Police  ‘ll Perform Better with Dedicated FG Funding, Says Criminologist 

Kemi Olaitan in Ibadan

A criminologist, Prof. Etannibi Alemika, has said the performance of the police in the country will be better enhanced if the federal government provides the needed funding for training and procurement of modern  tools.

Alemika, who is the Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Nigeria Society for Criminology (NSC), said this while speaking on “Policing and Police in an Anomic Society”, at the second international conference of the society, stating that there is chaos and strain in the country due to the erosion of cherished cultural values.

According to the foremost criminologist, police and policing in Nigeria is dependent on adequate government funding of the policing institution and socio-economic as well as political factors. “What is responsible for the erosion of values is the limitless aspirations of humans. We should see Police and policing as dependent variables. Socioeconomic and political factors, including the inability of the government to provide funding to equip the police are the independent variables,” he said.

All these were contained in the conference communique of the NSC. 

In their own paper titled,  “The clamour for state police in Nigeria : The arguments, the fallacies and the way forward”, Prof. Sadiq Isah Radda and Abdulmajeed Ahmed, argued that there was no doubt that Nigeria needs alternative policing strategy. 

Noting that the policing system is already decentralised with different layers of community policing and police-community relations.

While maintaining that the current clamour for state policing is due to political exigency, they warned about the tendencies of abuse of such system.

The duo stated that there is a way in which the state abdicated its responsibility once there is decentralisation such as the fate of education and health sectors.