Policing Nigeria

By all calculations, manipulation, analogue or digital, the present understaffed, people wearing the police uniform including the about one third of them serving very few as personal security or orderlies cannot by any magic police the over two hundred million citizens of our dear nation.

Formation of local security units in the current mixed system of semi-presidential-cum Westminster parliamentary concoction will only create rather than solve our security problems. We now have about four to five organisations trying to carry out one single operation leading to creating conflicts between the operating units while the problems continue to expand. The police in every nation are charged with keeping internal security. In our case, the incursion of the military in the governance of the country in 1960’s made the military be involved in internal security and with the small number of the then military, the co-opting of the police in the government including giving them appointments as military governors.

The suggested solution is to re-organise the Nigerian police by creating seven zones to cover the FCT and the six geopolitical zones with a DIG in charge of each Zone. For immediate manning, merge the Road Safety Corps, formally Traffic Department of Police, the National Defence and Security and the proposed States Security Units all should be in the new police setup. Similarly, the use of policemen as personal security should be reviewed by using non-uniformed security personnel as done in most countries to protect those who need such services due to their appointments. Deployment and recruitment of police should be done to reflect locality for the lower rank of inspector and below to sustain understanding of the locality and better relationship between the police and the public. To help increase the size of the new police, some retired but not tired military personnel can be recruited. Training and welfare are very important areas for any organisation that needs success. The military should be removed from internal security to their normal services except when required for aid to civil authority.

With the current political division and the shortage of reserves, it will be suicidal to expect any state, including Lagos, to be able to employ state police. Furthermore, how does the state operate without senior experienced officers? As the saying goes, the one who pays the piper dictates the tune. What law will the state police operate? Will there be different laws for security with each state enacting its own? Wouldn’t there be a conflict with the Nigerian police operations? Those of us still remember the relationship between the armed mobile police and the conventional police.

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In most states, payments of salaries are still a big problem. While ordinary workers can resort to strike on such cases, what will happen when the states cannot pay their police? It takes time to establish a security outfit including weapon training. How do we intend to establish such an organisation almost overnight? As suggested, let us expand the present police but with emphasis on state distribution. Recruitment as now being practised should continue but with deployment of DSPs and below to their states as much as possible to help train the newly recruited personnel. Appointments generally in the police service should reflect states of origin where possible from the ranks of DSP to Commissioner.

We must also understand that most elements we are dealing with now are the creation of political groups. What will happen when the state governor who employed the police loses an election? Will the incoming governor retain what his predecessor left? Certainly, in the current situation, it will not work and that may mean another recruitment and discharge of former members of the state police. To where? We will be adding more problems to ourselves.

Changes are needed, but we must make haste slowly. Some theoretical designs are impossible to implement practically. Let us not add more SALT TO INJURY. It will be very painful. What we are dealing with is more of security than politics. It needs an appropriate solution.

Retired Rear Admiral Suleiman Sa’idu served as Nigeria’s 9th indigenous Chief of the Naval Staff.