SINCE persistent public outrage has failed to stem the tide of extra-judicial killings  by the police, a thorough  prosecution and sanction of  police personnel found guilty of murder is definitely one of the drastic measures the nation must take now.  This  step was taken in Rivers  State  recently when a court sentenced a policeman, Inspector Samuel Timothy , to death by hanging for  killing  citizen Onyekachi Nwasouba .

A graduate of chemistry, Nwasouba was  forced by unemployment into the production and distribution of sachet water. It was on one of his trips  to distribute the product  that the  convict who led a patrol team  pursued Nwasouba to the front of his house.  He shot him dead despite his protest that he was not a robber. That shooting of Nwasouba in 2010  is about one of many. Before 2010 and since then, police personnel  have been involved in reckless and brutal killings of innocent citizens. This   tragic proclivity of the police was captured in 2008   by Amnesty International. In a report entitled “ Nigeria police kill at will”, the global watchdog  documented cases of torture  and shooting of suspects.

These brutalities are often meted out to the citizens, under different guises. The police personnel shoot  at  citizens who fail to oblige them a bribe on demand. This could be as little as  N100. In the case of Godwin Ekpo, a tricycle operator, his wife was shot dead after he refused to give a policeman a bribe of N2,000 he had demanded.  Ekpo , his wife and four children were returning from church on a Sunday in Lagos when the family came under fire. While he survived, his wife died. 

Thus rather than protect the citizens the police have turned their guns  on  Nigerians. Therefore, there is the urgent need  to make the Nigeria Police personnel  revert to their primary duty of protecting the citizens. To be sure, the leadership of the Nigeria Police may have tried at different times to instill discipline and steer  men and officers from the path of routine killings of innocent citizens. But such efforts have not been too successful. For instance, even  though different inspectors-general of police have warned their officers against  mounting roadblocks, this practice  continues. In fact, most of the extortions  and extra-judicial killings  take  place at  illegal roadblocks  mounted  by police personnel.

The police need re-orientation from their fixation on violence. Such re-orientation should  begin at the point of recruitment when emphasis should be placed on character. But this has not been possible over the years  because the recruiters who ought to administer the character  test are themselves sometimes worse in corruption than the recruits. Sad tales  of  applicants  who pay bribes in order to be enlisted  into  the police are commonplace.  Even though some of the personnel have university degrees, they need re-education; and their values should be changed through  regular trainings. The culture of brutality against citizens is so deeply entrenched that all the different units of the police are guilty of it: the regular police, mobile police , traffic police, among others. New curricula in police training schools  should reflect the ethos of the society, the importance of Nigeria  in the life of a police officer, contentment, character and a well-defined guiding philosophy of the country.

One way the police  can  check the escalation of the men’s proclivity for violence is to restrict the use of arms to  special units and those who deal with the public should not be allowed to carry arms indiscriminately. Those who deal with the public should be trained in unarmed combat and the use of communication technology as well as less-lethal weapons like pepper spray. In this regard, they would only need  to send for reinforcement from their armed colleagues in situations they cannot handle without arms.

Brutality most times involves  the rank and file  but it is  obvious that  the culture of impunity in the police  has been sustained  by the complicity of the  superiors.  In most cases, it is the divisional police officers and even higher  authorities  that shield  their junior officers  from  investigation and prosecution. And in many cases, these superior officers are known to share from  the reward  of the crime of their junior officers. Thus for a  change of values to be effective  in the police, senior officers  must model good behaviour, sanction  their erring officers, end the era of  shielding men and maintain core values of policing.

The  welfare  package of the police as it exists  today is certainly  not an incentive for optimal performance. The  police  personnel are poorly remunerated and some even pay for their own uniforms and kits. The  inadequate  funds  that the government makes available for their welfare are further fraudulently depleted by some superior officers. In the rare cases where they are accommodated in barracks, the living conditions are deplorable.  And because they are few compared to the population, they are overworked. All these conditions imbue the rank and file with a psychology  that sees the  citizens as their enemies. In this regard, the government should ensure that the police personnel  are properly kitted, well remunerated and their post-retirement welfare fully guaranteed.

Ultimately, for the country to get effective policing, it  must  embrace true federalism and the police must  be decentralised.