Police Picking Up the Pieces at 41

Nigeria's trip down four decades, from 1960 when it gained independence, is not dissimilar from the evolution of its police since then. Although, the Nigeria Police Force is about a century older than the Nigerian nation, their growth patterns are same. From a modest assemblage of thirty - member consular guard formed in the then Lagos colony in 1869, the Nigeria Police Force has grown into a 150,000 strong police force in the year 2001.

Baring the minute dividends of the half hearted efforts of the present administration to ameliorate the problems of the force, the police like every other facet of the country, had had stunted growth. For a greater portion of the colonial era, what is now known as the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) performed simple duties.

Its presence, rather than seen was felt. Policemen, in their awe inspiring heavily starched Khaki uniforms, only had to deliver occasional heavy baton knocks to the head of the local street urchin, bring tax defaulters to book, arrest the wayward Ogogoro (local gin) peddler and hound environmental sanitation offenders.

But with each fit and turn taken by the country in its stride down the pages of history, the police was forced to transform as the social, economic and political upheavals in the country dramatically changed the nature of its responsibilities.

Its challenges and those who pose them changed. As the nation advanced in other areas, the police also grew but was never enough to keep pace with or handle those who test its might. While it floundered, the opposition procured and deployed new weapons.

The street urchin graduated into the menacing Area Boy, the tax defaulter transformed into the embarrassing advance fee fraudster, the Ogogoro peddler into a drug pusher and the local thief into an armed robber. The passing years also witnessed the mutation of new strains from the pre-independence species prevalent in the criminal world.

Ritual killers, child traffickers, ethnic irredentist, cross border bandits and murderous men in uniforms, appeared on the scene. The Nigeria police of pre-independence Nigeria is not the same as that of the post experimental period. How much has the police changed in this period?

How well has the Nigeria Police Force fared in its bid to live up to its statutory obligation of "a national police with exclusive jurisdiction throughout the country,'' as enshrined in the 1979 constitution cum the 1999 constitution.

From the period of independence in the 1960s till the late 1970s, when the military handed over power to civilians in the second Republic, the police performed sundry functions. Its activities were largely over shadowed by that of its neighbour in the federation's armed forces-the military. The military, with its crop of task forces, took over most of the traditional functions of the police.

The thinking of successive government that a large police force was the answer to the nation's worrisome crime rate took root during President's Obasanjo's first sojourn in power. His administration tried to lower the recruitment age from 19 to 17 and to enroll demobilised soldiers in the police. Somehow, the plan did not fall through. Steady decline in the effectiveness and efficiency of the police crept in.

But government still believed that raising the strength would do the trick. In 1981, it began toying with the idea of increasing the number of policemen in the country to 200,000. The figure was to have been increased from the initial population of a little less than 40,000.

By 1983, the strength of the force, as given in the federal government budget of that year was152,000,but independent followers put the figure at 80,000. During this period, there were about 1,000 police stations nationwide. policemen, unlike now, did not have to go around, bearing arms, they were only issued arms for special assignments.

The figure oscillated between the latter figure and 100,000 till the Babangida administration in 1989 announced that a large number of officers would be posted to their home states and council areas to facilitate police community relations. When numbers and reposting alone could not solve its problems, the police was reorganised into seven area commands.

By 1989, another reorganisation took place after the Rear Admiral Murtala Nyako panel submitted its report to the then ruling military council. Government expenditure on the police then had hit the roof. Whether the expenditure was justified was, however, a different issue.

According to an International Intelligence monitoring agency, "the NPF operating budget between 1984 and 1988 was between N360 million and N380 million. It increased in 1988 to N521 million. More notable were the large capital expenditure infusions of N206 million in 1986 and N260.3 million in 1988, representing 3.5 and 2.5 percent of total federal capital expenditures in those years. These increase were used to acquire new communication equipment, transport, and weapons to combat noticed rising crime wave. About 100 British Leyland DAF Comet trucks were delivered in 1990 to the force. Despite these purchases, a study on the NPF in late 1990s concluded that the force's budget must double to meet its needs.''

At a point in 1989, a report said the police only recovered 14 percent of the estimated N1.8 billion, the value of stolen property for the year, while only 20 percent of the 103,000 suspects arrested were found guilty by the courts.
This period marked the turning point in the history of the force. Beginning with the tendencies of his men to appropriate excessive force in quelling students' riots that characterised the eighties, the police grew into a monstrous force that attracted fear rather than co-operation from the public. This period also marked the loss of the police's most important source of intelligence gathering, the public. Unlike its sister forces, dealing directly with the public made its foibles an open sore.

In an effort to reduce corruption in the force and to make it possible to easily identify offending policemen, the police authorities instructed its men not to carry more than N5 on them while manning check points. The nineties opened with the mass killing of 15 people by some mobile policemen in Umuechen. The mobile policemen, who committed the act were part of the security detail, protecting facilities at the Anglo-Dutch oil company in the community. This incident and subsequent revelations by the company that it bought arms for the police because they lacked enough to perform their duties was symbolic and it appropriately raised dust for two reasons.

First, it denoted the commencement of a decade that was to witness increased cases of extra judicial killings. Two, it also marked the slide of the police into a prolonged period of decay. Their guns became obsolete, communication equipment were left behind by the times, vehicles broke and stayed down. To further weaken the force, the military government placed a ban on fresh recruitment into it in 1993 and until recently the ban stayed.

Robbers became more daring and when the police could not face the superior fire power of armed bandits nor confront the military, who out of the fear of the implication of arming the police, left them almost at the mercy of robbers, they turned what has become an evil eye on the Nigerian citizenry. Extortion, harassment, victimisation and sometimes barefaced robbery of members of the public by policemen became the order of the day. Independent sources claimed that some policemen colluded with men of shady characters in various acts of misdemeanour. The situation became so bad in some areas of Lagos that armed robbers herald their imminent 'visits' to some neighbourhood with letters announcing such visits.

From the 20 percent of the eighties, the percentage of stolen properties recovered fell down to 0.4 percent. The government at the centre, which could have offered some respite to its beleaguered citizenry, was busy trying to ensure its perpetual stay in power.

Well trained police officers, who could have proffered solutions to the decay, were either witch-hunted politically and booted out of the force or made members of special task forces and made to work with their military colleagues to check the increasing number of political agitators.

This level of insecurity and the attendant inability of the police to handle the situation effectively was to act as a launch pad for the emergence of what has constituted itself into the popular 'police force'- vigilante groups. These groups differ in no way from there predecessors in the wild West, who formed posse to hunt undesirable elements. When the citizenry noticed that the jungle justice meted on suspects kept them permanently out of their streets, they switched their loyalties.

But the slide downwards to some extent was halted shortly after the second coming of Obasanjo two year ago. The government, since it got in, has made efforts to arm the police better than their adversaries. Recently, the Federal Government procured sub machine guns from Bulgaria to replace the obsolete guns used by policemen which could not perform effectively against robbers.

The government also paid arrears of salaries owed policemen while it has directed that Dodan Barracks, the former seat of government in Lagos as federal capital, be turned in to the police after its renovation. Compensation previously paid policemen, who died on active duty has been increased to N500,000 while a local police community relations committee has put an insurance scheme in place in Lagos for policemen. Lately, there are attempts also to improve on communication facilities available to the force. The force has now established communication link between Abuja and Lagos while efforts are on to extend same to other states. Added to that with the assistance of all three levels of government in the country, the force now relatively have access to faster cars and other vehicles.

But the changes for a police force, which underwent such a drastic descent, should have been all encompassing. The problems on ground seem to overwhelm the facilities put in place.

The most important need, according to security experts, yet to be met by government is the need for a reorientation in the force and the excision of members of the force, who have consistently refused to move in tandem with the new democratic spirit. As one top police officer put it recently: " Some of our men are past redemption, we would have to ease them out.''