A former Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase, has said that a large chunk of police personnel in the country is being deployed to protect the elite and not the security spaces.
Arase, who bemoaned the decay and decline in professionalism in the Nigeria Police Force, disclosed that 50 percent of personnel of the country’s police are protecting the political class and not the general populace.
The retired IGP also said that the problem of the Nigeria Police Force was not reforms, but lack of political will to implement reports of reforms done in the past.
According to him, “no fewer than four police reforms have been undertaken by different administrations between 1999 and 2016, but none of the reports of the reforms have been implemented. The reports are just there gathering dust”.
Arase stated these in his contribution via zoom, to the second edition of the National Dialogue Series of the Political Leadership and Training Institute (POLA) powered by the former governor of Ogun State, Gbenga Daniel, held on Sunday, in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital.
Other speakers at the virtual dialogue series with the theme: “The Challenges of Nigeria Police Reform, Civil unrest and the Nation’s Democratic Advancement”, included the former National Coordinator of the Police Equipment Fund, Kenny Martins, Ambassador Ibrahim Mai Sule, former member, Senate Committee on Security and Intelligence, Senator Ehigie Uzamere, Mrs.Baraka Sanni, former Oyo State governor, Adebayo Alao Akala and retired Assistant Inspector General of Police, Tunji Alapini.
“We have about 400,000 police personnel in Nigeria and 200,000 of those officers are with the political elites. What we are doing in this country is that we are policing the elites, we are not policing security spaces and this is an issue we have to look into.
“The problem we have in this country is lack of implementation. Even if we set up another police reform committee today, the same issues, the fundamental issues bedeviling the police that we are talking about today will still continue.
“The government should take those four reforms, do an executive summary and implement the report”,
Arase said.
In his contribution, retired IGP, Tunji Alapini, bemoaned the failed standard of training facilities of the Nigeria Police Force, saying that most Police Colleges in the country are not fit for training professional policemen and officers.
Alapini noted that the environment in which police personnel is being trained is no longer desirable, adding that ” this is one of the major reasons for the poor state of the Nigeria Police Force”.
“If you are trained in an environment that is not conducive when you come out, you apply what you have been trained on members of the public. This is what we call garbage in garbage out.
“I started my training at the Police College in Ikeja and afterward, I was posted to Kwara State. I have been opportune to be Commissioner of Police in Ogun, Edo, and Zamfara states. I have also been opportune to be a Commandant of a Police College where we train recruits and I know what it means for us to train new recruits. But nearly 30 years after I left the Police College in Ikeja, with what I saw, I couldn’t believe we can train people there any longer”,
Alapini added.
He noted further that the faulty recruitment process of the Nigeria Police Force has also allowed for the employment of what he described as “undesirable elements” into the police.
According to him,
“people who are untrainable are now being recruited into the police, a situation which portends great dangers for security of Nigerians”.
On the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), Alapini said the Squad deviated from its original mandate and veered into cases such as a land dispute, family dispute, and other cases, as a result of lack of supervision and neglect.
On his part, Senator Ehigie, called for the abolition of the quota system in the recruitment of police personnel, stressing that recruitment of police officers should be based on merit and not lobbying.
He also called for the increment of salaries and improved welfare of police officers, suggesting N250,000 as the minimum wage for a Police Constable.
