Minister of Police Affairs Muhammad Maigari Dingyadi said Nigerians will soon enjoy greater internal security and drastic reduction in crime rate as the country’s police force becomes well-equipped and motivated with the takeoff of the Police Trust Fund Act and a newly inaugurated board for the fund.
He spoke to Daily Trust in an exclusive interview commemorating the Nigeria Police Force at 90.
Why do you think President Muhammadu Buhari brought back the Ministry of Police Affairs after it was initially merged with the ministry of interior?
You know when we came in for the second time, President Muhammadu Buhari was seriously concerned about the state of insecurity in this country, that is why he had a second thought and decided to re-establish the Ministry of Police Affairs, for the sole purpose of giving policy support to the policing activities in this country.
We came on board and established the ministry which emerged from the ministry of interior. When I came here, it was an empty place and I had to put things in motion to see that we established the ministry.
Here we are today, a full-fledged ministry with all the departments needed to set it going, the main purpose is to ensure that we provide the needed support in terms of policy, in terms of equipment and materials to ensure that we assist the police in providing the needed internal security infrastructure for this country.
By the grace of God, a lot of impact has been made. We are making every effort to ensure that we provide the needed funding for the police so that there will be better equipment, better training, better welfare for the police, and above all better general infrastructure to ensure the welfare and the wellbeing of the police and ensure modern technology in particular for the use of the police.
It’s not just the equipment that is needed; we need the technology as well, to assist in gathering intelligence to fight crime.
What would say is the achievement of the ministry within this one year?
We are just a year old. It’s too early to start counting our achievements, but let me say we have done a lot of things within this short period. After establishing the ministry, we have tried to create ways, like you are aware, the President has signed into law the Police Trust Fund Act. For some time the body was not formed. When I came in I set the ball rolling trying to ensure that we establish this trust fund.
I set up a committee that mapped out the details of how it is going to be, and by the grace of God by the second week of May this year, we obtained Mr. President’s approval to inaugurate the new governing board of the Police Trust Fund, which I did under the chairmanship of Suleiman Abba.
The trust fund is now fully in place and I’m happy to say that they are now trying to finish up the budget for the remaining period of this year. They will soon take it to the National Assembly, so everything is set. I think very soon Nigerians will start to see the impact of the Police Trust Fund.
The funding is coming from deductions that have been made by the law itself; from the Federation Account and contributions from the state governments coming into the fund.
Let me use this opportunity to thank the state governments for their understanding and support, allowing us to ensure this fund is exclusively funded. What we have now in the fund is running into billions, so anytime the budget is approved by the National Assembly, the trust will go into action to provide the needed equipment and materials.
Will this fund enable the police to address its manpower shortfall and how soon should Nigerians expect results?
When Mr. President came in for a second time, he gave a special directive that we should recruit 40,000 additional policemen between now and the end of his administration. Just last year we recruited about 10,000 constables and we have since posted them to their local governments of origin.
They are there across the country and we believe with this arrangement, these constables are in a better position to assist in gathering intelligence, in their local communities to assist in security arrangements at the local and state government levels.
To ensure we fight crime, deliberately we decided to leave them in their local government areas because they know the terrain, they know the communities and they know their culture. We believe they will assist tremendously in that direction.
There seems to be confusion about the 10,000 police constables and the idea of community policing. Are they the same?
They are two different things, the constables undergo training in our police colleges for one year, but the community policing is just about to take off. It is another idea brought by this administration to ensure that we bring communities closer to the police. We get them to participate in policing their own communities. We are bringing the necessary support, monitoring and necessary policy directive. We went round all the states of the federation, and we inaugurated the Police Community Committees at states and local government levels.
They are now in the process of the final selection of the constabularies that we need in each local government. We are starting with about 50 to 70 per local government, and they are now in the process of final recruitment. So they are different from the 10,000 in police recruitment.
For the second batch of the constables, we have just advertised and interested persons are now applying. By September we will go and conduct exams for those who are interested and those that are successful will be recruited and admitted to our colleges for training.
In addition to all these, we also train ASPs in the Police Academy in Wudil, Kano. So annually we produce between five to six hundred ASPs and Cadet Inspectors from Kano.
It is true we have about 400,000 police officers across the country, and they are small compared to Nigeria’s population. So with this kind of arrangement, I believe gradually we will try to meet up the demand of Nigerians as far as the population of police is concerned.
It’s not just getting the numbers, the police are supposed to be the primary security agency in the country, checking banditry and other crimes that have been lingering for a while. How will the ministry ensure that the police regain their primacy as the foremost agency to maintain internal security?
You see, I don’t agree with you. The police are still the lead security agency as far as internal security is concerned. It is unfortunate that the military is all over the place, but it is not supposed to be so. The lead internal security agency is the police that is why wherever you see the military we also have the police.
We are always there; we are working together trying to create synergy. We are working together with the army in fighting banditry. We also go in and ensure that there is total civil order; that law and order are maintained.
Recently, the Inspector-General of Police complained about how vigilantes and other self-help security groups like regional security outfits are now arming themselves. How is the ministry working to ensure that these groups do not take over the responsibility of the police?
This is really a matter of serious concern to us. Just over the weekend, the IGP was in one of those places to plead with the government, local governments and traditional institutions to ensure that these self-help things are as much as possible minimised because some of these vigilante groups are volunteer groups and have not undergone any serious training.
We are making effort to ensure that we curtail these things to the barest minimum. In some cases, we try to ban these kinds of groups – sometimes they do assist – in most cases if you don’t monitor them they overshoot bounds.
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