Nigeria’s under-staffed police force

Nigeria’s Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Solomon Arase, recently lamented the inadequate number of police. Worried by this underdevelopment, IGP Arase urged various state police commands to embark upon community policing and strengthen same (in the case of commands where it already exists) in order to curb crime rate in the country. The Nigeria Police is the principal law enforcement agency in the country, has the statutory responsibility of protecting lives and property. The IGP attributed personnel inadequacies of the police to lack of recruitment into the Force in the past five years; promising that the present administration is looking into the issue.
IGP Arase made these remarks when he recently visited Minna, Niger State, in continuation of his nationwide tour of Police Commands. To buttress his claim of an under-personnelled police force, Mr Arase mentioned in his speech at Minna that the Niger State Command of the Nigeria Police has less than 8,000 officers which approximately puts the ratio at 1 police officer to 494 citizens. This only signifies that the relative law and order in parts of the country is absolutely by God’s grace and mercy.
Not too long ago, a nephew of mine who was writing his master’s dissertation (in the social sciences) at the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, wanted the statistics of policemen serving in one of the local governments in Niger State. He approached the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) to get the information but his request was turned down by the DPO who said he had no authority to divulge such information because of its sensitivity. My nephew explored other sources and got the statistics which is too shocking to be mentioned on this page as the total number of policemen in a Local Government Area (LGA). I want to believe that residents of the LGA are themselves not aware of this gross inadequacy of police presence in their community because, public knowledge of such a gross shortfall is in itself a big window for breakdown of law and order. The figure given to my nephew is by no means enough to control even a crowd of 250 well-behaved persons or an assembly of 20 criminally-minded Nigerians; let alone an entire LGA.
The figure is even more upsetting when the entire workforce of the Nigeria Police (including officers and men) is put in to context. The current total number of police personnel in the country is put at 370,000 which approximately puts the ratio of 1 policeman to 459 Nigerians. This sounds incredible in a country where the police is poorly equipped, poorly funded and many of its men poorly trained. Yet, a policeman or the police force is widely believed by citizens (and even government) to have solution to all security challenges including incidences that are outside of their professional competences.
For a farmer living in a rural or semi-urban community, for instance, the DPO or the policemen under his authority should be able to put off the fire razing his hut or rescue his child drowning in the river. The same farmer expects the police to, besides maintaining law and order, find his stolen bicycle; locate his missing goat; settle quarrels between him and his wife; trace the herdsman whose cattle grazed the produce on his farmland; collect the money owed him by his debtor(s); or arrest the man who fished inside his pond. In the city, the police is expected to, in addition to all these civil matters, prevent all forms of crimes; arrest, investigate and prosecute suspects of murder, rape, armed robbery, theft and abduction cases. This is huge enough for the Nigeria Police to cope with.
Yet, the police is also to provide security for all foreign envoys in the country (in their offices and residences); at all branches of commercial banks; for judges; for royal highnesses; and for some specified political office holders even though this is the group that has been allowed by police authorities to flagrantly abuse the privilege of having an Aide-de-Camp (ADC). With shortages in the number of police personnel required to carry out its constitutional duties, it is indeed bizarre to find those who do not deserve to have an ADC move around with pick-up load of policemen as personal security. One finds it difficult to understand why the wife of a local government chairman or a councillor should have policemen attached to her; to move about in convoy of cars! More disturbing is the humiliation to which wives of some politicians subject policemen to as they become handbag or umbrella carriers.
While speaking at Minna, IGP Arase directed State Commands of the Nigeria Police to withdraw policemen on posting as orderlies to politicians and redeploy them to areas where their services are more needed. It is one thing to direct and another for the directive to take effect. Mr Arase should make a difference in this awkward situation by which politicians degrade the dignity of the police. Working under an administration that is driven by integrity and accountability, IGP Arase has a task to make the Nigeria Police better than he met it; improving upon personnel inadequacies, logistic deficiencies, professional failures, infrastructural degeneration, and moral aberrations that have all worked against the realization of an efficient Nigeria Police. Staff welfare is crucial to redeeming the battered image of the Force, which over the years, almost became synonymous with everything that denote corruption or corrupt practice.
Although IGP Arase affirmed in Minna that the present administration is looking into the issue, Oga IGP should know that recruitment of 10,000 men into the Force will not solve the problem. With crime rate increasing daily as kidnapping now takes place even in rural communities of the country, and with a teeming population of unemployed youths all over the country; it should not be a hard nut to crack for IGP Arase to convince President Buhari to grant approval for the recruitment of substantial number of able-bodied young boys and girls into the apparently under-staffed police force.
Besides taking some unemployed youths off the streets of many Nigerian cities, such a recruitment will also curb crime which is most often committed by youths. It will similarly curtail the number of unemployed or poorly employed youths who get addicted to drugs; thereby reducing the prevalence of drug-related illnesses among youths. May Allah protect us all and guide the police force in its mandate of maintaining law and order in the country, amin.