What the Police Leadership Should Know

It is surreal that Nigerians should rejoice on hearing that three police officers assumed to be on official duty were mistaken for armed robbers and gunned down by Nigerian soldiers. But this is exactly what is happening – many are happy that the policemen were killed by the superior firepower of the military.

What is most guaranteed is the reason people rejoice. People are happy because they have been victims of extreme police brutality and depression of the civilian population. Among the things the police are accused of; are taking of bribe, demanding money for bail, unlawful arrest and unlawful detention, extra judicial killings, framing up innocent people, witness tampering, armed robbery and kidnapping. In other words, despite the slogan – “police is your friend”,  Nigerians actually see the police as their enemy.

This must pose serious problems on several levels. On the level of the society, it is extremely unfortunate to have a police force with so much distrust between it and ordinary members of the society. It is virtually impossible for normal policing work to be done with such level of lack of confidence. This was the problem everybody hoped that Mr. Abubakar, the current Inspector General of Police (IGP) was to address head-on upon his appointment in January of 2019. Unfortunately, despite the fact that one of his first decision in office as the IGP was to appoint Mr. Frank Mba, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, the new police public relations officer, not much else has changed.

On the level of Mr. Mba, this is beyond crisis. The image of the police could not be lower and the level of mistrust never higher. Even though Mr.Mba is light years ahead of his roguish predecessor, Mr. Jimoh Moshood, the accumulation of failures during Moshood’s period in office still weighs the police pubic relations office down. Mr. Mba has had his missteps, but the current public trading of accusations and counter accusations between the police and the army is the worst ever.

There is no doubt that the police leaders have to wake up to the challenge. The problem has not been that they were unaware of these problems. Rather, the problem is that they have  been in a systemic state of denial. Last July, DPA Founder, Emeka Ugwuonye made a number of posts on Facebook pointing to many problems with the police which were eroding public confidence in the police. Rather than welcome an honest criticism, the police landed a heavy-handed persecution of Ugwuonye to the point of fabricating a murder charge against Ugwuonye and covering up the man that was believed to have killed his wife.

As at this moment, Nigerian police continue to maintain illegal prisons that contain more inmates than the number of prisoners within the official prison system. And the inmates in the illegal prisons run by the police are detained under  conditions worse than those of slaves in the infamous transatlantic slave ships. Without a fundamental review of the situation, public confidence in the police will continue to erode.

Pictures of the slain policemen are shown below.