Date Published: 08/05/09
MR. OGBONNAYA ONOVO, THE NEW IGP, AND WHAT’S AT STAKE: A NOTE (2)
By Temple Chima Ubochi
ubochit@yahoo.com
Bonn, Germany
Protection is not a principle but an expedient. (Benjamin Disraeli)
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. (Mohandas K. Gandhi)
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. (Edmund Burke)
A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives. (Albert Schweitzer)
Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from the failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. (Byron R. White)
Sir, upfront, I want to apologise for the typographical errors in the first part of this letter, all errors are mine. Sometimes, one cannot get it all right. I hope that did not diminish the message.
Sir, your work is cut out for you; your officers and men need re-training for them to understand what their job really is, that they should be the last bulwark against criminals rather than them running away each time they hear gun fires. The police is in comatose condition because of under-funding, sub-standard and inadequate office and residential accommodation, poor salaries and allowances. The condition under which your officers and men live and work is deplorable, something needs to be done about it. This condition makes the police personnel grossly ill-prepared for their job, hence their failings in their duties. So sir, policies which would reposition the police to effectively meet today's challenges, should be implemented. Sir, please think if the current centralised police outfit is the best for the nation's stability at this stage of its political evolution, because, I have a contrary opinion.
In 2007, Yar’Adua asked the British Prime Minister to help in re-organising the Police Force. In my article of Tuesday, November 27, 2007 published in nigeriaworld.com, I wrote:
It will be nice to seek an assistance from the British Government in re-organising the Nigeria Police Force, because, a Police Force that knows its job is supposed to be up to its core role of protection of lives and properties and not the collection of N20 at illegal checkpoints. The stories coming out from the Nigeria Police Force are too cold for comfort. In 2006, a policeman shot his colleague because of a bottle of beer. Last month a policewoman shot her colleague in Akwa Ibom State because she didn’t allow her to collect rainwater. It is disgusting to hear that rainwater led to a death of a policewoman in this modern era. The Police Barracks are squalor with no amenities. It is unacceptable that a Police Barrack in Akwa Ibom State where the policewoman shot her colleague has no water borehole for the service personnel. So any re-organisation of the NPF should start with the personnel. Their well being must be taken care of, before any other thing. They need moral and psychological boosting. The NPF personnel need re-training so that each will come to terms with what his or her constitutional role is. They need to know that the Police should be the friend and not the enemy of the people. They should be well equipped for their job. It is bad that so many police personnel are buying their uniforms and working gears for themselves, it is bad that some policemen are maintaining and fuelling their duty vehicles themselves with little or no help from the police authority, it is bad that the basic salary of a police personnel is so little that it can’t get a man with a family any where. Any re-organisation should start with the human beings in police uniforms before anything else; otherwise, it will all be tantamount to waste of time”.
I also wrote once that the police force has still, in its rank and file, many lunatics and deranged personnel who are trigger-happy as to kill those they are supposed to protect. Sir, you should see to it that your officers and men will be undergoing psychological evaluation from time to time. Your police should devise a policy where recruits would undergo medical tests in psychiatry and psychology.
The Police has been an agent of oppression of the citizens. It is corrupt, brutal, sometimes, has exercised its powers unlawfully and sometimes, has engaged in extra-judicial killings. There were no adequate training programmes put in place and unqualified men and women were recruited into the Police. Sir, for effective and efficient policing, the force should start the recruitment of trainable manpower, provision of forensic science laboratories, barracks, offices, state-of-the-art operational logistics, mobile and communications infrastructure for the personnel. Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) Zone 9, Olusegun Efuntayo, said that “officers are afraid of confronting robbers because they are cowards. Our policemen are lily-livered. When they hear the burst of a vehicle exhaust, they run away. Training and re-training is what we need.”
Sir, your force would need sophisticated weapons, you have to seek support for the Force for the purchase of modern communication equipment to outwit the criminals; arms and ammunition to counter the fire power of the criminals; bullet proof armored personnel carriers, security patrol vehicles and possibly helicopters for combined ground patrols and aerial surveillance. These had become necessary in the face of sophistication of arms and ammunition employed by hoodlums in their operations. Statistics shows that most crime perpetrators escaping the dragnet of the law because of their high level of sophistication.
Sir, to achieve all you would want to, for the police, you need to explore alternative ways of funding to complement the meagre yearly budgetary allocation for the force. The federal government alone cannot carry the burden. Wealthy individuals should assist the police in maintaining law and order, because, truth to the saying “he that is down needs neither fear nor fall”, they (rich Nigerians) need security and peace more than the poor people and should pay for it. State governments should also emulate Lagos State government; that donated 10 APCs, 1,000 AK 47 riffles, one million rounds of ammunition and several communication gadgets to the State Police Command; by donating to their respective state police commands in order to boost their operations.
Sir, please ensure that excessive use of force by your officers and men is not tolerated and those responsible for such unjustifiable use of force should be brought to justice speedily. Also, International human rights standards on the use of force and firearms should be strictly enforced and should be fully incorporated into the police code of conduct and training. Sir, you need to reform the outfit, fund and modernise it to play its assigned role in this modern era. You need to encourage the National Assembly to promulgate a law providing for police accountability regarding violence, crime control and law enforcement, which should also ensure regular publishing and analysis of national data on police use of excessive force. The police should keep detailed records on the use of force and to report publicly at regular intervals statistical data on shootings and other use of force. Your officer and men should be introduced to training programmes designed to minimise and probably eliminate the risk of unnecessary force and death in situations like stop and search and vehicle pursuits. The police should establish a truly effective and independent oversight bodies in the states with powers to investigate and review complaints against the police. Sir, there was an allegation that the two leaders of the Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf and Alhaji Buji Foi, were extra-judicially executed while in police custody, you need to investigate this.
Sir, the police should have a computerised monitoring system to track officers' performance and identify those with irrational tendencies and those who are subjects of repeated complaints of misconduct. A nation-wide computerized database of crimes and their perpetrators should be installed so that a crime can be registered in Sokoto and the police in Lagos will know what kind of crime it was and the culprit by accessing the database. With this, all criminals would be monitored all over Nigeria. Also, there is need to re-orient the people to know that persons flagged down at police stop and search points should stop for the police as true law abiding citizens.
Some of your officers and men are selling police bullet proof vests and weapons to armed robbers, the armed robbers use those weapons/gadgets in their operations and it would still be some other officers and men who would be made to face those armed robbers and might loss their life in that process (dying from weapons the armed robbers bought from corrupt colleagues). That’s too bad. You need to make the police, a force where all weapons and gadgets would be fully accounted for.
The police takes bribe to pervert justice; a guilty person offers bribe to go scout free, while an innocent person gets locked up. The police kills innocent people and then turns around to accuse the dead person of being an armed robber, planting weapon on the dead person to justify the unwarranted killing, but, the real armed robbers operate without molestation. The police has no liver to confront the real robbers, even a sound of fart sends your men scampering for a cover. Sir, some of your officers and men engage in sex for favour, demanding sex from ladies in order to facilitate their enlisting into the force, once in the force, the ladies are intimidated into sleeping with their boss and in some cases, bosses, before being promoted even when they merited the advancement in rank and any lady that refuses to “play ball” would be victimised, denied promotion and might be frustrated out of the force. Some of the female personnel of the force have at one time or the other accused some of the officers of sexual molestation, with-holding of their promotion until they cave in to pressure and sleep with them. Also, some of your officers and men demand sex from female offenders or wives of offenders in order to let loose the culprits from the offences they were supposed to be prosecuted for. On the other hand, innocent person/the wife of an innocent man, might be intimidated into offering sex in order to be freed (or her husband to be freed) from offence she/her husband never committed. Sir you need to look into this grievous matter.
Sir, armed robbers are invading churches during services and making away with the collections. It has happened so many times in Lagos and in other parts of the country. This should be stopped. The armed robbers should not be allowed to desecrate the holy places, the churches should be off-limit to them.
Robbers gained entry into the Yar’Adua’s family house while his mother was sleeping despite all the security measures put in place there. There, they carted away valuables after hypnotising the president’s mother. Such a thing is not supposed to happen. Also, Robbers gained access into the Delta State Government House, Asaba and carted away valuables. Almost at the same time, robbers gained entry into the Lagos state Government House, Alausa and carted away valuables. Not too long ago, the Governor of Edo State was attacked twice inside the Government House Benin-City by the same man who gained unfettered access to the governor. A gunman was arrested recently inside the old Government Lodge, G.R.A. Enugu in Enugu State, where the state governor, Sullivan Chime resides. All these unlawful entries and security breaches happened despite the security measures put in place in those places. These are serious negligence, there should be no justification for such security lapses.
Robbers once waylaid the Abia State Governor’s convoy and overshot/overpowered his security detail and succeeded in carting away an undisclosed amount of money, which the governor, T.A. Orji, does not want to reveal because of the shame and the allegation that the money was being taken to Port Harcourt International Airport, from where it would‘ve been taken to the place to be laundered, before the robbers, overpowered everybody and made away with the money. Even some of the jeeps in the convoy were stolen. Just a clear case of armed robbers stealing from “a pen robber”!
Also robbers have waylaid bullion vans carrying huge amount of money so many times in Abia and many other states and despite the security detail attached to those vans, the robbers still had their way by blowing them open and carting away their “cargo”. Sir, these are not how things are supposed to be, you need to save Nigerians from hearing such stories by turning the ragtag force into a biting one that can match the firing prowess of the criminals.
Sir, the policemen at check-points are shooting at vehicles because the occupant(s) refused to “drop” N20 for them, and in that process, lives are lost. The police is cheapening Nigerian lives; for them, N20 is worth more than a person’s life. Sir, reports abound where policemen killed their colleagues because of either a bottle of beer, torch light, a bottle of ogogoro or even N20. The police needs re-orientation.
Sir, some of your men should be patrolling our highways 24/7, to safe the lives being lost there every now and then. Most especially, the Lagos-Sagamu and Benin-Ore Roads are now the favourites for armed robbers. A few days ago, 20 robbery victims were crushed to death by a truck as they were being robbed along the Lagos-Sagamu expressway. The passenger bus carrying the victims was on its way to the Southeast when it ran into a gang of armed robbers operating on the expressway after a huge log of wood was used to block one end of the road. The bus was forced to stop with all its passengers ordered to disembark at gunpoint. They were then ordered to lie flat on the road after which the robbers started to ransack the vehicle as well as the passengers. But oblivious of the danger ahead, a trailer, which was said to be coming on top speed overran the victims, crushing 20 (13 men and 7 women) of them instantly. This is soul wrenching!
Sir; I hope you are taking the recent alert by the SSS that 2011 will be bloody serious. Now is the time to start preparing your men for the forthcoming elections. Nigerians do not want a repeat of what happened in the last elections; we want free and fair elections and it all depends on the police, because, without the aid of the police, nobody can rig election in this country.
Sir, your men arrested and detained a goat in Kwara State not too long ago for stealing a car. A Police Force that arrested a goat as a thief is not worth the name.
To be continued
THE THANXS IS ALL YOURS
Continued from Part 1
