If there is one item
among office holders in Nigeria that is so cheap to come by it is smooth talk.
Few months back when Nigerian President blessed the country with a new defence
chief the Adamawa state born military General Alex Badeh made a sensational
statement to the effect that the notorious armed Islamic insurgents would be
defeated in two months from the date of his swearing in.
Few weeks after the full
implication of that statement dawned on him following the intensity of the
ferocious terrorism and violent attacks mounted by the insurgents the defence
chief made a dramatic 360 degree turn around and denied ever given a time
line for the eventual defeat of the terrorists.
Trust public office
holders in Nigeria not to learn from the mistakes of the past. The newly
appointed acting Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba who formally
assumed duties last Friday has followed the familiar pattern of freely
dishing out cheap talks on what he would do within his tenure as the nation's
police chief. These public office holders do this often and get away without
achieving these goals and Nigerian public do not ever ask the necessary
question to pin these public office holders down to their sacred pledges.
Knowing the gullible
nature of most Nigerian public, the new police head has started with a pledge
to protect the weak and the vulnerable in the society. If others would not task
him to keep to his words I will hereby do just that and remind him that there
are still some vigilant Nigerians who will observe him to ensure that he does
what he said he will do.
Abba from North West
Nigeria who reportedly spoke exclusively to a national daily on
telephone promised to invigorate the war against criminals across the
country. He also acknowledged that the current policing institution is ridden
with operational rots and therefore would require surgical overhaul but my
worry is that he may not necessarily have the political will to effect the
necessary revolutionary change since he is a beneficiary of the near comatose
system. Someone asked me what I think he stands to benefit by changing the
status quo which threw him up in the first instance.
But he defended himself
against the charge of lacking the capacity to see through the actualization of
the necessary changes in the near decadent Nigeria Police Force and stated
that: "our major concern is to protect and assist the weak ones. And as
you know, the criminals like to exploit the weak. That’s why the police symbol
is the elephant; the elephant is a strong animal and the police are stronger
than criminals.”
But this gentleman did
not respond to the querry why this so-called elephant [NPF] simply collapses or
melts away in the face of the emerging threats against Nigerians by way of
armed insurgency in the North East. The Nigerian police force is an elephant
with the legs of clay no doubt.
Not discouraged by
what is generally considered a groundswell of cynicism among most Nigerian
observers the police chief in what is considered his message to criminals
stated thus; "we will continue to consider criminals as
threats; we will go after them. We will not relent. We are going to
take charge and we would really take charge in the fight against crimes. We
will not allow any crime to go unpunished. You know I am a field man, so we
will not relent".
“Certainly, our focus
would be on violent criminals and these include violence against the weak and
the vulnerable. Violent crimes like armed robbery, like kidnapping and
terrorism will be tackled with renewed vigor.”
Recognizing attitudinal
poverty among the members of the Nigerian police as the fundamental
problem he stated that: “Like I told you, I believe that whatever you do to a
man to change him, so long as you allow him to maintain the same bad character,
you will not see the change in him".
"So, what we want
to do is that we want every police officer to know the values in policing and
then work in conformity with the provisions of the Code of Ethics".
The new man in the hot
seat of the Nigerian Police must also work on rebuilding the confidence of the
public on the integrity of the force because it is almost impossible to fight
crime by a police institution whose members are not trusted by the members of
the public.
Most people laugh at any
mention of the once popular slogan that the Nigerian police is your friend
because of the bad encounter they have had with men and officers of the
Nigerian Police force which is filled up with many rotten eggs. The police
hierarchy must dismantle the clique that protects erring members of the
policing institution because it is impossible to win public confidence and
trust when the same institution is ever so willing to protect their own who
violate the laws of the land which they were set up to enforce.
The new police boss
said his team would also ensure that “policing becomes truly intelligence-led
while enforcement and crime prevention initiatives are integrated and
supportive of each other.”
Now that we have heard
from the horse's mouth regarding how he intends to pilot the nation's policing
institution let us challenge him to immediately walk the talk as Nigerians are
already used to these sweet talks from all angles which end up unrealistic on
the long run. From the politicians, Nigerians have come to realize that they
need not invest their aspirations and hopes on what the political public office
holders say but to fervently pray that their actions would speak louder than
their words.
The new acting Inspector
General of police is said to be a man of letters because from his academic
profile we learnt that he is both a lawyer and a historian placing him in a
good position to comprehend and apprehend the fundamental ills of the nation's
collapsed policing institution. From his background as a lawyer he must be
aware that the current global trend is for the establishment of a vibrant
community, local and state policing institutions to compliment the supervisory
role of the national or federal policing force. It is expected that unlike his
immediate predecessor who appeared to have opposed the best global policing
practices, he would not be against the national clamor for the establishment of
state police that would be made up of persons from the respective areas so that
crime fighting would be thoroughly intelligence driven and knowledge based
because you can not give what you do not have and in the same vein no police
operative can operate competently in an area that he is a stranger.
Secondly, from his
background as a historian he must be aware that of all the modern policing
institutions globally, the Nigerian Police Force is about the only one that has
come under considerable focus as one of the worst human rights violator by way
of the large scale extra judicial killings that take place among the rank and
file. It is satisfying that he has promised to bring about attitudinal change
among the members of the Nigerian Police but again the first step is to build
up the complete biometric records of all the serving police operatives to
build a national data bank to determine the criminal records of all the serving
police operatives going by the fact that over the years the recruitment
process/mechanism has been anything but transparent and accountable. Erstwhile
President Obasanjo had stated that armed robbers and prostitutes have found
their ways into the present Nigerian Police Force and so the first task
for this historian/lawyer police boss is to fish out these rotten eggs so they
stop contaminating the few good ones.
For as long as Nigeria
maintains the status quo regarding the structure of the policing institution we
may never get it well. My take is that we need to quickly establish the
framework for the setting up of state police so the federal policing structure
will only exists in supervisory capacity and to take charge of federal crime
investigations or crimes that have significant national impact as is done in
places like the United States of America. Currently, most communities in the rural
Nigeria are not policed whatsoever meaning that they are left at the mercy of
criminals. This is the reason why most border communities have come under
increasing attacks by insurgents and there is no armed security operatives to
save them from these violent attacks. We need to have state police in place so
every communities all across Nigeria are adequately protected by armed policing
operatives from those communities and the federal police can only be called up
to assist if the crime or the nature of attacks surpasses what the local or
state policing institution can handle. The Federal Policing force must have all
the modern sophisticated weapons and facilities such as serviceable aircrafts
to be able to be deployed within record time as soon as their services are
required outside of the federal capital territory.
Administratively, the
new police chief needs to dismantle the long existing cliques that spring up
the moment a new officer is named the head of the nation's police boss and
recognize every officer as first and foremost as a Nigerian and must accord
equal respect to all irrespective of their religious or ethnic orientations.
The immediate past Inspector General of police was accused severally of working
against a section of the country by recommending for retirement officers from
that particular zone making it impossible for that zone to produce any head of
the Nigerian police in a long time. Specifically since I believe in full
disclosure I will state here that it is the South East zone that the last boss
of the police was accused of undermining. The Police service Commission must
ensure that these claims of discriminatory practices are investigated to foster
a sense of oneness among all and sundry in the Nigerian police family.
Another important issue
is the need to address once and for all the relevance or lack of it of the
Nigerian ministry of police affairs because most observers say this ministry
only award fictitious contracts worth several billions of tax payers money and
that the actual implementation of these contracts are not done thereby making
the police operatives go through hard times since they have little or no clean
office or residential accommodations exposing majority of them to the vagaries
of squatting with relatives. Even President Jonathan saw this by himself when
he visited the moribund Nigerian police Training College in Ikeja Lagos whereby
he was confronted by the monumental rot and collapse of all the facilities of
that premier police academy. It is high time we review the relevance or
otherwise of the police affairs ministry and if need be put the relevant
supervisory mechanisms to ensure that procurement practices meet the global
best practices and expose and punish persons who have in the past and present
stolen from the Nigerian Police which contributed to the near death of the
Nigeria Police Force.
+ Emmanuel Onwubiko is head; Human Rights
Writers Association of Nigeria and blogs @www.huriwa.blogspot.com;
www.huriwa.org.
4/8/2014
