THE CASE FOR POLICE REFORMS

The present standard of the police is unacceptable
The recent invasion by unknown gunmen of a police station in Gbako Local Government Area of Niger State where some detained criminals were released points to the pathetic state of the police in Nigeria today. While the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Dibal Paul Yakadi, reportedly rushed to the community following the development, the state government imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew and mobilised vigilance group to go after the gunmen and arrest them. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident as many police stations in our country have, at different times, been sacked by gunmen.

From Benue to Adamawa to Taraba and Zamfara States, criminal gangs seem to have overpowered the capacity of the state to restore order with hundreds of citizens killed almost on a regular basis. But it becomes a far more serious challenge when the police can no longer protect their own men and barracks from the onslaught of sundry criminal cartels. In January last year, for instance, two officers were injured when hoodlums invaded a police station in Suleja, also in Niger State, to free their detained colleagues. Numbering over 20 and armed with cutlasses, daggers, axes and sticks, the hoodlums reportedly first issued an ultimatum to the policemen on duty before they overpowered them. What that suggests is an urgent need to reform the institution if the men and officers must regain public confidence.

In the country today, especially in recent times, the police have failed in their duty of maintaining law and order, internal security, intelligence gathering and in checking the increasing wave of crime. So incapable of delivering on its mandate has the institution become that a huge slice of the military asset is often deployed to perform police duty with serious implications for professionalism in the military, not to mention the effects of its exposure on civil–military relations.

With Nigeria gradually descending to the Hobbesian state of nature where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, there is need for a more coherent strategy to deal with the security challenge and that cannot be done without a professional and competent police. Yet, to the extent that at the root of the endemic violent conflicts in the country is an obvious recourse to self-help by citizens, what the current situation demands is a total overhaul of the police starting with the appointment of a new leadership.

Meanwhile, the increasing loss of confidence in the ability of the police to secure the civil populace is worsened by the public conduct of many of its personnel. Last year, the Police Service Commission (PSC), the body responsible for the regulation of the police service, announced that it was investigating some state command police commissioners for alleged complicity in crime. Nobody knows what has become of that investigation. But since the processes leading to the recruitment of personnel into many of the security services in our country have been compromised, it is also no surprise that many social misfits are legally carrying arms to terrorise Nigerians.

Indeed, that the strident calls for the establishment of state police have now been endorsed by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) is an expression of concerns and indeed a vote of no confidence in the present structure and management of the Nigeria Police Force. However, as we have canvassed on this page several times, whatever may be the merit in such idea, it is not a silver bullet given that the same subversion that has rendered the federal police ineffectual could easily be replicated in the states. But we agree that the current situation where our policemen have become an easy game for a more sophisticated world of crime calls for a radical solution.