The missing links in policing Nigeria

THE Buhari administration has put a lot of premium on security. But security does not begin nor end with terrorism of the Boko Haram sect.

The same effort being expended on combating the scourge of insurgency should equally apply to securing the private lives and properties of all Nigerians.

The present level of personal insecurity of Nigerians occasioned by kidnapping and armed robbery brings to fore the role of the Nigeria Police in our national life.

The primary role of the police is the “Protection of Life and Property”. But given the ratio of Nigeria’s ever-growing population of 170 million to a police force of 370,000, we can say what we have as police is a drop in the bucket! Even as skewed as this comparison is, do you know, according to Suleiman Abba, the immediate past Inspector General of Police (IGP|), that over “100,000 policemen serve as escorts to private individuals”? Now you begin to see a part of the self-inflicted burden hampering the effectiveness of our police force.

Looking at it, there is no logical reason why well-to-do Nigerians, going about their private businesses, should have police escorts with them. Yet we are all crying that the country is under-policed.

These private individuals that go about with police escorts have the wherewithal to engage the best private security guards for their personal protection round the clock if they want.

But instead, because they know they can easily wangle or bribe their way through the police, they go to the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), pay peanuts to him, and then they are given armed police as bodyguards! This further emasculates a force that’s already being overstretched.

Now, hardly can the police, as presently composed and structured, withstand the demands of a changing society like ours. Fighting crime has become more sophisticated. It is now more of the brain than the brawn. You see, from the structural hangover coming down from the colonial past, the force has not been able to reorganize itself to meet the demands of policing a modern society.

In fact, the problems of the force are multifaceted. These include lack of training, poor remuneration, corruption-laden recruitment system, lack of equipment to fight modern crime, absence of reliable working database and poor knowledge of the people that are supposedly being policed.

In the police command and control structure, decisions are always made through an ‘order from above’. This practice has not only clipped the force but also rendered it ineffective. Officers on ground have to wait for an ‘order from above’ before they can take any vital decision. Nothing can turn one into a zombie more than a warped system that takes away creative thinking from an individual.

Also facing the police are poor training and lack of functional education within the rank and file. This has robbed the force of the basic prerequisite for effective policing. Effective policing needs good “Public Relation.” But where ‘the other ranks’, who usually form the face of the force, are poorly trained or functionally uneducated, public relation is hampered. Timidity is a combination of factors which robs the officer of courage and self- confidence.

Community policing is the bedrock of modern policing but here in Nigeria the system is non-existence. For effective policing, the current system of having the force answerable to one central command needs to be jettisoned. The system needs to be decentralized and each community (or each state) must be allowed to recruit, train and equip its own police force.

As part of the decentralization, each key institution in the country like the CBN, other banks, universities, hospitals and companies should be allowed to recruit, train and equip their security personnel the same way the police are equipped. They all should be given the title “police”, with institutional logo to carry out full responsibility of policing. I know the beneficiaries of the current system of centralized police force will kick against this. They will say, as they have been saying, that some individuals will hijack the system.

This is nothing but a siege mentality – an unfounded fear that has for a long time denied the country of having an effective police force. Each community (or state as the case may be) will be responsible for its police by way of wages and salaries, training, equipment, etc. This challenge can be met through taxing each home within the community. Community policing is the best way of providing security for communities. The personnel are drawn from the immediate community since they are more familiar with the environment and can easily identify possible criminal elements within the environs.

Another critical element is the absence of “Data Base” of persons in each community. How do you police a people whose database you do not have? Database contains the records of the citizenry of a nation. For now, in the absence of such an information bank, it is impossible for the force to run any background check on any criminal in its custody, for example. Not only that. Lack of database prevents the force from conducting a thorough check on applicants joining the police or being recruited into the force.

This is a very serious matter because it leaves rooms for applicants of questionable character and baggage finding their way into the force. To worsen the matter, the way recruitment into the officer’s cadet is conducted is not different from the way new members are admitted into occult group. You don’t get recruited into the officer’s cadet without connection, the same way one does not join the occult without one sponsoring you. With this closed system of recruitment in the force, the bright and the brightest don’t often get a chance to become a cadet officer.

To reduce crime in our society and enhance public safety, the first port of call should be the building and educating of our youths. Get them involved in skill acquisition so that they can be gainfully employed. Any society that doesn’t invest in and value young people, that society is invariably putting itself at high risk. Sooner or later these ‘abandoned’ youths turn themselves into hardened criminals. This is what we are presently facing in Nigeria.

The Nigerian government should seize this time of ‘change’ to restructure the police force. A pilot scheme can start in Abuja. Call it the “Abuja Police”. Let the inhabitants of the FCT, from monies collected from homeowners in form of property tax, etc., pay their police. The Nigerian constitution that created a unified police force should be amended to reflect all that we have espoused here. The time to do all this is now.

•Akahome wrote from Chicago Illinois, USA.