Date Published: 09/02/09

FOR A NEW NIGERIAN POLICE
By Emmanuel Onwubiko

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In early July last year, Ijeoma (not real name) boarded a public transport from Berger Junction in Wuse heading to Gwagwalada. She looked resplendent in her immaculate white gown that glittered like the early morning star. Her black pair of shoes were simply delectable. Inwardly, Ijeoma was so full of sweet dreams that at last her desire to pay her last pre-degree tuitions which will inevitably facilitate her writing her final medical school examination and open her doors of possibilities has come. The arrival of her first cousin from the United States of America made the dream come true because she enjoined the rare privilege of securing some good chunk of cash from him when she explained her longstanding ordeal of not being able to raise the exorbitant tuition fees from her Septuagenarian father who retired three years back from the near-moribund Nigeria Railways. Looking out through the windows, Ijeoma suddenly realizes for the first time that lurch greenery that dotted both sides of the high ways leading to the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport was a beauty to behold.

Little did she know that her dreams will come crashing. Reason: the four passengers including two ladies who dressed like preachers in the ill -fated bus were birds of the same feather that flocked together for a common criminal purpose of robbing any unsuspecting member of the public that falls into their trap. ‘One chance robbery’ is the name of the genre of criminal activity that would soon become her misfortune. As Ijeoma and her so-called co-travelers were moving at lightening speed around the Lugbe junction along the international Airport express way, she was waylaid and dispossessed of all her belongings including huge cash running to over two hundred thousand naira with which she was to settle her outstanding tuition fees and rents for her hostel accommodation at the university of Abuja. As one of the men made attempts to rape her, the others in the criminal gang disagreed leading to a fierce altercation and at the end of the heated arguments that generated from the foiled rape attempt, Ijeoma was pushed out of the moving bus violently even as she survived due to some miraculous circumstances that she landed in the thick bush nearby, unscathed. She was traumatized.

Some good Nigerians rescued and took her to a nearby hospital where she received medical attention for some hours and discharged. She headed to a nearby police station to lodge her complaint believing that the gang of dare devil thieves would be apprehended and her belongings recovered but her experience at the police station was a throw back to the scenario that played itself out while she was being robbed inside that ill -fated bus. The police operatives did not only made demands that she pays filing fee but she was treated with disdain. Several months after, neither the gang nor her precious possession and cash have being captured or retrieved. She told her neighbors that she has lost faith in the Nigerian police and by extension the government for failing to fulfill the constitutional provision that stated that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primarily responsibility of government” as enshrined in section 14(2)(b) of the 1999 constitution.

The story narrated above tells the gamut of the experiences of most Nigerians that they have faced in their encounters with the police operatives all across Nigeria. Since the emergence of the civilian rule in 1999, several scientific surveys have come up with the disturbing findings that contrary to the official slogan of the Nigerian police which says that ‘police is your friend’, the least friend a citizen would like to have is the operative of the Nigerian police. Etanibi Alemika, a professor of criminology at the University of Jos who has researched extensively on the problems afflicting the Nigerian police and impeding the effective and efficient policing of Nigeria stated rightly that “the police can only be as friendly as the government of the day is with the people.” Analysts say that the high rate of social, organized crimes that go on in the Nigerian society and the clear inability of the operatives of the Nigerian police to solve some or most of them could be blamed on the dearth of useful voluntary information to the police from the members of the civil society because of the total collapse of trust and confidence in the members of the nation’s police force.

Crime statisticians say that no criminal activity can be successfully resolved without quality information rendered to the police by the citizens and this is true because operatives of the Nigerian police are not spirits but human beings who must work with verifiable and useful information to either nip in the bud the incidence of crime and criminality or to arrest the culprits if such criminal activities are committed. Several questions have been asked regarding the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the operatives of the police in tackling and unraveling the deluge of criminal activities that take place in all across Nigeria. But the most prominent of the questions is that which seeks to find out why operatives of the Nigerian police have become the worst abusers of human rights even as the second segment of this all important question is why corruption is very rife in the Nigerian police?

A remarkable scholar by name P.G. Shane in his work “Police and people: a comparison of five countries” attempted to offer one of the most valid reasons why the police operatives especially in most developing economies like Nigeria most often fail abysmally in the performance of their statutory duty of crime prevention, detection and enthronement of law and order.

According to Shane “the police and police work have often been received with ambivalence and ambiguity by the people. The police represent alternatively and simultaneously civil order, repression, and help. Police operatives are greeted with fear, respect, warmth and hatred”.

Tony Platt echoed the above assertion when he argued that the police for instance are not the friends of the citizens because “the main function of the police has been to protect the property and well being of those who benefit most from an economy based on the extraction of private profit. The police were created primarily in response to rioting and disorder directed against oppressive working and living conditions in the emerging industrial cities”.

Alemika wrote that; “The police are men and women organized by the state (government) as a paramilitary force with the sole purpose of defending the status quo, that is to enforce the laws, values and ideologies that justify, legitimize and defend prevailing distribution of power and wealth in society”.

“Police are organized to prevent people from making significant advancement in their advocacy for alternative social order”, Alemika posited.

To a large extent, it is safe to assume that the assertions made above by the learned criminologists are true about the Nigerian police. The same can not be said with every degree of certainty about the police in most other civilized climes like the United States of America and the United Kingdom where the police operatives respect the extant laws and legislations in those countries regarding human rights and the due process of the law.

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But is it how the police should be or is that what the constitution of Nigeria says?

To begin with, section 14(2) (a) provides that “sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this constitution derives all its powers and authority”. Section 14(2) (b) states that the “security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”

Since the constitution recognizes that sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria and that government officials at every level derive their authority from the people, and since the security and welfare of the people is the primary responsibility of government, it follows logically that the Nigerian police force whose hierarchy is appointed by the president as provided for in sections 215, to 218, must work for public good and safeguard the interest of the people.

I just like most analysts believe that the newly appointed Inspector General of police Mr. Ogbona Onovo, a fine gentleman, will change, transform the behavioral patterns of the operatives of the Nigeria police force if the members of his team would abide by the example of the Inspector General of police known for his competent, efficient and effective approach to his duties of policing the nation.

Our optimism for now is not misplaced because for the first time in the recorded history of the Nigeria police force, the nation’s police boss apologized to Nigerians for all the failings of the police operatives in the last four decades. This is unprecedented.

Onovo on August 26th 2009 publicly apologized for what he described as “previous intransigence of the Nigeria Police Force” in carrying out assignments, just as he pledged to collaborate with the Police Service Commission (PSC) to earn the confidence of the Nigerian people.

“We cannot be a mirror unto ourselves. We make mistakes here and there, and these are mistakes of the head. For all our previous intransigence we say we are sorry, we will be much closer this time so that we achieve the common objective which is proper, qualitative and effective service delivery to Nigerians”.

“On behalf of all the officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force, we have good and fantastic things ahead of us. By the time we complete the reforms we will have the kind of police force that will be at par with our colleagues all over the world”, he said.

I am sure that the polished gentleman in Ogbonna Onovo will enable him to lead the operatives of the Nigeria police in the right way so much so that they will know what Reverend father Mathew Kukah rightly wrote that “repression produces and spreads a great deal of frustration and the frustration causes conflict as some citizens turn their impotence against fellow victims”, and that the operatives must always respect the principle of the rule of law in their police work.