The recent upsurge in police misconduct across the country is depressing and should motivate the police hierarchy to overhaul its recruitment, training, supervision, and disciplinary systems. Despite swifter response to public complaints in recent times, police officers on the field continue to exhibit highhandedness, abuse of power, extra-judicial killings, extortion, and disregard for civil rights. Apart from stepping up punishment for erring officers, the Police Service Commission and the Inspector-General of Police need to adopt reforms to instil discipline and professionalism in the Force.
For many Nigerian police officers, graft, impunity, and lawlessness have become so ingrained that despite well-publicised exposure of police misdeeds, arrests, and punishment by superiors, they persist in abuses and misbehaviour on the field. Punishment should be made stiffer to deter such recalcitrant officers.
Across the country, some policemen are misbehaving. Early in April, Inspectors Siaka Adejoh and Friday Obaka, and Ndiwa Kpuebari, a sergeant, were filmed slapping and flogging a motorist at Emouha Junction, East-West Road, Port Harcourt, Rivers State. After the video went viral, the officers were arrested, detained, and paraded.
Less than 48 hours later, another police inspector, Ubi Ebri, shot dead a Delta State resident, Onyeka Ibe, on Ugbolu-Illah Road over a N100 bribe demand. The officer was arrested, detained, and dismissed. Within the same week, five police officers were arrested for shooting a trader, Ibuchim Ofezie, to death at Terminus Market, Jos, Plateau State. The officers were reportedly chasing tricycle operators when one cop fired a shot that hit the victim.
Around the same time in Adamawa State, some policemen guarding a political party’s hired praise singer, Dauda Rarara, were filmed shooting indiscriminately into the air to massage the ego of the singer. The officers were deservedly arrested for the unprofessional act of wasting taxpayers’ money.
In Lagos, three officers attached to the Okokomaiko Police Division were arrested for extorting N100,000 from a mobile phone dealer, Onyinyechi Anwusi. In this case, the Lagos Commissioner of Police, Idowu Owohunwa, also ordered the removal of the Divisional Police Officer in charge of the station, Emmanuel Edebagha, a Superintendent of Police.
While it is commendable that police chiefs have considerably improved response time to complaints from members of the public, and erring police officers are swiftly facing orderly room trial, the problem in the force persists. This demands scrutiny from the police chiefs.
One clue is that it is mostly junior officers that are being promptly sanctioned; the senior officers, including area commanders and commissioners of police, who either fail to exercise effective command and control, or engage in misdeeds, are unscathed.
True, the PSC has been imposing sanctions, including dismissals, demotions, and loss of promotion of some senior officers, the evidence of the extensive rot in the system suggests that much more needs to be done to deliver a professional people’s police force for the country’s fledgling democracy.
The PSC says it has already commenced investigation after a police officer alleged that officers pay as much as $10,000 for promotion. This should be part of a wholesale inquiry into the Force, which has earned notoriety over the years for corruption, inefficiency, oppression, extortion, and extra-judicial killings. The anti-corruption war must start from the top.
There must be accountability in the Force. Senior police officers should exercise effective supervision over the police officers in their jurisdictions. The Assistant Inspectors-General of Police, Commissioners of Police, Area Commanders, and Divisional Police Officers must take responsibility for the actions of their officers in their respective areas of operation.
The United States Capitol Police Chief, Stephen Sund, resigned after facing criticism for lack of preparedness to handle the mob that invaded the US Congress in January 2020. In China, a former police chief of the Inner Mongolia Region was executed following his conviction for murder and bribery.
Officers who commit crimes, apart from being dismissed, must be prosecuted. Some dismissed policemen have taken to crime, using their training and experience to dubious advantage. A dismissed police corporal, Michael Adiku, was among the gang leaders of the Offa bank robbery, who killed 30 people in 2018. Another dismissed police officer, Benjamin Ogbobe, was among some PoS robbers lynched by a mob in Enugu in November 2022.
The IG, Usman Baba, must interrogate the corruption going on in the deployment of police officers to individuals and highly placed politicians and public figures. There are only about 371,800 police officers for over 200 million Nigerians.
The officer, who despite the Force’s acute personnel shortage, deployed three police officers to a singer, should also be punished.
A former Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Rasheed Akintunde, a few years ago, revealed that only 20 per cent of police officers are engaged in core police duties of protecting lives. “The remaining 80 percent are just busy providing personal security to some `prominent people’ on guard duties,” he added.
This odious system must stop. There are allegations that money is being collected. Who are those behind the racket? Why should any singer, individual or businessman have several police officers at his disposal in a country where the police-to-citizen ratio is 1 to 648?
In other climes, a private citizen who needs protection hires private security guards, who operate in a multibillion-naira sector regulated by the government. Experienced police officers and other security agencies who have retired should be encouraged to professionalise and set up security companies to fill the gap, under a strict regulatory regime.
But for social media, some of the police atrocities would have been hidden and the culprits would have escaped. The police should strengthen the provost department to monitor credible complaints on social media and respond accordingly. To their credit, this is currently being done by some state police commands and their public relations units, and by the Force Public Relations Office.
A 2019 survey by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project showed that out of five major public institutions it surveyed, the police emerged as the most corrupt. The police must cleanse the recruitment system that allows criminals to enlist.
Nigerian police should no longer be willing tools for the highest bidder or to settle personal quarrels. Land speculators, politicians, individuals, even criminals, fraudsters, and transport union bosses running extortion and protection rackets routinely hire police officers to harass and intimidate innocent people and opponents.
Regrettably, the gains of the #EndSARS protests have been eroded by resurgent police brutality. The reforms promised by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), did not go beyond salary increments. There must be a comprehensive reform that includes systemic reorientation, transparency, and re-training.
Periodic psychiatric tests as suggested by some experts must also be incorporated. The PSC and the IG should not relent until they have flushed out all the bad eggs in the Force.
