000 Nigerian VIPs (less than 0.05% of my country’s population). How may policemen be left to safeguard Nigerians living in Owo and the over 200 million inhabiting various parts of the country?  Can’t VIPs, except for a few high-ranking State actors, patronize licensed private security officials and bear the financial burden of their services?

2. COLLECTIVE POLICING KITS:                                                                         

The major functional kits expected to be in their best forms are;                                                                                

i. Police Barracks; ii. Police Stations; iii. Police Cars; iv. Police Motorbikes; v. Police Bicycles; vi. Police Ambulance; vii. Police Phone lines, e-mails (permanent, customized, dedicated, institutional and not personal phone lines & e-mails) to be shared widely with the public viii. Police ICT Trackers.

 

3. PERSONAL POLICING KITS:

Police kits are inexhaustive because of the dynamics of crime, However, the regular 21^st century policeman bears on a daily basis, an average of 17 functional personal kits in the line of duty in developed nations while his/her counterpart in Nigeria has paraded just about 5 of these since I was born. This is without mentioning the additional kits (helmets, shin guards, tear gas canisters, anti-bomb tools, special weapons, sniffer dogs etc.) of the various Special Forces units of Police institutions in the modern era. According to numerous sources, these kits include; i. Duty Uniform (cap, shirt, trouser, footwears); ii. Duty Belt (to hold many accessories); iii. Bullet proof vest; iv. Flashlight; v.        Baton; vi. Handcuff; vii. Body camera; viii. Rubber gloves; ix. Breath analyzer (for alcohol detection); x. Radio (for communication); xi. Internet-enabled electronic device xii. Pepper Spray; xiii. Taser gun (to deliver electric shock); xiv. Knife; xv. Ammunition (cartridges, bullets etc.); xvi. Handgun/Pistol holster (gun-holders strapped to belts for safe-holding); xvii. Handgun/Pistol.

 

As we prepare for a new Presidential tenure in 2023 under one of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Mr. Peter Obi, Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwanso and other Presidential aspirants, the development of the Nigerian Policing system should be scientifically planned and measured. At the end of the tenure of the next President, some of the indicators of a modern Police Force to be quizzed include; i. how many personal policing kits (out of the 17 mentioned earlier) have been added for the regular Nigerian police officer? ii. Are they still carrying AK-47 rifles (ordinarily used in war situations) as the regular firearm or the standard policing operation has been altered to pistols/handguns? iii. Has the constitution been revised (or a new constitution adopted) to legally recognize State Police? iv. What percentage of the Federal Government’s budget is allocated to funding the Federal Police Force in Nigeria? We shall take stock at the appropriate time.

Finally, I encourage all well-meaning Governors like those of the Southwest region to consider kitting out in their respective States, the recent ‘children of necessity’ (like the Amotekun Corps) with the constitutionally-permissible professional policing kits out of the seventeen above-listed, in preparation for State Police. That is how to build a modern and effective policing system for communal safety and forestall more contemporary calls like that made by Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara State to agonizing but ‘untrained’ citizens to bear firearms for self-protection. I rest my case.

This article, written by Dr. Adetolu Ademujimi, a Medical Doctor, Author, Reformer, Coach, Public Policy expert and Social entrepreneur, was first published on 2nd July. 2022.