The Minister of state for Police Affairs, Imaan Suleiman- Ibrahim, recently made public the directive by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the effect that policemen attached to the fabled Very Important Personalities (VIPs) should be withdrawn and redeployed.
She also said that part of the directive involved the development of a community policing strategy. We are elated at the prospect of the emergence of community police as part of measures to combat crime and criminality in parts of the country.
Community Policing has remained a controversial subject of discourse in the public space as one of the measures that must be put in place to check the rising spate of insecurity particularly at the rural level most of which is assumed to be ungoverned making it easy for bandits and kidnappers to operate and cause mayhem.
But before the eventual emergence of that aspect of police operations, it is pertinent to revisit the issue of VIP protection, a phenomenon that has been hugely abused as everyone with some wads of money to show off and can afford to pay, impishly claims to be entitled to police protection.
A former chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC), Mr Mike Okiro, a retired Inspector General of Police, had raised the alarm on the impropriety of a small group of those he described as Very Important Personalities (VIPs) and others not so important but unauthorised persons cornering for themselves the services of 150,000 policemen.
He also said that the nation cannot afford to have more than half of the Police personnel in private hands. This was just as he lamented that the Police has not been able to sustain the enforcement of the order on the withdrawal of policemen attached to unqualified persons in the country because of lack of fund. What this means is that the recent directive of President Tinubu is not new. There have been similar directives in the past that were largely ignored because the beneficiaries of the facility are those in the country with a sense of entitlement.
However, it is not a secret that the problem of Nigeria police Force is as complex as that of the country itself. Even more is its peculiar situation that relates to, not just underfunding but also the inadequacy of manpower to enable the force to actualise its mandate of policing the country effectively. The issue of funding is regarded as very strategic. But is funding really the problem of the Police or corruption?
We recall the Tafa Balogun incident with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in which the former Inspector General of Police was alleged to have cornered N16 billion of Police money to himself.
Nigeria Police, as one of the law enforcement agencies in the country, should place its priority in the prevention and detection of crime, not to have more than half of its personnel protecting a privileged few.
As a law enforcement agency, the Nigerian Police Force is saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that lives and properties of Nigerians are protected within their individual domain. They do this by deploying men and other resources to strategic places, locations and institutions. It is also the duty of the Police to provide security to top government functionaries and other important personalities still in service. This is understandable within the context of ensuring that such state protected persons receive assurances of their personal safety in the course of their duties.
Discerning Nigerians also worry that what ought to be a privilege is being abused as it has come to be seen as a status symbol available only to the rich and famous. A situation in which a whopping 150,000 men and women of the Police Force are tied down in people’s homes and offices is, indeed, not acceptable.
The practice whereby any affluent person of unknown pedigree just because he can afford to pay, are granted lavish police protection is obscene, to say the least. Even more disappointing is the reality that people who served in government for over 10 to 15 years ago still enjoy police protection. This, in our view, is an abuse given the fact that the Police is already understaffed.
It is our opinion that policemen should be withdrawn from those who are not government officials. And for that category of persons, the number of policemen attached to them should be minimal. A situation where more than five policemen are attached to a serving government official is not acceptable.
The nation cannot be battling with shortage of manpower in the force while majority of these officers are floating around as body guards. To meet the national security challenges, we make a case, as a matter of urgency, for the government to approve the recruitment of more policemen for enhanced service delivery and ensure that they are serving the nation not individuals.
Similarly, this newspaper believes that it is in the nation’s best interest for the Police to be adequately funded and equipped with up – to – date facilities that will make the operatives to function effectively and efficiently and in accordance with international best practices.
