It was a raining Monday morning, and I was stuck in the notorious Lagos traffic. Right ahead in the downpour were two traffic officials, one a LASTMA officer who was wearing a branded raincoat and rain boots, while his police counterpart was going about the discongestion of traffic, exposed to the element in his police uniform and black shoe.
At independence on October 1, 1960, Nigeria was ranked as one of 15 most viable and potentially prosperous nations on earth within the next 20 years. It ranked higher than Malaysia, Singapore, India and slightly above even China. But today, whereas those other nations have gone ahead to realize their potentials and striving to achieve more, Nigeria has remained prostate with majority of its people living on less than two (2) Dollars per day, unemployment rate as one of the highest in the world, infrastructure decay and sitting amongst 20 poorest nations on earth.
Not a few eyebrows were raised in Nigeria and beyond when on November 23, 2005, the erstwhile Inspector General of Police; Tafa Balogun, was sentenced to a meager six months’ imprisonment for diverting funds that amounted to billions of naira meant for officers and the entire rank and file of the Nigerian Police Force.
In delivering his judgment, Justice Binta Nyako also ordered the forfeiture of Tafa’s assets totaling One Hundred and fifty million US Dollars ($150m) including money stashed in banks, foreign and domestic, diverse shares in blue chip companies, home and abroad and properties totaling 14 in all. Last year was the turn of Police Pension Fund to hit news, when Alhaji Atiku Abubakar Kigo, Former Permanent Secretary, Police Pension Fund confessed to the looting of 32 Billion from the fund.
Another scandal has broken out that seems to dwarf both Tafa and kigo’s house of shame, with the revelation that over One Hundred and Thirty Five billion Naira (N 135,00b) received between 2010-2013 by M.D., Abubakar for reformation of the Nigeria Police Force, has been diverted and siphoned. Despite the institutional and contemporary security challenges like terrorism that the police now have to grapple with, and the unassailable low level of morale of its officers saddled with the unenviable task of combating crimes.
The fact today is that our Policemen and women are compelled to pay for their uniforms, boots and shoes. Senior officers pay for their mandatory training which oftentimes is outdated with syllabus unchanged for the past 30 years, and pay for the fuel to move their vehicles around. In states where the executive governor is not financially buoyant or charitable towards the police, it is common to see Mopol Squadrons hiring commercial buses because they lack serviceable trucks to move their men to one duty or the other. The mounted troops and K9 branches of the police is non existence on street patrols, while the much needed forensic laboratories have become a mirage.
While relations of Department of State Security officers who were ambushed by cult members in Nassarawa state got 10million naira each, dependents of the police officers involved in the same ambush went home with one million naira only.
However, this uncharitable state of affairs is not peculiar to the Nigeria Police.
Just as it had been noted elsewhere. The problems of the Nigerian Police are symptoms deep rooted in societal maladies. The rot in the Nigerian police is only a reflection of the Nigerian society. It is a manifestation of our inverted national culture of corruption and lawlessness. Corruption has eaten so deep into the national psyche. It has corroded our national will, distorted our collective sense of fairness and perverted our value system. It undermines equity and merit, entrench inefficiency and mediocrity. The resultant effect is a policing institution, one of the worst globally, in terms of domestic performance and attitude towards its own people.
‘Just as children subconsciously behave like their parents, the people unwittingly behave like their leaders. It is the greed, fraud and lawlessness of the power elite that pervaded and perverted every segment of the Nigerian society.’
And the miserable situation continues.
With the latest scandal breaking out on over One Hundred and forty billion Naira Police funds mismanaged by the current IG, Mohammed Abubakar, the Police outfit has again mirrored the decadence and widespread rot in the polity with most of the officers wondering why allocations to state Police commands and Mopol squadrons had to be reduced by seventy five percent (75%) when such monies have so far been collected. Most of these senior Police officers who are ready to ask questions, have expressed lack of confidence in the Senate Committee on Police Affairs to unravel the theft and misuse of the N140billion since the Committee and indeed, the entire Committee of the whole upper chamber has demonstrated more than enough of its own bug of this malaise.
We should cry out today for an encompassing investigation into this alleged fraud as one of the critics of this government who often times have given kudos and knocks as the situation demands. If indeed government provided the sum of One Hundred and Thirty Five billion Naira to enhance the activities of the Nigeria Police Force, and there is absolute nothing to show for it, somebody must pay for this evil against the state and people of Nigeria. If the police are well equipped, people like our aviation minister will spend less consideration on bullet and armored proof vehicles.
There is the need to establish the details of the proposal that necessitated the 135Billion budget, what defines the philosophy of the word ‘Reform’ in the police. Was the police ‘oga at the top’ the originator and did he actually get the monies? Was it a slush fund as being brandied by many commentators to fund the governorship aspiration in Ekiti of a certain minister?
I have many friends in the police force that I am proud to be associated with. They are gentlemen, incorruptible, patriots and hard working officers. But these men over the decades have not only been deprived the basic equipment needed to be effective, but traumatized with the mismanagement of scare funds. They are not allowed to unionize like their contemporaries in some western nation-states.
They are denied a voice, but the voice of the Nigerian people is the voice of God, and we demand a honest and transparent probe.
We cannot afford to be stupid on purpose when it concerns our collective security.
Gambo, writes from Lagos.