Tag: Police

I had suspected for some time now that there’s something untoward going on within the Police establishment but I really could not put my finger to it until a few months back.

Don’t let’s start by comparing the Police here with their counterparts in the UK from where we got our independence. They are poles apart, not just in their orientation and their operational modus, but even in their pay.

For months on end, there’s perhaps no month you flip through the pages of newspapers and other journals that you won’t see stories on the pay packets of our elected representatives at the Senate and the House of Representatives, not excluding snippets on what our president and governors earn and their comparative analysis with what their counterparts in some advanced democracies earn. They boggle the mind.

But because it is in the nature of our people to celebrate scandals, focus hardly shift to doing same with what our policemen earn vis a vis their counterparts in other places.  An exception though. The former cop now a serving Senator who’s currently spilling the beans on the incumbent IG, is serving the mouth-watering menu that’s not only of interest to the public, but now a matter for the court to pronounce on. But that may be waved away with what I grew up to hear from my elders in the community, to wit: “Gambari pa Fulani, ko l’ejo n’nu”, meaning “if Hausa kill Fulani, case no dey inside”. It is an important exposure, no doubt, and the menu must be served to the last course.

What is of greater importance to this narrative, however, is that the role and place of the Police in a democracy are hardly accorded their pride of place in our country, perhaps because of our long romance with military dictatorship and more because there’s perhaps no proper understanding of the fact that as far as internal security is concerned, Police should enjoy premium in the scheme of things.

I checked and I discovered that our Police is perhaps the most understaffed and underfunded all over the enlightened world. That our cops are even coping with crime detection or prevention in the land, in spite of institutional drawbacks, speaks volumes to the endurance and operational capability of these men and women in the officers’ cadre and the rank and file.

Their efforts can best be appreciated when you realise that in spite of the fact that Britain ranks among the best policed in the world, crime rate is still higher there than here, with all their access to modern technology. They have more men and women than we have, have emolument packages that are more lucrative than we have and have a better orientation than we have.

If the authorities are persuaded to apply universal standard of confining members of the Armed Forces to their constitutional role of defending the nation against external aggression and internal insurgency, then there can be serious consideration of adequately funding and equipping the Police to serve its primary constitutional purpose of maintaining law and order in a civilian setting; and even dealing with internal insurgency. It is in very rare cases of national emergency that we should see soldiers involved, and, on the streets, not in little matters of putting down demonstrations or strikes or in getting involved in supposedly routine election matters.

If you find policemen and women exhibiting foul and improper manners on the roads and at their stations or diminishing themselves before touts and land speculators, unacceptable as it may be, that can be excused on the ground that the setup of the Police establishment itself is constitutionally faulty and should be looked into. That, to me, is far more important than the unending skirmishes between the executive and the legislative arms.

It seems those who drafted the constitution and embodied the law setting up the Police Service Commission did not realise that they were unwittingly building in anarchy into the Police establishment. A quick look into the law setting up the Police Service Commission (PSC) exposes this major flaw. While the commission is empowered to deal with the discipline and promotion of ALL policemen up to the rank of deputy inspector general of police, it gave it no role in the case of the Inspector General of Police (IGP).

That, to my mind, is a major loophole that can be exploited by a smart IGP, for which he cannot be faulted but which inevitably will have negative impact on the morale and efficiency of the Police. I hope that is not already playing out in two recent incidents I will refer to presently.

Before Fatai Owoseni was finally dislodged as Commissioner of Police, Lagos State Command, we had two pieces of news previously that he had been posted out and on those two occasions, the rumoured posting turned out to be untrue. Anyone conversant with this serious constitutional and administrative loophole, in the PSC – IG relationship, knew that it was a matter of time before the rumour of Owoseni’s posting out of Lagos became real. It happened shortly afterwards.

Now, the new Police helmsman in Lagos, an acting CP, Imohimi Edgal was rattled a few days ago with the news that he had been demoted back to DCP by a letter said to have been written by a permanent secretary in the Police Service Commission, a letter which eventually was disowned as unauthorised by all the commissioners in the Commission, san their ubiquitous permanent secretary.

The implication of that demotion was to render the hard working young man’s position as the CP for Lagos immediately untenable. That’s wrong, unfair and absolutely unjustifiable, especially in the knowledge by most Lagosians that the new CP, barely two months in office, has shown flashes of brilliance that should not be rewarded with demotion.

These two incidents may not be unrelated to the lacuna between the PSC and the IGP, and I bet,  if someone is not exploiting this to blight the morale and efficiency of the working cops.

My hunch tells me that all the IGPs, past and present, knew of this major flaw and it is beyond debate that a mean, overzealous and ambitious IGP can exploit it to his advantage, but to the detriment of the overall national interest.

It is apposite, to properly ask:

• what is the working relationship like between the PSC chairman who was until a few years back an IGP himself and the present occupier of that seat?
• Did he have any issue with IGP Okiro when he served under him?
• If yes, will he be angelic sufficiently enough not to want to have it back at him now that he’s IGP and he’s administratively licensed to act without regard to the PSC?
• If not, how cordial is his relationship with the PSC whose chairman was once his boss in the Force?

When we get answers to these posers, we will then know, as Yorubas say, if the snake doesn’t have a hand in its underbelly, as far as this infamous letter of demotion of Lagos and Kogi acting CPs by a permanent secretary and the eventual denouncement by the PSC, is concerned.

But if in truth members of the PSC are unaware of, and did not approve of the letter issued by the Perm Sec, then he must be a fifth columnist in the PSC serving other nebulous interest and giving the Buhari Administration a bad name. He should therefore be relieved of his position and shown the door; the nation can do without such officer!