WITH UCHE NNADOZIE
This has become our standard response each time we encounter serious challenges in Nigeria. Reform, change, restructure, and such words are bandied to make it look like we are doing something about the challenge. It has become a standard response. All our problems in Nigeria are located in our ability to reform, or so we think.
Unfortunately, our people buy it. In most discussions, people paint flowery pictures of what should have been if only we reform the police. Ask them what exactly needs the reforming, they begin to stammer. It is what it is. I have come to get tired each time we promote these series of escapist solutions. The bigger problem is that our public affairs commentators and journalists who ask the questions think they are doing the country some good. In their honesty they can’t see their naivety. By continually promoting the reform mantra, we inadvertently excuse the government and its security agencies from responsibility.
I see television stations spend good time during their many interview programmes trying to goad their guests into accepting that the police need reforms. They have not taken the pains to enumerate what the sub head of the reforms should be. They do not bother about analysing each of these sub heads. They just bandy the word “reform” as if merely asking a committee to come up with some reformative outlines will solve our insecurity challenges. Also, at what pace have we bothered as a people to insist that police does its constitutional jobs at all levels. Last week, the acting Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu asked that duty hours be reduced from 12 hours to eight. He didn’t need to set up a reform committee or wait till the president or minister says so. In fact, the action is a reversal to what it used to be. He simply redirected his men to return to what they used to do, believing that putting in long hours may have caused some of the issues we are grappling with in the police.
We should wonder what kind of IG elongated the hours spent by the police on each shift in the first place. Was it thought through? This is partly the sort of problems militating against better security “architecture”, another fancy word that our people like to project.
What is security architecture? How does one change it or redraw it? Is that really what we need at this time? Can we truthfully say we don’t know what our issues are? Sure, internal police set up has its own issues, political influence both at the executive and legislative areas have their own issues, then the communities have their own issues that militate against policing in the country. I still wonder why you have police men stationed in street corner guest houses. In some cases you have six mobile police men sitting and idling away with our guns and bullets guarding guest houses or motels of private business men and women. Why should that be? We complain the police have fewer men than needed, yet the ones available are sent to secure motels? Of course, it is because of corrupt enrichment that this practice persists because these hoteliers pay police for those services.
Is the money for this service paid into the federation account? In the first place, why should it even happen that police will go sit around hotels? We also have police men in all bank branches nationwide. This is ridiculous. We don’t need any reform to withdraw our police from such condescending roles. Although I know they make a lot of money from this side work. But the work diminishes the worth of a police man. It seems they are police to make money for selves- that’s why a constable employed today will begin to look for ways to buy a car and build a house within six months of joining the police. The job of policing is not a money making venture. It ought to be a passion, but the police hierarchy has turned it into a mercantilist venture, thereby eroding respect and making the police look very dishonorable in the eyes of the public.
There’s huge indiscipline in the force. Policemen behave anyhow they want and even their superiors find it difficult to reprimand them.
Most of the time, the superiors receive kickbacks from the illicit activities of their juniors. Those who make returns are favoured by “lucrative” postings. Reforms won’t change that. The same way reforms won’t change recent murders committed by police personnel on duty.
They kill because they feel they will receive a slap on the wrist. They kill because they do not feel any sense of responsibility to Nigerians. They think and work believing that they are policemen and women for their own devices. Yet the force has its own rules of engagement. They have their regulations of how to use fire arms. Even the recent decision to include rubber bullets and such ammunitions as part of the weapons of the police did not benefit from any reform.
These are simply directives and determination to act differently. Boots, uniforms, accommodation, insurance, remuneration, torchlights, batons, guns, vehicles and other helpful equipment including a central data bank and street CCTVs does not require a reform. These are resources that can be procured or even manufactured here in Nigeria if we really want to. People have complained about the structure of the police. Some have called for the creation of state police arguing that policemen do not understand communities they are posted because they are not originally from those communities.
TO BE CONCLUDED
