Top human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN) has described the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase as grossly incompetent.
Falana, who spoke Monday morning on Channels TV, faulted the police boss on the handling of the mayhem visisted on several communities by the Fulani herdsmen.
He said it left much to be desired that the IGP had to wait for a presidential order before taking action after scores of local residents were killed in the recent Fulani herdsmen attack in Ukpabi Nimbo community in Uzo-Uwani local government area of Enugu state.
Falana also decried the ratio of policemen to the citizens, saying the the police lacked the capacity to effectively police 170million people with just 130,000 men.
He also queried the number of policemen assigned to political office holders.
He said “162 police officers guarding a governor is too much. Nigeria used to have 30 policemen guarding a Governor, now Police assigns about 162 officers to guard each State Governor, for a police that is already understaffed, that figure is still too much.
Falana maintained that the Ex Enugu commissioner of police, Nwodibo Ekechukwu, deserved some punishment for his shabby handling of the mayhem in Enugu.
” The transfer of the ex-police boss in the state is not enough as the community had alerted the governor who then alerted the commissioner of police but he failed to take actions”
He further said that all heads of security agencies- commissioner of police, Director of state security service and Army commander in Enugu were guilty of security negligence and should be dealt with accordingly.
Falana alleged that the police was regularly engaged in outright killings of armed robbery and kidnap suspects after parading them to the media.
He said, “What happens to armed robbery suspect and kidnap suspects after the parade? They are simply extra judicially executed. I go to court regularly; I cannot remember when last armed robberies were brought to court. In 2014, 532 armed robbery and kidnap suspect were paraded all over the country and I went to the police to get the court were these criminals were being arraigned but I got no response,” Falana said.
On state police , Falana said State governors should fight for State Police.
Falana said “it was high time the 36 state governors challenged the federal government over the centralized policing in Nigeria. The FG has violated the constitution; what I mean is section 214 of the constitution provides that there shall be only one police force in our country that shall bear arms but over the years, all other paramilitary force carry arms. There is no way you can police over 170 million Nigerians with one police force. The federal police will deal with federal offence, the state police will deal with state offence. Even local government can have police.”