Mohammed Sheidu sits atop as the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Police Trust Fund (NPTF), a body saddled with the onerous task of managing the welfare of the nation’s police personnel. In this interview with Bolaji Ogundele, he shares interesting insights on the challenges, prospects of funding the affairs of the Nigerian police apparatus thus far. Excerpts:
How has been, how far have you gone with the massive task of the Police Trust Fund?
It’s been a daunting task, if I could say, and why I’ll say daunting is the fact that this task is not just for the Nigerian Police Trust Fund. It’s not just for the government. It’s for Nigeria as a whole, because when we discuss policing, it is our internal security that we’re talking about. Now, the mandate of the Nigerian Police Trust Fund, yes, is to provide intervention when it comes to training, when it comes to equipment, when it comes to general welfare of the Nigerian Police Force and so far, we’ve gone around and we’ve looked at assessments of training facilities, medical, the welfare, basically, of the Nigerian Police Force and why I say it’s not just the government, it’s not just the trust fund, it’s the whole nation that has to have all hands on deck, because this is the one agency or organization that is charged with our internal security, and as we know today, one of our major issues, if not the primary issue, we have in this country, is internal security.
Now the police are charged with internal security. How are we handling the welfare of the police officers, the training of these police officers to bring them to world standard? That’s why I say daunting, daunting in the sense that all hands need to be on deck. It’s not a one man story, it is a Nigeria story.
Talking of bringing our policing to world standards, looking at where we are now, can we get to that world standard target?
We can, I am very hopeful, and I believe in the alignment of things. And why I say that is that I believe in over four decades, we actually have a leadership and a president that is demilitarized in his mindset, and there’s going to be more focus on actual policing in this country. Why I said that is that for an appointment of the National Security Adviser, you have Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, who’s a retired police officer.
So it shows that the narrative is changing from the military mindset to more of a civil approach of where the police itself would be considered and taken into cognizant consideration, because that is their primary focus.
So yes, in the nearest future, we are looking to have that. The government is actually putting things in place for us to be able to shift towards this 21st Century policing. As a trust fund, in our training activities, we’re shifting our gears towards that. Even the police stations we are launching across the six geopolitical zones, tagged smart, modern police stations, are looking into how we can do that.
Why I say it is not just the government, but the nation as a whole, is the training facilities. We need to build that trust back. That slogan, “the police is your friend”, whether we like it or not, they are the first and last lines of defence. You have something that happened in your household, the first place you are meant to run to is the police station. It’s not the military. They steal your kid’s bike, you are reporting to the police station. Something happens, traffic offense, they hit your car, it’s the police at the end of the day.
In the recruitment process that we’re doing now, the Police Service Commission is moving towards that direction. We, as the trust fund, are now looking at how to increase welfare. We’re looking at places where police officers own their own homes, not barrack-type lifestyles, but living among communities with people, which is how it is everywhere else in the world. So once you have that, you have some form of commitment. I joined the police, I own a house. If I join the police, my family members could be farmers. I joined the police, I have good medicare. I joined the police, so my kids can go to school, education. Those things are what we need to now tie into our current policing system, and we will get a better police force.
Do you think reformation can get the Nigerian Police to a place of trust again, when Nigerians will truly be able to say, indeed, the police is our friend?
Yeah, it goes back to resource allocation, and actual resources for these same people. So we’re talking about training facilities. I discussed, and this is information, you can go and check it. Police Stations are given N45,000 quarterly for imprest. If you like to call it running cost or you call it operational cost, it’s N45,000 for a quarter. Do the math. It’s about what …? Is it up to N12,000 a month? Do the math, per day. So how much to fuel, to file, if there’s diesel, there’s no light. That’s why the type of stations we build now, one of the first things we looked at is, okay, all these software, all these technologies we want to bring, how do we have lights in that kind of police station?
First of all, that station is off grid. There’s about a 30 kilowatts inverter battery system, with solar panels that runs, thanks to the REA, based on the agreement and the MOU that we signed. One of the issues is you’ll go to a police station and there’s no lighting. So how do you expect them to function with meagre or no resources at all? That’s why I said the officers (policemen) we see every day are miracle workers, because they are living and functioning by miracle. They wear their uniform by miracles. There is nothing really there to actually support them fully to discharge their duties. It does not exist.
So until we now come up to make sure it exists, then we’ll get a better police force. We’ll get a better police force. They are totally underfunded. The IG said it. The budget reallocation for just fuelling of cars cannot run them the whole year. If they are lucky, is it four months or is it eight months a year? So what happens to the remaining months? Where do you expect them to get funding for fuel to move around like you.
Do you think Nigeria can fund the police to a world-class standard, considering everything, including training, equipment, their general welfare, including housing and all? Have you done a mental calculation of what it might cost Nigeria?
It’s quite expensive, to be very honest. So the government can, then we… There’s a mandate, the Constitution allows the Nigerian Police Trust Fund to actually raise funds. We can get donations, we can be sponsored, both internationally and locally, and you as private citizens can actually come and donate to the cause of the police. So the Nigerian Police Trust Fund is gathering resources on behalf of the Nigerian Police Force. Now, we’re looking at a case whereby we are tying our internal security and the performance of our Nigerian Police Force to our economy, because FDIs cannot come into an insecure state.
Those things are what we are now looking at and there are international organizations that we’ve been in discussions with, and they are willing to come in. At one point in time, I think it was UNDP, which had even started rehabilitating some police training facilities. But it is having that continuity with the office of the NSA, to be able to make sure that we can go along with this, cascade it, get it to different locations. So the government can raise the funds.
We too are charged, it is a part of this trust fund that has not really been looked at, but that is one of the major parts that we’re looking into, is how to actually raise these funds for this to be done and this is why I say all hands are on deck, not just government, but the public, the nation as a whole. You need to come in and do your bit for your national security.
Constitutionally, you are to be funded with 0.005%… Are you getting these funding?
That’s 0.5% of the FAC allocation, which I’ll even give you that some states took us to court as of 2022, then there’s a 0.005% of the net profit of all companies operating in Nigeria. Let me even give you this. 0.005% is quite meagre, because for every N1 billion, if my maths is correct, for every N1 billion, N50,000 comes to the trust fund, because 0.005 percentage gives it an extra two zeros.
Now that’s for the first three years. 2019, 2020, 2021, until the tax bill of 2022 those monies were not collected. So FIRS now started collecting from 2022, up to date, of which they’ve been doing a very fantastic job. FAC allocations, court case; most of the states and local government allocations, trust fund is not getting it. This is why we have to come in and start thinking out of the box; how do we mitigate? How do we get things functional? Then we started looking at other agencies, other parastatals that we can partner with. REA, for instance, their mandate is rural electrification, it’s to light up places. My own mandate, I can build police stations. How do you help me light up police stations? We have that ongoing.
We looked at NALDA, we want to create farm clusters for police officers’ family members. That is currently ongoing. We’ve signed an agreement with the Enugu state government. They’ve provided us land for farming, at the same time they’ve also provided us land for housing because we’ve signed a similar agreement with Family Homes Fund on how we can do tw/ three bedroom bungalows for police officers in states of origin. So every state government we’re discussing with is, how can we get land for housing and how do we get land for farming? Those are things that we’re looking at to help mitigate these issues that we have on inadequate resources.
As part of mitigating your inadequate resources problem, are you permitted by law to seek a review of your funding system?
You know, we are a child born of the National Assembly, so it goes back to them as the lawmakers. We can discuss with, which we have, in all honesty, the committee chairs in the Senate and the House on ‘okay, these are the issues that we believe…’, and if it is something they themselves can bring up on the floor of the House, which they’ve actually said they can, because they are the lawmakers. We can only advise and say ‘we believe that this ABC would work better for us’, and we send our presentation to them, if they go through it, and they believe that we have a case and we’re making sense, then they can pull it out on the floor for discussion. So that’s where we are with that.
You have assessed the situation, you know what you need to make the police in Nigeria measure up to world-class. What will you be asking for, what do you think the federal government needs to do to help you achieve success with this task?
I think we just need more hands on deck and when I say hands on deck I mean we know what the problem is now, I don’t think we’d actually looked at it from this view. We know what the problem is, we just need more government support and more people support and I think I’m even more clamouring for the citizenry support, the nation’s support in the trust fund, in our interventions, and the police force itself, because there’s been a loss of trust. This is a trust fund, so when you don’t even trust the police, how would you want to fund it? It is one of the issues that I’ve seen across the board.
So we’re trying to see how we can build that trust back in. So my give, or take, from the government and from the people is for there to be… We’re here now to be more transparent, we’re here now to be more accountable, and that we believe that with more efforts and more direction paid to the Nigerian Police Force, we’ll get more achieved. Not the militarized mindset, but more of a policing mindset.
What is the guarantee you’re giving Nigerians that this can succeed? What should they expect?
By the grace of God, we expect that we will have a better police force. My prayer and my take is that, we’re under-policed first of all. UN standards is one police officer for 400 citizens, we’re about 250 million, and the police force is about 360,000/370,000 estimate, if you even look at that, the ratio is about 1/700+. We need about 200,000 to 300,000 police officers to meet UN standards. My prayer is that if we can live with 500,000 21st century police officers, we have done well, and when I say we’ll have 500,000 is that with this new recruitment that’s ongoing, that’s where we discussed about police officers owning homes, the medical facilities being upgraded. They have something tied to the educational system for their children, medicine for them and their family, agriculture for family members. As a police officer, I own a home.
These things will tie me to my office. These things will tie me to me actually performing better. If I know that the police gave me a house, and if I am caught wanting in the office, I lose my house. I will not want to lose my house. I’ll do everything possible to make sure that I keep my house and my house is paid off by the police force, which they’re already deducting these monies from their salaries already. So it’s just, we’re just trying to re-channel this thing for us to be able to get it… So ideally, yes, 500,000 police officers, well trained, that’s why we’re talking more about the training facilities. 500,000 well trained police officers across the board. I think yes, we’ve done well, if we get that.
