President Goodluck Jonathan recently asked the inspector-general of police, Mr. Hafiz Ringim to proceed on terminal leave, apparently for his inability to stem the current insurgency by Boko Haram in the northern part of the country. Since the president’s action, there have been mixed reactions as to whether the removal of Ringim and other senior police officers would solve the problems of Boko Haram and other crimes. IYOBOSA UWUGIAREN takes a look at the real issues enveloping the police today.
Does President Goodluck Jonathan really understand the level of decay in the Nigeria Police Force? Maybe this short story will assist him.
An Abuja-based journalist was recently travelling from Kaduna to Abuja and before he got to Suleja town – about 28 kilometres before Abuja – he was flagged down by a policeman at one of the many police checkpoints along the Kaduna/Abuja expressway.
First, the policeman, with the rank of a sergeant asked the journalist to produce his vehicle documents, which he quickly did. Thereafter, the journalist was requested to identify himself and he immediately brought out his identification card, telling the policeman that he was a journalist. The policeman looked at the identification card and the journalist with shock and immediately alerted his colleagues with him at the checkpoint by shouting in his local language what was later translated to mean “Come and see a fake journalist. He says he is a journalist but he has no NTA identification card.”
For that policeman, only those working with the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) are journalists and he wanted to arrest this journalist for impersonation.
The police sergeant is just one of the many products of the Nigeria Police Force charged with the responsibilities of intelligence gathering, policing, arresting and detaining suspects, and detecting and preventing crime in the country. They are the people that Mr. Hafiz Ringim, who was forced to resign on Wednesday as inspector-general of police, worked with in the last two years, fighting the deadly and well–equipped radical Islamic sect, Boko Haram and other criminals in the country.
Arguably, Ringim has become the first scapegoat of the escape from police custody of Kabiru Sokoto, the suspected Boko Haram member that masterminded the bombing of a Catholic church in Madalla, Niger State on Christmas Eve.
Appointed IGP in September 2010 by President Jonathan, he was asked to go on “terminal leave” on Wednesday, following his failure to adequately account for the vanishing of the suspected Boko Haram member. Apart from Ringim, President Jonathan also sent all deputy inspectors-general of police packing immediately. They include Mrs. Ivy Uche Okoronkwo, DIG POL 2i/c, force headquarters, Abuja; Mr. Azubuko J. Udah, DIG Administration (“A” Dept); Mr. Sardauna Abubukar, DIG Training (“E” Dept.); Mr. Audu Abubakar, DIG Operations (“B” Dept); Mr. Saleh Abubakar, DIG Works (“C” Dept.) and Mr. Mohammed A. Yesufu, DIG Planning and InfoTech (“F” Dept.).
The president, in a statement by his spokesman Dr. Reuben Abati, said the move was the “first step towards the comprehensive reorganisation and repositioning of the Nigeria Police Force, to make it more effective and capable of meeting emerging internal security challenges”.
According to Dr. Abati, the assistant inspector-general of police in charge of Zone 12, Bauchi, Alhaji Mohammed Dikko Abubakar, would act as the police chief, pending his confirmation by the Police Service Commission (PSC), the statutory body charged with the responsibility of promotions and retirements in the police.
Also, a retired deputy inspector-general of police and chairman of the PSC, Mr. Parry B.O Osayande, was appointed to head a committee to reform the police; to examine records of performance of officers on the police force, with a view to identifying those that can no longer fit into the system, due to declining productivity, age, indiscipline, corruption and/or disloyalty, and to make any other recommendations for the improvement of the force.
The action of the president seems to be popular in the eyes of many Nigerians and the international community, going by reactions to the news since Wednesday, especially at a time when the country is facing many serious security challenges.
For example, two prominent lawyers, Mr. Mike Ozekhome (SAN) and Mr. Wahab Shittu, said that Jonathan acted wisely, in view of the security situation in the country. The deputy minority leader in the House of Representatives, Hon. Suleiman Kawa Sumaila also shares that view.
But some security experts, who understand the degree of rot in the police force, say that Ringim and others affected in Jonathan’s action are not the problems of the institution. They believe that if the president and the Osayande–led committee want to succeed at the huge task of reforming the force, they should take into account the prevailing socio-economic and ethno-religious crises in the country, which have hugely affected every institution and sector of the country, including the police.
A constitutional lawyer, Chief Mike Ahamba (SAN) said that while the president’s action “is a right step in the right direction”, there is urgent need for the federal government to take more practical steps to reform the police system and stamp out the rot in it.
For example, he advised the federal government to find out who Zakari Biu is and about the system that brought him to the leadership position in the police force, despite his antecedents.
Ahamba, who spoke with LEADERSHIP, added that it is when proper answers are found that the federal government would understand exactly what the causes of all the criminality are, especially the Boko Haram insurgency currently threatening the nation.?
To be sure, many experts had in the past pointed to “the political unsteadiness, prolonged military rule, widespread insecurity, ethnic and religious conflicts and corruption” that have negatively influenced the police force and its everyday job of policing the nation. And they have attributed the incompetence of the police at maintaining law and order – as evidenced by the glaring cases of armed robbery and other crimes involving the use of sophisticated weapons, the high rate of casualties as well as the persistent ethno-religious conflicts – to the political and economic crises in the country. Perhaps this is so.
Today, not many Nigerians doubt that the police force is ill equipped to perform its functions well and in compliance with the rule of law. Instead, what is apparent is that Nigerian policemen are decidedly and noticeably subservient to the rich and those in power. Even in the rendering of their routine services, they tend to protect the ‘powerful’ over and above others. They are visibly mobilised in large numbers during ceremonial occasions, when they cordon off high profile personalities from the ‘common folk’; they are assigned to guard the homes of government officials and act as bodyguards for them. Rarely do you see high-ranking officers without a police officer attached to him.
In most cases, much of the force is concentrated in the metropolitan areas.
A recent research, carried out by a Mr. Innocent Chukwuma-led non-governmental organisation with special focus on security matters, the CLEAN, identifies many factors responsible for the rot in the police. They include inadequate manpower, in terms of quantity but most especially quality; inadequate funding; poor crime and operational information management, including inaccurate recording and collation, poor storage and retrieval; inadequate analysis and infrequent publication of criminal statistics; poor remuneration and general conditions of service.
Poor resource management; inadequate logistics – arms and ammunition, uniforms and accoutrement, telecommunication and transportation facilities – both in terms of quality and quantity; inadequate offices and residential accommodation; inhumane conditions under which suspects are held in police cells; unhygienic work environments; limited contact or relationship with the citizens outside law enforcement circles and other maintenance functions were listed too. Indiscipline and involvement in crime or collusion with criminals and a lack of integrity among other things were also identified as inhibiting factors against the law enforcement agents.
While the competence and credibility of the leadership of the police could act as a compass for effective policing, experts say the removal of Ringim and other senior police officers may not totally solve the problems. “There is no doubt that there has been palpable confusion in our national security in all ramifications. Ringim’s removal has been long overdue and therefore, his removal is well-deserved because of his incompetence,” Mr. Bamidele Aturu, a human rights lawyer told LEADERSHIP.
But he was quick to add that his removal would not solve the police’s problems. “There is the urgent need to overhaul the police system; the security situation of the country demands a high level of intelligence gathering in order to nip the crimes in the bud and do away with the incessant ‘fire brigade’ approach,” he said.
Mr. Bamidele, an expert in criminal law, added that the reform would also require a good remuneration package for the police, beefing up logistics and dealing with the injustice in the system.
Designated by Section 194 of the 1979 Constitution as the national police of Nigeria with exclusive jurisdiction throughout the country, records show that Nigeria’s police force began with a 30-member consular guard formed in the Lagos Colony in 1861. In 1879 a 1,200-member armed paramilitary Hausa Constabulary was formed. In 1896 the Lagos Police was established. A similar force, the Niger Coast Constabulary, was formed in Calabar in 1894 under the proclaimed Niger Coast Protectorate. In the North, the Royal Niger Company set up the Royal Niger Company Constabulary in 1888 with headquarters in Lokoja.
When the protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria were proclaimed in the early 1900s, part of the Royal Niger Company Constabulary became the Northern Nigeria Police, and part of the Niger Coast Constabulary became the Southern Nigeria Police.
Northern and Southern Nigeria were amalgamated in 1914, but their police forces were not merged until 1930, forming the Nigeria Police Force, headquartered in Lagos. In the 1960s, under the First Republic, these forces were first regionalised and then nationalised.
The NPF performed conformist police functions and was responsible for internal security generally; for supporting the prison, immigration, and customs services and for performing military duties within or outside Nigeria as directed. In mid-1980, there was a plan to expand the force to 200,000. Going by the 1983 budget, the strength of the NPF was almost 152,000, but other sources estimated it to be between 20,000 and 80,000. Police officers were not usually armed, but were issued weapons when required for specific missions or circumstances.