The reluctance of Nigerian Policemen to conduct proper basic
\ninvestigations into criminal cases is a major reason they drag
\nunnecessarily, and in many instances, get dismissed on grounds of lack of
\ndiligent prosecution, a former Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) and
\nSolicitor-General of Lagos State, Mr. Fola Arthur-Worrey has said.<\/p>\n
He said that Police officers were so accustomed to not going through the
\nstandard investigative process that all efforts to change their approach
\nto doing things the right way have failed so far.<\/p>\n
Addressing students at the launch of The Halogen School of Security
\nManagement & Technology, (HSSM&T)\u2019s maiden Professional MBA in Security
\nManagement programme, (In partnership with Babcock University) the ex
\nprosecutor said, \u201cThe standard approach when someone is arrested is you
\ntake his photograph, then you take his fingerprints and then his height
\nfor the purpose of identification but I was DPP for two years and I didn’t
\nsee a single photograph in any file which I thought was weird. How do you
\nfind out whether this person has been involved in a prior for example? The
\nmost fundamental element of criminal investigation, is fingerprinting yet
\nthe last case where fingerprints were used to convict in a Nigerian court
\nwas in 1964. This was the case of a burglar who left his fingerprints on
\nthe louvre of the house he went to burgle. We have tried to get the Police
\nto use anything, even if it’s the old model of pads and paper to document
\nfingerprints but they just don’t want it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arthur-Worrey decried the dearth of experts in the force, noting that it
\nwasn\u2019t always this bad with Nigerian Policemen as he recalled with
\nnostalgia, his days as a public prosecutor in Lagos when according to him,
\nPolice Officers carried out their duties wonderfully.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cWe had wonderful experts in every field. We had great facilities
\nlike the lab in Oshodi which I relied on when I was a prosecutor in the
\nearly eighties. They were good at blood work, they were good at pathology
\nand they knew their stuff. Then the Police had the best ballistician, I
\nknew a guy who was a handwriting analyst, trained in Wales, he used to
\ncome to court in his blazer and he just used to intimidate the defense
\ncounsel. He was just good.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody does ballistics anymore. When last did you hear of a case that
\ninvolved ballistics, unlike Oscar Pistorious\u2019 case where the emphasis was
\non the science of it. It underscores the damage being done by the
\nconflation of security with law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n
He commended the HSSM&T for taking the initiative as the first to offer a
\nmasters degree in Security Management in a University setting. He noted
\nthat programmes uniquely tailored to solve problems of security and law
\nenforcement were long overdue as Nigerians could simply no longer depend
\non the Police alone.<\/p>\n
He also urged the Halogen Security Company to go a step further as
\nindustry leaders to offer professional support to the Police in law
\nenforcement through the deployment of different levels of scientific
\nprivate detective strategies including fingerprint lifting\/analysis,
\nsurveillance, evidence collection and preservation and many more.<\/p>\n
Tracing the origin of the decline in Police efficiency, Arthur-Worrey
\naverred that the root of the problem was the military rule, which paid
\nmore attention to \u2018regime security\u2019, undermining the critical element of
\nlaw enforcement in the process. This he said, has systematically eroded
\nthe capacity of Nigerian policemen over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe eroded police capacity because of military rule, and its own
\nperception of security and its inability to distinguish between security
\nand law enforcement. This is a critical understanding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we say national security in Africa, we mean to say ‘regime
\nsecurity’, they’re not really concerned with the regular people so all the
\nresources go to the regime security which is why the convoy culture has
\nbecome so dominant, taking one third of armed Policemen off the streets
\ninto the houses, vehicles etcetera of not just the politically exposed
\npersons (PEPs) but also private people, Chinese etc. Some people can just
\nwander into the CP’s office and say ‘I need a Policeman’ he will quickly
\nacquiesce and those policemen love it. This is a de emphasis on law
\nenforcement which is a very demanding, meticulous area that leads to
\nconvictions in court,\u201d Arthur-Worrey submitted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The reluctance of Nigerian Policemen to conduct proper basic investigations into criminal cases is a major reason they drag unnecessarily, and in many instances, get dismissed on grounds of lack…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n