9 March 2010By Abdulrahman Muhammad Dan-Asabe
Finally, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FG) has
admitted the failure of one of its own institutions,
the Police Force. This shameful and overdue admission
by FG was conveyed to the Inspector-General of Police,
Mr. Ogbonna Onovo, by the Minister of Police Affairs,
Dr. Ibrahim Lame, according to The Punch, 5 March
2010.
According to Lame, the FG is displeased with the
Police Force because of: too much extra-judicial
killings, current rate of crime across the nation,
human rights violation, robberies, high profile
assassinations and deliberate failure to comply with
government directives, amongst others. All these, the
Minister added, are despite increment in salary and
increase in the capital budget of the Police Force.
By coming public with this damning assessment of the
Police Force, one would have thought that the FG
would, at least, demand from the Police Force an
immediate and comprehensive time-based plan for
addressing the issues raised (and for possible FG
support) without further delay. An employee must be
listened to, given needed tools and fully supported
throughout the course of discharging his/her duty
before (s)he may be condemned as incompetent.
Anyone with the above view is sure to be thoroughly
disappointed by the government’s vague and empty
threat to the Force. Hear what the Minister had to
tell the Force: “The police high command should rise
up to the challenge, failing which government would be
left with no option than to find an appropriate
solution it deems fit”. (Emphasis mine).
The above has once again demonstrated the
un-seriousness and incompetence of our so-called
leaders. Why wait until tomorrow to do what can be
done today? Perhaps the FG has given the Police Force
until when there are no more innocent people left to
be killed before finding its so-called “appropriate
solution”? And how does the head(s) of a government
institution that has failed in its primary assignment
(of providing security), failed again to comply with
government directives be allowed to remain in office?
The answer to this question is simple and obvious: it
is not just the Police Force that has failed;
leadership in all aspects of the nation has failed.
Lame’s claim that increment in salary and increase in
the capital budget of the Police Force should have
changed the force for the better is rather comical, in
Nigerian context. When has increase in salary or in
capital budget resulted in better performance of any
kind in any FG establishment in Nigeria? Has huge oil
revenue to the nation and to the PDP government
resulted in better power supply, or water supply, or
better health care services to the people? What has
changed for better? What has the eye-popping and
mind-boggling salaries that politicians and political
office holders award themselves (forget corruption and
outright thievery that they engage in) achieved in the
past ten years of pseudo democracy in Nigeria?
The FG public accusation of the Police Force is akin
to “the pot calling the kettle black”. These are a
bunch of people who could not fulfill their own
campaign promise of declaring a state-of-emergency on
power supply nor fulfill their later days promise of
delivering a mere 6000MW of power supply to the
nation. There is no power, no water, no roads and no
security of any kind for the ordinary person. Worst of
it all, the future of the nation is being
systematically and deliberately compromised through
these so-called leaders’ cavalier attitude towards
public education, training and employment of the
youths.
In any case, the government should know that ordinary
Nigerians are not deceived into thinking that this
belated vague threat to the Police Force is done out
of genuine concern for their plight in the hands of
the Police. It is the superpower of the Internet and
the ubiquitous camera-phones (mobile-phones with
cameras) that has made it more difficult, if not
impossible, for these gory crimes by the police to be
swept under the carpet as usual. Why did the
government have to wait until pressured by the western
leaders to act, following the recent gory pictures of
police extra-judicial killings of civilian members of
Boko Haram shown on global media such as AL-JAZEERA
and some blog sites?
That the government is only now coming to the
realization that the Police Force is rotten is a clear
manifestation of the quality of leadership the nation
has been bedeviled with. Nevertheless, we will keep a
close watch to see what concrete changes follow.
By
Abdulrahman Muhammad Dan-Asabe, Ph.D. Ningbo, P. R.
China
muhdan@yahoo.com
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EsinIslam.Com
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