President Goodluck Jonathan has inaugurated a Special Committee charged with overseeing police reform, it was announced Wednesday.
The Nigerian Police Force has come under heavy criticism recently for failing to address the growing insecurity in the country.
The nine-member committee is made up of two former army officers, two former Assistant Inspector Generals of Police, three lawyers, the Solicitor General of the Federation and the permanent secretary to the SGF’s office. The panel will be chaired by Parry Osayande, who, as chair of the police service commission, has not been able to tame the mess in the force.
The committee met for the first time on Wednesday at Aso Villa at the President’s behest and were named as Casimir T. Akagbosu, AIG (rtd.), mni, Bashir A. Albasu, AIG (rtd.), fwc. Major Gen. S.N. Chikwe, rtd., Prof. S.D. Mukoro, Dr. Fabian Ajogwu, SAN, Aisha Larai Tukur, Abdullahi Yola, Solicitor General of the Federation and Femi Oyisade, Permanent Secretary, SSO, Office of the SGF, to serve as the Secretary.
There is a strong legal flavour to the team, with various members coming from a legal background.
Meet the team
Parry Asoyande is chairman of the Police Service Commission and a former deputy inspector general of police. His chairmanship has not been noteworthy and he once infamously accused Nuhu Ribadu of “stage managing” his own arrest. He has a subordinate at the commission in a certain Habu Daura, who was was once indicted by police authorities for assisting armed robbers to conceal stolen properties.
Casimir Akagbosu is a former Police Commissioner of Benin and retired as an AIG and is now a practicing lawyer.
Bashir Albasu is another retired AIG and he is no stranger to special committees. The Kano native, a trained lawyer, is Chairman, Tax Appeal Tribunal, North West Zone. Mr. Albasu was in 2010 named as Chairman of the Hajj commission and has been a very vocal advocate for police and electoral reform over the past few years.
An interesting name on the list is Saliba D Mukoro. In 1990, Mr. Mukoro, then a Major, was fingered as one of the chief plotters in the aborted Gideon Orkar coup to oust Ibrahim Babangida. He was indicted and faced execution but managed to flee to the United States where he gained a bachelors degree in criminology and a Ph.D in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston university, Texas.
He eventually returned to Nigeria in 2006 and ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Delta State governorship last year. Before he left the US, Mr. Mukoro was Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice at Mississippi Valley State University – a position he held for six consecutive years.
Another old soldier is Major Gen Sunday Chikwe. In 1998, Major Gen Chikwe was appointed General Officer Commanding for 81 Division, Lagos, having previously served as Chief of Operations, Army Headquarters. He was promoted to the rank of Major General in 2004 after which he served as Provost Marshal. He ended an unblemished military career in 2010.
Fabian Ajogwu is another lawyer on the list. The Senior Advocate of Nigeria is a managing partner at leading Lagos firm, Kenna and Associates. He holds a Masters in Law and an MBA from the IESE Business School Barcelona. Although his main specialty areas are in banking and energy law, he is known to be a strong campaigner for electoral and civic reform.
Aisha Tukur is another lawyer.
Completing the committee are career civil servants, Abdullahi Yola, the solicitor general, and Femi Oloyisade, the permanent secretary to the SGF.
‘Waste of resources’
Nigerians have not reacted favourably to the news of yet another committee being set up. Okechukwu Nwanguma, Programme Coordinator, Network of Police Reform in Nigeria, said on Facebook that : “Setting up another committee to reorganise the Nigerian police is not only a waste of resources but a pretext to evade responsibility.”
Pius Adesanmi, popular columnists and professor of English, added that by appointing the committee, President Jonathan had already failed to live up to his promise to cut down on committees.
LIST OF FUNCTIONS OF COMMITTEE AS OUTLINED BY PRESIDENT
1. To identify the challenges and factors militating against effective performance in the Nigeria Police Force and make recommendations for addressing the challenges.
2. To examine the scope and standard of training and other personnel development activities in the Police to determine their adequacy or otherwise.
3. To determine the general and specific causes of the collapse of public confidence in the police and recommend ways of restoring public trust in the institution.
4. To examine records of performance of Officers and Men of the Nigeria Police Force with a view to identifying those that can no longer fit into the system due to declining productivity, age, indiscipline, corruption and/or disloyalty;
5. To make any other recommendations for the improvement of the Nigeria Police Force.
The Committee’s recommendations shall be implemented along with those by previous committees set up by Government on the reform of the Nigeria Police Force.
CHAIRMAN
POLICE REFORM COMMITTEE 3/2/2012
ABUJA
GENERAL POLICE DISPLINE
It is a general fact that the police personnel are lacking discipline in and outside their operative domains. The ex-service police officers and the public abhor seeing police bad behaviour in the public. Police discipline started to erode through nonchalant attitude of the authority. There are now weak disciplinary behaviour in the barracks where policemen are being quartered in the abandoned vehicles within the police barracks in the past, may be, it is still existing? The policemen put their wives in the family way and they had babies within that environment that caused and manifested into ugly human behaviour by their begotten children.
The general contention is that the policemen have no fundamental human right to complain against maladministration of the authority. Every sane human being would know that children born in such squalid environment would definitely inhabit criminal inclination or his juvenile delinquency will be above board. The parents will start to struggle hard to bring such children up to a better and civilized human being at all cost.
Such environmental culture inhabited by the children will continue to hunt them until they acquire enough civilized exposure among the educated elites. This neglect by the authority towards the Force had continued until it started to rebound on the civil populace. The victim of such social virus would ultimately change from the ugly behavioural culture after many years of interaction with civilized society. This would be so because culture is dynamic, and the Force have no option than to remain and believe in such dynamism before they can take their proper and appreciable position among the civilized society.
Discipline includes respect for human dignity. Not all fingers are equal as God has made it that every human being cannot be equal in status. This is a feasible phenomenon of a physical line of demarcation of status in every society. This difference in physical nature includes social interaction of men in a given environment.
This is why the military and the police establish separate accommodation facilities to house the rank and files while the superior officers have their separate quarters. This is primarily done to maintain discipline according to human status. Such disciplinary measure prevents insubordination and disrespectfulness between the senior and junior officers
It has seen observed for a long time that all sorts of ranks are mixed up in the police barracks. The rank and file are quartered with senior officers. These mix-ups of men were never so in the colonial era, makes one to doff hat for the military forces that have kept such disciplinary tradition all along, even after the colonial era. Discipline started to erode gradually thorough this physical interaction of junior men with their superior in rank. It also generates envy, and ill-founded imitation by the junior against their superiors. The junior ranks perceive what their superior officers do and they would immediately like to emulate them, though they don’t have the same emolument. The SPO will not hesitate to give a junior rank a ride in his automobile to the office, because they are neighbours. From here the junior ranks conceive the culture of going to the office with their own cars, though they are not yet entitled for it by their status. The junior ranks will struggle by corruptive ways to purchase Tokunbo car to drive to the office like their bosses. Every one of them wants to live like the master whereas it is a natural law of God that had created the caste system in the world. In India a Sudra (low class of people) does not mix up with high classes. Such are in every society of the world. It is this separation of status that defines natural discipline among human being. OSU in Ibo land does not mix with high class. The same with labourers do not measure shoulder with his boss. In the old police administration, constables were entitled to purchase bicycle through loans, and Inspectors a motor cycle, while SPOs rode in motor car. Today the reverse is the case, where a corrupt constable rides on a motor car while a disciplined SPO has no bicycle to ride.
The force has been trying to control the excesses of the men to no avail. Where does a sergeant have money to purchase a motor car even though his counterparts in Britain receive enough emolument for such luxury shows that our government has immensely contributed to the corruption of the men in the force.
As I have mentioned, in the colonial days and in the first Republic, there was a system of loaning money by the SPOs to purchase vehicle to perform their lawful duties. The successive government have made this system a moribund, whereas, it should be the responsibility of a good government to take care of their officers, so that corrupt culture would be totally eliminated, and discipline is maintained to the highest order.
DISCIPLINARY SQUAD.
The force should strategize their disciplinary squad whose duties should include going round to supervise the men on various public duties. ~Some of the disciplinary officers should be in mufti. Such officer should be selected among the most disciplined officers with exemplary character.
The disciplinary officer should not below the rank of an Assistant Supt of Police who shall be provided with vehicle to perform his duties.
There should be enough vehicles for each police station and posts to attend to urgent calls from the public
The disciplinary squad should also monitor the crime branches to stop the frequent allegations against the police demanding money for bails from the public. Any officer caught demanding money for bail or extorting money at the cheek-point should be dismissed.
The disciplinary unit should entertain complaint against the police from the member of the public.
The Inspector General of Police should appeal to the retired police officers to bury the nonchalant attitude of seeing indiscipline policemen in the public without correcting them. ~They should be able to contribute to the well-being of the Force.
The following should be re-introduced, viz_:- Plain cloth allowance. Torch allowance. Bicycle or motor cycle allowance and Car allowance. This will make the men to be more active in their jobs.
The police authority should be more serious on Police Community Development, that works wonderfully all over the world.
AND BEHOLD THE POLICE SHOULD BE MORE REMUNERATED!
RECOMMENDATIONS: – The followings are, therefore, recommended for consideration to the Police Reform Committee.
(1) Enough barracks or house accommodations should be provided for policemen.
(2) ~The old police culture should be re-visited i.e There should be parade before each tour of duty where the men should be properly inspected for tidiness, and the essential accoutrements should be provided ie. Police note-book, torch, baton or rifle as it may be.
(3) Each policeman should report off duty at the police station with his note-book signed by the Desk sergeant or Station officer.
(4) Ammunition issued should be signed for before leaving the station and should be checked while reporting off duty. This is just to check reckless use of arms.
(5) There should be weekly or monthly barrack inspection to maintain usual cleanliness of the police barracks.
(6) Barrack fatigue should be introduced.
(7) There should be yearly or bi-annual kit inspection of the rank and file to ascertain proper kitting of the men.
(8) The ethic of attending police mess on Friday is totally forgotten. Meeting together of officers on every week-end to interact socially with each other should be re-introduced.
(9) Sports activities in the police force are dead; it should be resuscitated.
FRANCIS OLA FALEMARA (ACP) Ret.