It is difficult to write anything meaningful with so much deliberate kidnapping, murder of orderlies and the carnage in the rank and file of the police recently just outside Lafia where, in 1975, I did my NYSC in the General Hospital. It was a pleasant memorable posting and we worked very hard for the people at that time. The recently bereaved police widows receiving a token N1m, or stopping traffic with protest dirges are very real and their pain is excruciating. That pain is no different from the pain of all the other widows of this new vicious violence in the country. Many get no compensation at all except from friends and family if they are lucky. We painfully add these 40+ new widows and their children and the police families to the long list of unsung suffering relations of bomb blast victims and those violently slaughtered on a daily basis in the brutal herdsman’s war against the farmers from many states on the North-South cattle corridor. We add the families of those killed almost like clockwork at the rate of 10 murders a day in the well-engineered bloody Hausa Fulani settler Vs indigene Plateau State crisis.
Of course the police are no saints and many will remember the odious events of Odi and numerous other incidents including accidental discharge and checkpoint killings going back to ‘Kill and Go’ days when the citizen was on the receiving end. Recently it has been revealed what the police go through to get into the police service like purchase of the application form with maybe N30,000 and also the extreme hardship in training exposed by the award-winning Channels TV Corporate Social Responsibility Project documentary.
We all know what it is like losing a breadwinner in a family when there is no ‘social network’ to provide the daily needs of sickness and education, housing and feeding.
Almost every Nigerian police station had to sell its soul and start to put up shops along their perimeter fence during the years of the locusts. Of course the police officers women got involved, selling shops to each other and taking years of rent in advance from traders. Now the police is facing an unpredicted security breach as there are thousands of shops right on their doorsteps available for rent by anybody as few security checks are possible in Nigeria where we specialise in ignoring databases like the INEC, Passport, cell-phone SIM card registration, ID card and road safety databases and we destroy computer based systems to allow corruption.
And when one dies, truth may just turn out to be a lie, someone must be wrong no matter how his argument is strong. Two groups carrying weapons paid for by Nigeria confronted each other over oil bunkering- Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC and the Police. We know the Police well and their track record. NSCDC is also not an unknown quantity. In fact rumour has it as largely incorruptible. Who was right?
The police are fond of contradicting the body count and contesting it with NGOs and the mortuary. Hear them say ‘Only 22 died’. Meanwhile 50 families are searching the mortuaries and are fatherless, brotherless, motherless or childless as a result of the ‘Only 22’. The police’s ability to limit casualties is only matched by their spectacular ‘sirening’ around the country in their new vehicles. Recently yet another State Police Fund for a federal force was inaugurated. Does the federal government have no shame? With N884 or so billion/month can it not spare N5 or 10b to quickly equip the police to help fight this escalation unrest in Nigeria before we descend into total anarchy? Already the police are ‘legitimate’ targets of undeclared war in some states. As the police belong to the federal government, does the federal government not have any conscience or responsibility to finance and empower its own frontline security employees? It is shameful for the federal to expect the states to prop-up the police. The security vote in most states is a secret fund, probably illegal, a hangover slush fund from the military. It is time the security vote becomes part of the state budget, simple! It was pathetic to see the commissioner of police in the state introducing police trust fund again and inviting corporate Nigeria and concerned citizens to contribute. We have been down that road many times and after five or 10 vehicles have been bought the rest of the money always disappears down the malignant hole of corruption. So who is a fool and who is the criminal? Indeed many real criminals are wealthy and will also donate loudly to the fund for protection. Paradoxically we were told that the murdered police in Nasarawa State were well-equipped.
The federal government needs to declare some form of police emergency to empower it to bring the police up to international standards starting from the on-going refurbishment of basic training facilities to databases and forensic laboratories. That would help solve unemployment. It is not only Aso Rock, governor’s offices, NASS and State assemblies that need furniture and equipment and transport and electric power. Watch the TV to see what police stations around the world look like, even South Africa with clean painted exterior and interior, good quality furniture, computers, stationery, camera, video camera, communications and internet linkages -all available in Nigeria but unused. As the nation hangs in the vicious balance between war and peace, what is planned role for the police?
