THE POLICE AND NATIONAL SECURITY

It’s time for state police

While nations across the world are increasingly relying on technology to fight crimes, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) is stuck in the past, dependent more on mounting roadblocks, blaring sirens, and using other antiquated methods. Recently, a national newspaper disclosed that a key tracking equipment deployed by the police to go after kidnappers, bandits and terrorists had been inactive since the beginning of the year, due mainly to non-renewal of subscription. For a nation under the vice-grip of sundry cartels of violent criminals, how can such an essential platform used in tracking phones be allowed to remain inactive for an hour?

Such negligence is symptomatic of the state of insecurity in Nigeria today. In the past few weeks, thousands of Nigerians, particularly in the Northwest and North central, have been violently seized from their homes or schools by bandits. In Niger, about 120 children, some as young as four years, have spent more than seven weeks with their captors in the Tegina region of the state. But Kaduna holds the prize for violence and incessant mass abductions. Scores of Bethel Secondary School students in the state are the latest victims of kidnap for ransom, often demanded in millions. The abductors were even cheeky enough to ask for food items to feed their victims, besides the huge ransom they are also demanding.

There are many pertinent questions begging for answers. How do law enforcement agents monitor the illicit activities of criminals if they lack basic equipment? How do we expect them to locate and rescue victims given government insistence on non-payment of ransom to kidnappers? And even more confounding, why should the entire police force saddled with the internal security of a nation the size of Nigeria be limited to having just one tracking equipment, and ill-maintained at that?

Unfortunately, this report has again highlighted the inadequacy and lack of preparedness of the Nigeria police to combat crimes. This perhaps explains why the current structure has failed in maintaining law and order, internal security, intelligence gathering and in checking the increasing wave of crimes. The entire police force is so overwhelmed that a huge slice of the military asset must be deployed to perform police duty with serious implications on professionalism. Since their single tracking equipment broke down, they have been dependent on the ‘benevolence’ of the military to perform their constitutional duty. To compound the challenge, police personnel are ill-motivated, and professionally ill-equipped to perform their important duty of protecting the people.

More disturbing is that in two separate attacks last week, no fewer than 19 policemen were killed by criminal gangs. Thirteen officers were killed last Sunday during an operation to repel an attack by bandits in Bungudu Local Government Area of Zamfara State. On Wednesday night, six policemen were murdered by gunmen at a checkpoint in the Enugu South local government area of the state. While criminal gangs seem to have overpowered the capacity of the state to restore order, it becomes a far more serious challenge when the police can no longer protect their own men and barracks. What that suggests is an urgent need to reform the institution if the men and officers must regain public confidence.

While asking the federal government for a special intervention fund to enable states contain the myriad of security crises that have rendered the country unsafe, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) recently reiterated the call for state police. Their position now seems unassailable. As things stand, the NPF is inept and incapable of performing its constitutional roles. The huge responsibilities for the upkeep and maintenance of the police in form of equipment, logistics, allowances, and other forms of assistance may be better handled at subnational levels. That of course will necessitate tinkering with the current structure to devolve more powers and resources from the centre to the states. It is perhaps the only solution to the current crisis of insecurity that puts Nigeria at the risk of becoming a failed state.