With Uche Nnadozie
Typical of us, anytime we look vulnerable and are in the midst of major challenge, the only antidote Nigerians know to propose is a new law or create a new organisation. Since issues relating to herdsmen and farmers crises grabbed national attention, people have returned to their pastime: create something new! In this case, create state police. And as the Senate held its national security summit in response to different killings across the republic, Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo led the choir for state police. Then other stakeholders have followed, including those with little or no idea of what state police is about.
Of course, for the usual suspects, state police is a characteristic of a federal system of government. How naive, how convenient? In all this, no one has spared a thought for the Nigeria Police Force. We are very quick to dance towards a popular cliche. We do not think through the nuances of what state police will bring to the table. For most promoters of this reform, it is to support better secured communities. But for me, we have not asked hard questions about why the police isn’t as effective. I will be lying if I claim that our police functions to its full capacity. It does not. But it is not because it is centrally controlled. And there is no truth in the information out there that state policing is synonymous to a federal system.
Let us look at our system for a moment. Some states have set up traffic control agencies. This initiative was led by Lagos state. So I will use Lagos to buttress my point. The Lagos State Traffic Management Agency, LASTMA is an integral part of the governance paraphernalia of the economic capital of Nigeria. To some degree the agency has blossomed over the years. Its mandate is to ensure road safety and traffic fidelity in the state. There is also the Federal Road Safety Corp, FRSC and the Traffic section of the Nigeria Police. We call them, “Yellow Fever”. In all, there are less than 30, 000 police personnel in Lagos. The traffic police is part of that number. Lagos is said to have more than 20 million people. With a small landmass, it will be difficult to move goods and services without encountering mad traffic; with it comes all manners of traffic offenses and even crime.
The police or FRSC did not fail in Lagos because they are ran centrally. The coming of LASTMA is of course because these federal agencies failed in a rapidly growing city-state. There is no way you can use 30, 000 police men to police 20 million people, period. So its as if the police was set up to fail. We have failed to understand how to deploy, when to deploy and how to fund our police. To now assume that states will do it better is strange to me. I have not said state police is bad, what I am saying is that we have not even tried to make our police work for us. We do not have enough, we do not equip them enough, we do not pay them enough, we do not deploy them enough. We see police as symbol of authority rather than a law enforcement and crime prevention agency. That is why out of 400, 000 police officers in Nigeria, 150, 000 are deployed to big men and women. 250, 000 men are then left to police 180 million people. It can’t work.
Truth is that Nigeria does not have money to run an effective and efficient police force. The budget to the police is mere pittance. Technology deployment is almost non-existent. The various departments in the force are left to cater for themselves. State police will not suddenly solve the problem. Getting more funds from FG to states to be able to fund the police will leave a broken country. There is a Neighbourhood styled police in Lagos presently. They are the closest to state police or if you like community policing model. But its over a year since their inauguration. All they do is stand with LASTMA and Traffic police at road junctions to pretend to be controlling traffic. They are also seen around party (event) centres milling around. They are well clothed and drive around in new expensive cars. There is nothing they can claim to have contributed except wasting tax payers money.
The thinking was that this Lagos idea of state police will perform with aplomb. They should have been deployed to communities where they will gather information because they will integrate within such communities. Every resident should have their contact so that they can be called up during emergencies, but no. So how else will this state police work if its prototype has been a complete failure in Lagos? We do not like to obey laws in Nigeria. A little traffic offense forces the offender to begin to make calls to influencers rather than face up to the offense. With a state police, it will get worse. It will be typical man-know-man. No crime will be busted. We are a peculiar people in our ways.
We need to find a new way to get the Nigeria Police to work. Funding, training, technology, etc will help. We should not attempt to dump policing on the doorsteps of governors who have shown lack of capacity in spite of the security votes they get. These governors know how to use the Police to harass their opponents or rig election but when there are security challenges they suddenly remember that police is controlled from Abuja. Control is not the problem of the police in Nigeria, it is deployment and our perennial lack of faith in the rule of law. I urge caution.
