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Nigerian Police: ‘To Serve and Protect With Integrity?’ By Kabeer Adamu
Sometime last year, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) carried out a recruitment exercise of some 40,000 young men and women to increase the manpower in the force. I would not have bothered to comment if appropriate measures were taken to properly finance, train and equip these young people. To begin with, the Nigeria Police is grossly under funded to cater for the needs of the existing police officers not to talk of recruits. The 2004 and 2005 Appropriation Bills did not adequately provide for the police and in 2006 additional officers were recruited to overburden the already under financed force. What the police sorely need is not new recruits but re-engineering and rehabilitation. The NPF still operates with obsolete communication equipment, firearms and basic kits required for effective police work. In terms of infrastructure, the barracks and training schools are dilapidated; and given the present state of the police training schools, I doubt if the recruits were properly trained to meet the challenges facing the present NPF.
Secondly, the criterion for the recruitment exercise was not transparent. In my view, most of the youths recruited do not deserve to be in the police force. Many of them are dregs of the society who have somehow bribed their way to be recruited. With bribery and corruption that has eaten deep into the police force like a cancer, one wonders what the many undeserving young men and women recruited into the NPF would do having successfully completed their training. It is these same misfits that would man our streets, highways and police stations.
Another pathetic situation with the police apart from being under equipped and under funded is poor management. Police Officers that patrol our highways fuel the vehicles they use from their own resources albeit, from monies collected from commuters on highways. Imagine a situation where armed robbers are operating on the highway with the police just a few kilometres away stranded because they have no fuel in their vehicle to accost the robbers.
Regular travellers on highways across the country often report cases of robberies in broad daylight, which has become the order of the day. The robbers are often reported to be using highly sophisticated weapons, which are by far more superior to the ones used by the police. The introduction of the highway crime prevention task force to ensure adequate security on the highways and in the society in general is commendable and a welcome idea but how well equipped is the task force? If the police are ill-equipped how could they be expected to face better-armed foes? The recent spate of robbery of Bureau de change operators in Kano, Lagos and Yola leaves much to be desired. The robbers attacked in broad daylight and there were no police around to stop them. The Police always come after the incidents!
The highest motivational factor in every establishment is remuneration. The police are inadequately remunerated and while some paltry allowances are approved for them, these allowances are not usually paid by their superiors to the extent that the junior officers threaten to go on strike. In spite of the poor remuneration, the officers are bound by Section 36 of the Police Act (Cap. 339 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990) which provides that: “no member of the force shall, while he holds such appointment, engage in any private business or trade, without the (written consent of the Nigeria Police Council or any person to whom such power is delegated)”. If the officers must be bound by this Act then they should be adequately compensated to deter them from bribe-taking and begging. Attractive incentives should be provided for them to encourage dedication and better performance in their duties.
It is sad to note that even common writing materials are oftentimes not made available to the police. Anyone that lodges a complaint with the police is expected to provide money for the purchase of paper and also pay transportation for the investigating police officer before any investigation could commence. He also has to pay a commercial photographer to take photographs of the scene of the crime. The police could not even afford writing paper talk less of a camera essential for good police work!
Take a short trip from Kaduna to Abuja and you will encounter men of the Highway Patrol Division of the NPF. These people are mean and downright corrupt. They selectively stop motorists and subject them to all sorts of harassment. God help you if your Drivers’ License, Motor Vehicle License, Insurance and Certificate of Roadworthiness have expired. Even after confirming that you are the rightful owner of the vehicle which should be their primary objective in the first place, they will still harass you for those things that are clearly the purview of other agencies, the Federal Safety Corps and the Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIOs) and extort money from you. The amount they expect you to give them is usually above N100. The question here is, are these Highway Patrol officers required to stop and ask for vehicle particulars or is their primarily responsibility to patrol the arm robbery infested highway? In most cases you find them a few metres from the outskirts of a village usually not more than 60 kilometres to Abuja.
When Mr. Sunday Ehindero came on board as I.G. he stole the Los Angeles Police Department’s slogan “to protect and to serve” and coined out his own version of police watchword – “to serve and protect with integrity”. Barely two months after that I read an editorial of The Guardian on extortion by the police. It was reported that commercial drivers in Abuja protested against extortion by the police in Abuja. They rose up together and chased mobile policemen at vulcaniser bus stop into the bush and blocked the road from Ido to Tasha. The drivers’ protest lasted for about 5 hours while the mobile policemen went into hiding inside the bush. It was humiliating and a disgrace to the image of the already daunted honour of the Nigerian Police. The editorial also highlighted how officers and men of the Joint Patrol Team have made it a regular affair to extort money from motorists’ along the Seme border and Lagos-Badagry expressway just as is the practice at illegal police road blocks across the country. The worst extortionists in the police are officers and men of the Highway Patrol Teams. Any where you encounter these officers; you should be ready to part with money. They have made it their ‘unconstitutional right’ to collect toll from any commuter that happens to pass along their way. These officers do not care about a person’s I.D. card; they go to any length to make sure that something is wrong with a commuter’s vehicle particulars so that they will have an excuse to extort money from him.
The police are principally enforcers of the law but the bad ones amongst them make the job of law enforcement by good officers very difficult. It is these types of officers that tarnish the image of the police force because they feel that the police uniform they wear puts them above the law. A State governor’s motorcade was roughened by a truck full of mobile police officers en route to a training exercise at Gwoza, Borno State, and they even had the audacity to engage the governor’s security detail in a fight. The resultant punishment that was meted out on them could not have been the right thing done by the police high command.
When you see a police officer breaking the law you do not have to dig far into his or her background to discover that his integrity is highly questionable. Only a few police officers have drivers’ licence and complete vehicle particulars but they drive! When El-Rufai drove away ‘okada’ operators from Abuja city and made it mandatory for civil servants owning motor cycles to wear helmets and reflective jackets, it was meant to cover the police also but you hardly see a policeman that fulfils this requirement. Laws are made for everybody but the police break them without batting an eyelid because they feel their uniform provides them immunity from prosecution.
When you encounter a vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road against the traffic and at high speed, with full lights on, it should not come to you as a surprise that the person behind the wheel is a police officer driving a police vehicle! This is done when the police are ever ready to arrest a hapless driver who commits a similar offence whether deliberately or by accident. The other day a group of mobile policemen drove against the traffic to beat the serious hold-up caused by the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) officers along Kubwa-Gwarinpa expressway, Abuja. The FRSC officers parked by the side of the road blocked them and a scuffled ensued. It became a national matter that was broadcast on radio and television. The I.G., Mr. Mike Okiro had to intervene and he promised to conduct an investigation on the matter the report of which would undoubtedly not be heard by the public because it has happened before and it would still happen again unless the general conduct of the Nigerian Police is transformed.
True, there are God-fearing, hardworking, dedicated and highly committed officers in the police force whose performance is commendable but their efforts are overshadowed by lazy, incompetent and highly corrupt officers. While some officers are working hard to check the menace of crime in the society others are busy extorting money from innocent citizens and conniving with armed robbers to perpetrate their crime. The X-Squad and Monitoring sections are responsible for the discipline of corrupt police officers in the Nigeria Police. What efforts are these departments making to investigate cases of bribe-taking, extortion and rampant acts of misconduct by errant officers?
The job of sanitising the police force of bad eggs is not a task that could be accomplished within a short time. For almost four decades, the NPF has been a force that has made a bad name in terms of integrity. It is therefore foolhardy for the NPF to use the slogan “To serve and protect with integrity” ‘’To serve” yes, but to “protect with integrity” No. The disgraceful manner the erstwhile Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun was kicked out of office is a case in point. It therefore did not come to me as a surprise when Mr. Okiro decided to remove that slogan from all police vehicles nationwide because it contradicts the action of the police.
What of those instances where policemen are also accused of brutality and taking the law into their own hands without following due process? There have been cases of Policemen torturing and even shooting suspects without just cause besides sundry other abuses such as colluding with political party agents and thugs to aid rigging during elections. Human Rights Watch (HWR), the international human rights organisation, had at some point cause to petition former President Olusegun Obasanjo on the continuous violation of the rights of individuals by government functionaries, including the police, and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had also accused the police of using excessive force on suspects to get confessions from them, and also of abuse of the detainees under their custody. Nigeria is still a developing nation when compared to South Africa where the crime level is very high. As Nigeria is developing so is the crime level increasing. People need jobs without which they would find an alternative means of survival and in most cases they turn to crime.
The influx of people to the Federal Capital Territory in search for better living standards over the past 15 years has raised the level of crime in the Capital city and the El-Rufai demolition crusade did not help matters as the exercise has rendered many people homeless and jobless leaving some with no option but to resort to crime. The police have their hands full as many of these people are forced to relocate to satellite towns and villages that surround the FCT, from where they plan crimes and attack innocent people while the police are helpless. A friend of mine witnessed a gang of dare-devil robbers rob a filling station in broad daylight at Kubwa, Abuja. The police were called but they could not arrest anyone as the robbers shot intermittently to scare people as they made their getaway.
The breakdown of security in the country has now reached such an alarming level that many communities form vigilante groups to provide security for their lives and property because they have lost confidence in the police. In spite of the limited resources at their disposal, the police still respond to many instances of security breakdown. It is a pity that the police are at the receiving end anytime a crime is committed. One cannot blame the police sometimes when they take their time before responding to a distress call. Instead of being applauded whenever they successfully arrest armed robbers and recover stolen property, people are only happy to call them names and accuse them when they are unable to tackle a security situation because they have already acquired a negative tag. Sometimes they could be a little overzealous in trying to impress the public.
The ‘brand’ new I.G. started on a wrong foot by being a little overzealous. He recently made a mockery of his position and embarrassed the entire police force by announcing police ‘success’ in arresting a group of ‘notorious armed robbers’ only to discover later that the so-called ‘suspects’ were a group of panel beaters and a car dealer that were under investigation for an alleged stolen car. The police spokesperson had to apologise to the public for this horrendous error committed by the CEO of the police himself!
The police are helpless and that is why they had to run to our former colonial masters, Britain for help to assist them in detecting killers of the slain Lagos politician, Chief Funsho Williams. While government officials surround themselves with scores of well armed security operatives sometimes even policemen at the expense of other Nigerians, the underworld are busy having a field day. These government officials have forgotten that one day they will also join the rest of us commoners when they leave office. The time for them to act is now when they have the power to improve the security situation in the country.
The Federal Government should improve the remuneration package of the Nigeria Police Force with a view to getting a better performance of the force and reducing or wiping out completely its toga of bribery and corruption. The remuneration package of the police should be reviewed in such a way that a police officer would not be tempted to collect bribe. A performance bonus should be introduced whereby officers would be enticed to work hard to earn the bonus.
A performance index should also be introduced through which officers’ performance is measured monthly and reward given to the best performing officer of the month and also at the end of the year based on the index, the officer of the year could emerge who could be rewarded with a promotion as well as a bonus. This would promote competition to excel in the force and the society would gain from a dedicated force committed to really safeguarding the lives and property of the citizenry.
The condition of service of the police should be improved to incorporate in addition to the newly introduced pension plan, a group life insurance policy integrated with an accident cover. This policy should cover officers 24 hours a day in the event of accident, whether on or off the job, as well as provide for dependants’ benefits in case an officer dies while in service whether through natural death or through the hazards of his profession so that the officer’s dependent’s would be adequately compensated. Furthermore, the education of policemen’s children should be subsidized and provision made for free education up to University level of children of officers that die in the line of duty.
The police should be fully kitted and well equipped to tackle the menace of crime in the society. The firearms presently used by the police have become obsolete in other parts of the world for decades and should, therefore, be phased out and replaced with those munitions that can match those often used by armed bandits and the militia. For the police to return fire-for-fire, nothing less will be adequate.
Finally, the whole police force should be sanitised with a view to rooting out undesirable officers that are giving the police a bad name and recruitment of officers should be handled by consultants that are not part of the police force. Such consultants must of course be security experts that would screen potential recruits thoroughly without fear or favour as is presently the case. Police training programmes should be enhanced to incorporate current trends of crime fighting and all officers should be subjected to training at least once a year on new techniques to improve their performance. Officers due for promotion as laid down in the condition of service, should be promoted as at when due. This will further motivate the police to put in more effort unlike the case when officers remain on a particular post for ages without promotion, thereby becoming frustrated. All these can only be achieved if the police force is adequately funded.
The need to support the police to improve the security situation in the country cannot be over-emphasised. The National Assembly should pass a bill to re-engineer our police force. This country has the human and material resources to make the Nigeria Police Force the best in Africa. Let’s support the police to acquire some integrity so as to serve and protect the country better.
Kabeer M. Adamu C810 Railway Road BAUCHI - NIGERIA |