NEWS > 16 December 2007

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AllAfrica.com - Washington,USA
16 December 2007

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Nigeria: British Aid Now, Stat

I want to dive headlong into this state police debate today by telling a story. Alhaji Rauf Aregbesola, former Lagos Commissioner for Works who ran for governorship in Osun State this year, paid us a visit at THISDAY shortly after the polls. Aregbesola, who ran on the ticket of Action Congress (AC), was very bitter. From the beginning to the end of the two-hour monologue, he complained bitterly about how the incumbent governor, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, used the police to harass, intimidate, torture, maim and kill his supporters before and after the elections. He outlined all the evils that were allegedly perpetrated by Oyinlola through the police. As he was rounding off his case, I asked a question that had been lurking around my mind.

"But you are one of the people campaigning for state police," I half-asked, expecting to engage him in a decent argument over the pros and cons of placing the police force under the control of state government. He flew into a rage and started yelling at me. I will only reproduce the printable words here. At a stage, I thought he was going to slap me, but I was a bit lucky. Hear him: "What are you saying?! If I were the governor, do you think I would use the police like that? When we chose republicanism in 1963, we knew what we were doing. It was to prevent state institutions from becoming personal property of those in power." Believe me, I have done a good job of editing the profanities he yelled at me, but I still did not get the point he was making, nor do I agree with him that if he was the governor, he would have allowed the police to function without interference. It sounded too good to be true.

Mr. Tunji Bello, former Commissioner for the Environment in the AC-controlled government of Lagos State and now chairman of THISDAY Editorial Board, raised this issue of state police recently in his weekly column. He was reacting to the move to get the British police to help turn around Nigeria Police Force. In his argument, which I found very enlightening and convincing, he said while British assistance might be useful, the best way to go was to allow states to take full charge of the police for ease of administration. Managing the police force from Abuja, he said, presents too many hindrances and fosters inefficiency. He illustrated his point with the posting of policemen from one part of the country to the other where they are complete strangers and totally ignorant of the terrain.

I have always taken special interest in police matters. I therefore have a strong urge to contribute to this debate. I will categorise their problems and challenges into two: internal and external. There are those we can blame the police for (internal) and there are those beyond their control (external). There are headaches that paracetamol can cure and there are headaches that are mere symptoms of malaria or typhoid which paracetamol cannot handle. Furthermore, there are problems that are fundamental to the police (diseases) and there are problems that are ephemeral (symptoms). To address all these problems, therefore, we must be open to all options available. The nature of the fundamental problems with the police is such that state control is not guaranteed to solve, especially as the institutions that states currently run are also plagued with similar problems.

The internal problems of the police are quite enormous: poor working conditions, poor training, poor tools, poor orientation and low self-esteem. The problems usually start with the recruitment process. To be honest, how many people enlist in the force out of love for the police job? How many people join the police out of a sense of duty or service to fatherland? We all saw how American firemen and women ran into the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, even when they knew they might not come out alive. You can argue that they knew their families would be well taken care of in the event of death, but you cannot discountenance the fact that they were also determined to save lives at the risk of losing theirs. That is a sense of duty. Most of the police men and women we have today are just doing a job. They were driven into the force by unemployment or by the knowledge that they stood to make a lot of money through extortion. That is a fundamental problem.

The orientation or mentality is also faulty. Most police men and women are not very proud to wear the uniform. They have low self-esteem. They think the society sees them as drop-outs and never-do-wells and they react defensively and oppressively. Indeed, many of them see the uniform as a licence to lord it over the citizens. This makes it very easy for them to be so undisciplined and brutal in their interactions with the society at large. Policemen drive against traffic as a matter of principle. They drive dangerously and bash other people's vehicles without any sense of remorse. They threaten defenceless citizens with guns. They molest ordinary citizens. They have a complete misunderstanding of what their duties and their conduct should be. They do not have an idea of their place in the society. They are not doing the job with a sense of pride and commitment.

Now, do you blame them? Right from the training school, they are treated as animals and trained to become beasts. Their accommodation is run down, a little worse than a goat shed. The food is not fit to be served to puppies. Their training allowances are embezzled. The teaching materials are archaic. The training tools are insufficient. I discovered, in the process of doing a research on them four years ago, that many do not undergo firearms training. Those who do are usually given two or three bullets and taken to the shooting range for practice. They are subsequently discharged from training and unleashed on the society. To expect such people to discharge their duties excellently is to expect me to speak fluent Ijaw before dusk today - it will take miracle or magic or both.

How do they get uniforms? Many, if not most, have to bribe. They join a force in which corruption mounts a road block at every stage. How do we expect them to be different from what they are now? Is it not what we sow that we reap? Let us not even discuss the issue of welfare - those dingy police barracks, those postings without provision for accommodation, the miserable hazard allowances that are never paid, the poor salaries that make them feel unloved in the society, the years it takes to compensate their families in the event of death, and so on and so forth. It is very sad story.

We may also wish to discuss how well equipped the police force is. A force that does not have a forensic lab and yet expected to solve robbery and murder mysteries. A force where intelligence gathering is non-existent and yet we expect them to pre-empt and prevent crime. A force whose firepower is not as sophisticated as that of the armed robbers they are expected to engage. A force where policemen and women work non-stop for 24 hours, whereas in advanced societies the police have three shifts. Until recently, their vehicles were God-forsaken. Communication facilities are rusty or inadequate. How on earth do we expect such a force to perform? Are they miracle workers and magicians?

I have just scratched the internal problems on the surface. When we now move to the external problems, we will realise why our police are in double jeopardy. We may even resolve the internal problems in a spate of three years or less, but the external problems, I'm afraid to say, will be extremely difficult to address. The biggest problem is politicians. Politicians, what can we do about them? These politicians, especially the ones in power, have access to stupid money. They are ready to bribe the top echelon of the force to hell. They manipulate the police to gain or consolidate political power - the same way they manipulate INEC. It's even worse with the police because you cannot rig elections without security agencies.

I don't know if I am revealing a trade secret, but many DPOs, Area Commanders, Commissioners and the rest of them are on the payroll of politicians. Even if they get one million per cent salary increase, it cannot match the amount of money they collect from politicians. So the police are readily available to be used by politicians. A second external problem is that of a hostile society. Police are supposed to watch over our lives but we have no respect for them whatsoever. We treat them with absolute contempt. We may have justifiable reasons, but that cannot help matters. They are human beings like us, and every human being wants to be respected and treated with courtesy. At worst, we should tolerate them.

I am running out of space so I have to conclude now. This is exactly my point: there are problems British assistance can help solve, especially in training, re-orientation and infrastructural development. These cannot solve all the problems, agreed. There are problems the politicians have to solve. There are problems the society itself must solve. The problems are in different facets and degrees. If we double their salaries without taking care of problems of infrastructure and training, we will achieve no tangible result. If we reform the force and still leave them as tools of politicians, the whole essence will be defeated. I support whatever assistance that will make the police force very efficient and noble. When we have addressed these problems and the society is safer, we can then decide if we want villages, councils and states to have their own police force - and how this will be managed in a way that politicians (federal, state or council) will not use them as private army. Tough task, is it?

Trust Okiro, Policemen Don't Rig

The Inspector General of Police, Sir Mike Okiro, has come up with his own pet theory. According to him, police did not participate in the scandalous rigging of the 2007 elections. "Policemen don't vote, so how can they rig?" he told THISDAY in Washington, DC, United States, last week. "It is politicians that rig," he concluded. Brilliant, isn't it? My only problem with his postulation is that he doesn't seem to understand what rigging means. I am not very good when it comes to English, but according to experts, rigging is anything that is done to exert undue influence on the outcome of a voting process.

When you distribute bribes to get votes, that is rigging. When there is multiple voting, that is rigging. When votes are counted and the figures are altered or concocted, that is rigging. Gosh, I almost forgot: when you do all these under the nose of the police and you don't get arrested, that is rigging at its best. I want to emphasise this to the point of repetition: it is practically impossible to rig without the connivance of security agencies. By simple guesstimate, 90 per cent of rigging is done with the full co-operation of the police. Not even INEC officials can alter figures without the permission of the police.

I am ready to make an excuse for the IGP: his English is not better than mine. But I seem to understand the meaning of rigging better than he does. Hurray!

Simon Kolawole

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Article sourced from

AllAfrica.com - Washington,USA16 December 2007

Nigeria: British Aid Now, Stat

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AllAfrica.com - Washington,USA
16 December 2007