A universal fact that has over time been acknowledged by even the
die-hard supporters of the inefficient and corrupt status quo in Nigeria is
that the Nigeria police has failed as a potent force for crime detection,
prevention and combat. The raison d’être for establishing the Nigeria Police
Force is for the prevention and detection of crime, the apprehension of
offenders, the preservation of the law and order, the protection of life and
property and the due enforcement of all laws and regulations with which they
are directly charged, and shall perform such military duties within and without
Nigeria as may be required by them, under the authority of, this or any other
Act, [ see Police Act].
But the policing capacity and skills of the operatives and officers
of the Nigeria Police has continued to nosedive so much so that few years ago,
a serving Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice Chief Bola Ige,
[SAN] was murdered by suspected assasins in his Ibadan, Oyo State Country home
at a time his team of armed Police security guards and the State Security
Service [SSS] reportedly left their guns at the residential premises to go
to near-by restaurant to eat. These killers of the then Justice Minister as
well as many other innocent precious lives wasted have yet to be arrested and
prosecuted.
Sadly, successive Federal administrations have adopted weak,
inefficient, compromised and incompetent approach to solving this dangerous
national malaise of a failed policing institution in Nigeria. These Federal administrations
have used the formation of committees upon committees to find solution to the
problems afflicting the Nigeria Police Force and suggest strategies for
actualizing effective police reforms. But the formation of committees by
successive Nigerian governments have failed to produce the desired results.
Great thinkers believe that setting up committees is same as running away
from facing the problems and solving them squarely. Charles F. Kettering once
stated that; " If you want to kill any idea in the World today, get a
committee working on it".
In Nigeria, to add salt to injury, most of these presidential
police reforms committee were substantially composed by much of the same
persons who worked at the highest echelon of the Nigeria Police Force and used
their privileged positions to ruin the policing institution so much so that the
Nigeria police is not only one of the most indisciplined police outfits in the
World, but as currently constituted, the policing institution has witnessed
systemic collapse compelling the current administration to draft in the
operatives of the Nigerian Army to handle assignments of internal security that
constitutionally ought to be handled by the police.
The involvement of the military in internal security and maintenance
of law and order has brought international opprobrium to the image of the
Nigerian military that has come under considerable condemnation for human
rights violations. But violence and crime have continued unabated.
Nigerians endure daily cocktails of crime prevention errors by
operatives and the hierarchy of the Nigeria police Force which usually result
in casualties that end up as aspects of the larger picture of body counts and
crime statistics.
Killings of innocent lives have become commonplace and people are
sadly assuming that policing duty starts and end with body counts and
meaningless official press statements by police public Relations officers
confirming numbers of innocent persons gunned down, maimed or wantonly
destroyed by armed members of the underworld who are increasingly becoming very
daring, well trained, well armed with sophisticated weapons over and above
those of the regular police. The climate of impunity which gives violent
criminals the impression that you can commit any atrocity and get away with it
in Nigeria has embolden and made these criminals very callous, heartless and
vicious. The other day in Umuahia, Abia State, a baby just born was stolen from
the labour room by kidnappers and the operatives of the Nigeria police are
groping in the dark and unsure of how to deploy intelligence to uncover the
gang responsible for this crime against humanity. The Nigeria Police does not
have competent, efficient and functional intelligence gathering department even
as the commonest law enforcement tool which are forensic laboratories are
nowhere near any police station in Nigeria.
Sadly, the foot soldiers in the Nigeria police force who are
deliberately poorly equipped, poorly trained and poorly remunerated by the
over-fed political elite and the police hierarchy are often in the first line
of fire when these criminals deploy their usually sophisticated fire power to
the consternation of Nigerians who look up to the police to enforce law and
order.
A careful observer would have noted that for many years now, the
gross incompetence and absence of professionalism by the Nigeria police has put
Nigeria in the world’s crime map of infamy as one of the most dangerous places
to live. Only recently, a national daily reported that the United Kingdom
border Agency has turned down several asylum requests by frightened Nigerians
running away from the firing line of these armed terrorists in Northern Nigeria
who have made several successful forays into Abuja, the nation’s political capital
with devastating consequences to the precious lives and property of Nigerians
and foreigners alike.
Painfully, decent members of the civilized World are daily
insulted by the unintelligent and totally illogical media releases/statements
that have emanated from the highest quarters of the Nigeria Police Force in
their clever by half effort to conceal and explain away this monumental
policing incompetence and fatal blunders that have collectively cost Nigeria
high tolls in terms of the dimension of the bloody violence on precious lives
by these depraved armed members of the underworld. Family members are wiped out
intermittently in violence- prone flash points by armed bandits and the police
primarily charged with the constitutional duty of maintenance of law and order
are usually always caught napping. What a big shame?
The climax of all these policing blunders was the year 2011
June 16th terrorist attack of the Nigeria Police Force Headquarters in Abuja,
few days after the then Inspector General of Police Mr. Hafiz Ringim had
threatened to declare war on the Islamic insurgency group in the North. The
bombing last year also of the United Nations House in Abuja is another show of
shame that clearly demonstrated that the nation’s policing institution has systematically
collapsed. Nigerian Government has now set aside a whooping N5 billion from the
scarce public fund to rebuild this edifice which was wantonly destroyed because
Nigeria has no proactive policing institution to nip crimes in the bud.
It took public outrage for President Goodluck Jonathan to wield
the big stick and sack the immediate past Inspector General of police Mr. Hafix
Ringim for these overwhelming collapse of the crime fighting mechanism of the
Nigeria police Force.
If you think the change of guard at the highest echelon of the
Nigeria police Force that brought in Mr. Mohammed Abubakar as the Inspector
General of police would translate into change in crime prevention strategy then
you must be among those who live in the high streets of ‘fools paradise’.
Do you ask why? Then consider the fact that only few weeks ago
when four promising young Nigerian undergraduates of the University of Port
Harcourt were slaughtered in the most primitive savagery by members of the Aluu
Community of Ikwerre local government Area of River State, few distance away
from the police, the current Inspector General of police insulted our
collective intelligence when he explained that his men were ‘chased away’ by
stones wielding villagers of Aluu Community before these four young Nigerians
met their untimely, painful and gruesome end and further violated with reckless
abandon when the abominable dastardly criminal acts were recorded by video and
uploaded on the internet for the World to watch.
Again the nation’s current Inspector General of police has
insulted our collective intelligence when he was quoted as saying that the
Nigeria Police Force cannot prosecute terrorists in police detention because
the anti-terrorism law has not been signed. Oh what a country?
Is the Inspector General of police not aware of section 36,
subsection (8) of the 1999 Constitution as amended?
This constitutional provision states that; “No person shall be
held to be guilty of a criminal offence on account of any act or omission that
did not, at the time it took place, constitute such an offence, and no penalty
shall be imposed for any criminal offence heavier than the penalty in force at
the time the offence was committed”.
Assuming without conceding that Nigeria does not have extant
anti-terrorism laws, is the police Inspector General saying that persons
arrested for suspected grave offence of mass killings of innocent
Nigerians cannot validly be prosecuted in the competent courts of
law under extant laws that forbids murder which are clearly enshrined in our
common laws and other legal statutes?
However, since the senate Committee on Information Chairman
Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe has corrected the erring police boss and
pointed out that Nigeria has extant anti-terrorism laws, the Federal government
through the office of the Federal Attorney General must take over the
prosecution of all cases of terrorism so as to bring effective justice to these
suspects that have now being held for several months without trial and deliver
effective closures to the pains of all those who have lost their bread winners
in the hands of these suspected terrorists.
The public show of ignorance of the existence of the
anti-terrorism laws as displayed by the Inspector General of police is a clear
demonstration of the fact that the policing institution is incompetent and
cannot professionally handle serious criminal matters connected with terrorism.
Nigeria must get her acts together and practically reform the
Nigeria police to give Nigerians effective and efficient policing institutions
at the local, municipal, state and national levels. The National Assembly
will do us a whole lot of good if they use the opportunity of the ongoing
constitutional alteration process to wholistically introduce provisions that
would bring about effective, independent and well funded Local, Community, and
state police similar to what obtains in virtually all developed climes.
It is only insane people that can keep experimenting with a dead
policing institution that the current Nigeria police Force has become and still
expect a different result from the systemic failures that have occurred.
* Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’
ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, blogs@www.huriwa.blogspot.com.
22/11/2012
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