It is now imperative for the Jonathan administration to kick-start a holistic approach to reforming the police. There are fundamental errors in the way our police is structured, staffed and the strategies they are using in combating crime or social ills in Nigeria. In brief, I will just deal with the anomalies in the structure; the Divisional Police Officers are one of most important point in the chain of command but most of them lack the necessary capacity and capability to carry out their task. They are transferred to their different units without an understanding of the locality, those with godfathers jostle for plum postings to the ports or cities where “returns” are high, couple with this they are saddle with a work force that have low morale and lack the basic training for being a policeman.
Setting the structure right will require the following
1. Localising recruitment into the lower cadre of the police e.g. there is no need recruiting a policeman in Kaura Namoda and posting him/ her to Agenebode or Ondo Town. This will allow the local community to name and shame individual police and their family that are taking grafts
2. Setting goals for each DPO depending on the peculiarity of its locality and allowing discipline them for the shortcoming of their wards where their internal control have been seen to have failed e.g. any DPO that have more an illegal road block, or bribe taking activity reported in his precinct automatically get demoted and if found guilty twice, loses his job without entitlement.
3. There should be pay rise for the lower rank of the police and they should be sent out of the barracks to live among the community they are policing, the barracks should be turn over to the anti-riot squads that should be mobile and robust in term of the technology at their disposal
There is more to this strategic shift in policing Nigeria and I will include them in my next posting please fill free to add your comments and feedback
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