NEWS ANALYSIS: BEHOLD A POLICE STATION

Recently, the picture below was on the social media and online newspapers showing the state of a Nigeria Police Station in Eupi, Otukpo, Benue State of Nigeria.

Photo Credit: Daily Post

I have been associated with the Police closely for the last thirty plus years now.  I have lived in Police barracks, shared offices in Police Stations in several States and Local Government Areas of Nigeria.  What you see above existing as a Police Station in Eupi in Otukpo Benue State of Nigeria is a typical.

Every year, huge monetary allocation is made in the appropriation bill for the Nigeria Police Force.  At the end of every year the same monies have been spent fully but the situation of the Nigeria Police Force keeps getting worse in their mental disposition, their infrastructural condition, their operational equipment, their operational capability and readiness, their crime response form and skillset, their uniforms, their morale and what have you.

The Nigeria Police barracks have done nothing in the last thirty years that I was closely associated with it than to deteriorate.  No maintenance whatsoever is done to these building from the time it was built until they finally collapse.  They are never declared inhabitable because the leadership of the Police Force has never bothered about where their officers and men are coming out from to do their jobs daily.  Every year new commissioners of police visit barracks. The grasses that grow around the barracks are cut down during those visits and that is all.  These commissioners of police are probably accomplices to why these buildings are never maintained because visit after visit has done nothing to improve the condition of the barracks.

The challenge we face is that we continue to expect performance from a Police Force that is treated the way we treat them – no humanly acceptable habitation for the Police men and women we recruit every year.  Many of the barracks have no running water.  The policemen and women and their children and wives and husbands have to walk several kilometers every day to be able to obtain drinking and bathing and washing water.

For sure every year, all Police barracks are budgeted for.  What are these budgets for? Where are these monies spent? Who spends the budgeted funds and on what heads and subheads?  Getting answers to these questions would normally cost human heads so no one is asking them.

If you ever see a Police station or barrack that is renovated in Nigeria, it was usually done by the local government chairmen in those days when governors have not stolen all the money allocated to the local governments from the federation accounts or by the state governors themselves.

Have you ever seen an operational vehicle of the Nigeria Police?  They look exactly like this police station at Eupi Otukpo in Benue State of Nigeria.  They vehicles are dilapidated, mere wreckages moving on worn out tires with no head lamps and break and rear lights and no more than five litres of petrol.  If you see a Police vehicle that is new, it is bought or renovated by a State Governor or a local government chairman in those days when they had access to the funds meant for local governments.  The other alternative for having good and operational vehicles for the Police is from the largesse of corporate organizations and criminals.

It is conditions like this that make me call for State Police.  It is obvious that the Federal Government of Nigeria cannot fund the operations of a moderately manageable Police Force.  It is not because there is lack of funds but because there is unchecked corruption and indiscipline in the way government business has been run since independence, but especially since the military regimes in Nigeria to date. 

The truth is that there is nothing the Federal Government of Nigeria can do now to improve the condition of the Nigeria Police Force.  The Nigeria Police Force would continue to wallow in abjectness in morale, operational equipment, capability, training and crime combating.  It is totally decayed from the roots.  It is not redeemable.  It is only suitable for disbanding.

The forthcoming national conference should deal with this issue decisively.  A State Police and fiscal autonomy would save the situation.  The policemen serving at present need not lose their jobs.  They should all go to their state of origin to be converted and their years of service calculated accordingly for them.

The argument would be that if the same policemen should go to the state police, the trouble would continue.  My response to that is that it would not be so because, the problem of the Police is not just the Police but the Police Commission headed by politicians who are settled with such appointments.  They connive with authorities above and below around them to misuse the budgets set aside for policing and Police development.

On how a state governor would do better, I state that tribalism and the unwieldy nature of the Nigeria Police Force sheer size is one of the most challenging problems in dealing with the situation.  For a state Governor it is a direct solvable problem if there is rising crime in his state.  For the federal government, it is indirect and sometimes a third level problem that crime is rising in a particular state in the country.

All operations of the Nigeria Police Force are currently funded by State Governments without a composite Federal Allocation for that purpose.  The States are where the shoe pinches.  If the current budget for the Police is downloaded by constitutional provisions to the States, we would have a far better Police Force nationwide.

On the fear of misusing the Police, this is already being done.  A governor can do anything he wants with a Police Force be it Scotland Yard Police, not to talk of Nigeria Police.  They can do anything they want with even the military and all other security agencies and they are presently doing so.  Therefore, nothing we have not seen would happen because the Police Force is devolved to the States.

If we want a Police Force that would do professional policing for us, we need to treat them differently in all facets.  The only possible way to achieve that is through the disbandment of the Nigeria Police Force and the institutionalizing of State Police Force.

The federal government can retain a small elite police force whose duties would be to take over inter-state Police business and only when the two State Governors are not able to meet to deal with the matter.

The truth is that our Federal Government cannot afford the Police Force needed to police Nigeria.