THIS week President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared emergency on security in Nigeria and ordered the police to immediately recruit more staff to complement its dwindling strength while enhancing security service delivery in the country. Although, this is a good development, but the fact remains that treating the security forces in Nigeria as a bunch consisting of separable and mutually exclusive groups is one of the bane of security consolidation in Nigeria despite abundant human capital availability.

In one word, the government of Nigeria is endowed with abundant human resources to run its security programme comfortably without the need to recruit new personnel. In fact, every state in Nigeria already has long list of men and women that are currently on their payroll who, with adequate training, can fit into the new role with minimal inconvenience when state policing finally becomes operational.

The governments, particularly, the security managers over the years have failed to appreciate that resources are better managed and preserved by the application of the elementary optimisation techniques that are taught in primary Operations Research classes.
New recruitment into the police force may be desirable but auditing, reordering and re-organisation of existing security architecture may show that the situation is not that of dearth of manpower but of failure of human resource management.

Any casual visitor to our country cannot fail to notice proliferation of able bodied men and women loitering threateningly around the streets, sometimes with gun, extorting money from helpless road users in the name o providing one form of security or the other.
At each of these spots is a retinue of men and women adorned in multi-various uniforms controlling the traffic or engaging in some related activities.
Some of them are without uniform but with big baton beaded with spikes pretending to represent the interest of the Local Government but in the real sense they are a set of avoidable nuisances who are on ground to extort money from unsuspecting citizens. These seemingly “idle”people are simply an aberration to the corporate image of any decent environment and their routine and daily conducts do not prescribe otherwise.

Unfortunately, they constitute the window from which visitors and tourists to Nigeria see the inner chamber of our country. Their routine is readable, with their major preoccupation directed towards setting traps for people they are hired to protect citing laws that are non-existent. For example, a motorist could be stopped for passing through the “One Way” when there is no visible road sign to indicate that the road laws are violated.

These men are employed by the governments be it at the Federal, State or Local administrative levels but their activities give the impression that the intention of the governments is not to fill the much needed security lacuna but just to find “ food for the boys”
We often see at all road junctions of every state in Nigeria, many policemen, the state Transport Management officers, the Yellow Fever sitting idly and chatting with only one of them passing traffic in a place that has functional traffic light. Yet, we complain that the police is short of manpower to provide security for the nation.

It is not uncommon to see about half a dozen of policemen standing menacingly over one vehicle harassing guts out of a hapless driver who may have supposedly infringed the traffic regulation one way or the other.
A situation that requires the attention of one junior officer most often have a retinue of them in attendance sometimes struggling to wrestle the steering of the vehicle from its owner. This ugly situation is found in almost every corner of every state in Nigeria. The police is known more by the citizenry, for vehicle inspection rather than for proper security provisions.
The Federal Road Safety Corps is a sheer waste and duplication of normal police job with the former more involved in “harassing” those who fail to use the seat belt of their car. Treating this unit as a separate entity from the police is a huge plundering of tax payers money.

More so, when the so called road safety corps does more of the job of the Vehicle Inspection Officer than provide any extra-ordinary assignment that is beyond the job specification of the police department. Every police station in the country has a traffic management unit with its own full complement of staff.
The Nigerian situation is indeed sordid and sorry to the extent that people have come to associate men in uniform, wherever they may be, with corruption, extortion, wickedness, treachery and double-dealing.
In terms of the aforementioned conduct, the most refined and best behaved of the men in uniform are the military (Army, Air Force and Navy). Although, they too can sometimes be vicious and high-handed but they are more occupied, serious, disciplined and decent. They observe more finesse in their public conducts.

One would have thought that in a country bedeviled by insecurity the various units mentioned herein can be harmonised to give the best to the country.
The eye opener that confirms improper usage of the police is the recent recall of those of them who have been posted as escorts to the “Big Men”, a marked deviation from their job specification and primary responsibilities. The directive by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that these men should be recalled into the police force is very commendable.
Two days ago, the Inspector General of Police reported that 11,566 of these men have been brought back into the police mainstream. This is a whooping 3.11 per cent of the 371,800 officers in the force. Except very few, most of these officers are in the “Rank and File”, a section that is very active in law enforcement.

Records indicate that there are about 198,871 officers in this category about 5.81 percent of them are posted to the so called VIPs. Only God knows how many of these “Rank and File” are mere “Desk Jockey.” This defies logic in a country where thousands of able bodied young men and women on government payroll loiter aimlessly on the road preoccupied with extorting monies from road users.
What is important in this discourse is that there is need for immediate and outright structural restructuring of all the law enforcement units (formal and informal) in the country. With proper synergy between the state and the federal governments, a workable and sustainable solution can be put in place to attain the maximum utility benefits from what we have.
The Federal Road safety Corps with a manpower strength of about twenty-one thousand can merge with the police and a good number of them can be on the field to combat crime while some can be part of the traffic unit of the police force. In this regard, the law guiding the functions and duties of the traffic police officer can be merged with those of the Road Safety Corps for effective service delivery.

At the moment, the military leaves its primary responsibility of protecting the territory of Nigeria for the police duties of quelling riots, combating local crimes to other assignments that are meant for the police.
There are other informal units not recognised by law that share the job of the police. These aberration should either be outlawed or reintegrated into the system with proper and adequate training that will make them more function and useful to the country.

Finally, there should be no delay in giving the formation of “state police” the breath of life that it deserves through proper legislation. Thank God, Mr President is well disposed to having a functional security at the state level.

A situation where the Governor of a state is the Chief Security Officer of the state while he cannot give directives to any of the security units of the state is unacceptable, dangerous and meaningless.
Ojikutu is a Professor of Statistics (Retired), University of Lagos.