The police often cut a pitiable sight whenever they are spectacularly wrong-footed by criminal gangs. The kidnap last Sunday of Professor Kamene Okonjo, mother of the Finance minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was not the first time the police would have egg on their faces. It will certainly not be the last. Their public image, they know too well, is sullied, and the competence of their men, not to talk of their public relations, leaves a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, everyone, including policemen themselves, knows the problems the Force is battling with; and to some extent, everyone has a fair idea of what the solutions are. The problem with the police is that there is simply no president willing to tackle their problems. With every test the police fail, its personnel, serving and retired, get increasingly disenchanted and demotivated. Sometimes they take out their frustrations on the public, and at other times they simply turn their backs on the job. This mounting frustration perhaps explains why the just retired Plateau State Commissioner of Police, CP Emmanuel Oladipo Ayeni, on his last day in office, publicly vented his spleen on the system that continues to ridicule the Force and render it ineffective.
His views on what has gone wrong with the police were uncharacteristically candid and trenchant. Hear him: “The state of the Nigeria Police Force is worrisome. The personnel of the police do not have necessary logistics to work with in all the states of the country. There are no sufficient vehicles to perform our statutory duties of protection of life and property, maintenance of law and order, apprehension of offenders and enforcement of all laws with which the force is directly charged.
“Virtually all the state police commands rely on the assistance of state governments for the provision of vehicles, communications and necessary logistics. I came to Plateau State on July 11, 2011; a state that is facing serious security challenges. No single vehicle has been given to the command by the Federal Government. Apart from that, a single litre of fuel has not been given to the command as well. How does the Federal Government want the police to function and perform its statutory duties under this type of climate? If not for the assistance from the state government, everything would have collapsed.
“Therefore, if we want the problem of security to become something of the past in Nigeria, the Federal Government must take the issue of internal security serious by giving the Nigeria Police the attention it deserves. If this is not done, there will be increased criminal activities in the country. Police cannot perform magic because you cannot build something on nothing. The Federal Government must wake up and play its constitutional role of providing security for the people living in the country.”
I have never been a fan of the police. But I am sensible enough to appreciate that that security organisation has been neglected for far too long. The federal government retains control of the police and pays their meagre salary, but it is the states, which exercise very minimal control over the agency, that sustains it operationally. I have said it here before that notwithstanding the suavity and determination of the Inspector-General of Police, MD Abubakar, he is fighting odds so daunting it is hard to see him making the kind of progress he envisions. If there is to be a change in the fortunes of the Force, it will have to come primarily from the presidency.
That change, sadly, eluded both the excitable Olusegun Obasanjo presidency and the lethargic presidency of the late Umaru Yar’Adua. Yet, either man was a fairly gentler conservative than President Jonathan, a conservative dyed-in-the-wool. It will take a tectonic shift in Jonathan’s worldview for him to author the radical change that would be the saving of the Nigeria Police. His presidential credo is to pass on the country as it is, a lousy and unworkable nuisance, to his successor. The Force had better wait for that successor and hope he would be a progressive and a patriot par excellence.
