Like a ritual, successive Inspector-General of Police talk tough about rot in the Force: extortion, godfatherism, welfare problem, lack of office stationery, dilapidated, infrastructure and below-poverty-line barracks life.
In their many speeches when they assumed office, they had always told their Commanders that one of the objectives of their mission was to rid the force of corruption – a seeming Siamese twin to virtually every policeman.
But for Nigerians and even the IGs, who have always vowed to jail any policeman caught collecting money, their anti-corruption sermon appears more like lectures for deafs and dumbs without signs. They know so well that the police force, like a ship of debris, is still sinking into infernal decadence with little or no chance of being rescued. Not with rhetorics.
A case in reference, with an eight-point agenda, Tafa Balogun gave the impression that the time indeed had come. He demonstrated this with the dismissal of over 800 policemen nationwide. But when his demise came on Monday 17 January, 2005, it was clear that he was corruption personified.
If the reasons given by the federal government for his removal held any water, the degree of corruption in Nigeria police force remains as big as its former Boss (Tafa Balogun). One thing that is clear is that Tafa Balogun had institutionalised corruption in the Nigeria Police Force. It remains a citadel of extortion, extra-judicial killings and other vices, both at the top echelon and among its men and officers.
Across all roads in the country, every kilometre is a vintage position for a police toll plaza where all commuter and private vehicles are fleeced of various sums of money. Woe betides any driver who dares to refuse payment for whatever reason.
Extortion is not limited to the highways. In every police station across the country, its presence is as huge as the awesome greed of the force’s former boss (Tafa Balogun). There is a fixed price for bail even though it is conspicuously written and displayed that bail is free. No one comes out of any police cell without having to pay money.
Endemic as the phenomenon appears, extortion in both the police stations and highways pale into insignificance when compared to other vices of policemen on the highway. In May 2003, the Kogi State Police Command announced that its men killed three fleeing bandits. Samuel Adetuyi, the State Police Commissioner was full of praises for his men over the feat.
The alleged bandits were paraded alongside some locally made pistols said to have been recovered from them. But a few days later, one of them turned out to be Ibrahim Musa, Captain of the Nigerian Cycling Contingents and a gold medallists at the 2003 Abuja All African Games. He was on his way to Lagos to buy materials for his fast-approaching wedding. The other two persons with him were Mohammed Salisu, an HND student of Kaduna Polytechnic and Sadik Abubakar Mahmoud, both friends of Salisu.
Two years earlier, a bus carrying seven traders, heading to Katsina to buy rams for Sallah, was intercepted by three mobile policemen along Okene/Abuja road. The policemen, who noticed huge sums of money with the traders, tricked them by raising a false alarm that the route was infested with bandits. They also volunteered to take the traders through safer route. It turned out to be an isolated primary where the protector-turned invaders dispossessed them of their money. Before melting into the dark night, the mobile men riddled the traders’ bodies with bullets and set their bus on fire. But two of the traders escape with wounds to report the sordid act. The three policemen were later tried and sentenced to death by hanging.
Rot in the Nigeria Police force is compounded by the problem of welfare. Policemen are known to remain stagnated in one rank for upwards of 18 years. But on 1 February, 2002, aggrieved policemen, under the aegis of Junior Police Officers Association, embarked on an industrial action. The strike, first of its kind in the country, ended the career of Musiliu Smith, then Inspector-General of Police.
Tafa Balogun, his successor, directed the immediate promotion of the affected officers. About 3,000 were elevated. However, the euphoria lasted for as long as it took them to realise that it was promotion without accruing benefits. “I don’t understand why salaries befitting our ranks are not being paid to us. We are continuously told to hold on. That something would be done. But for how long?”, one of the affected officers queried then.
Besides individual neglect, a serving police officer told ZN in Asaba, police formations across the country lack basic infrastructures. Accommodation is a luxury for majority of policemen. Existing barracks are grossly insufficient, dilapidated, overcrowded and dirty. Broken sewages, from which stomach-wrenching stench are emitted, are a common sight in virtually all of them. Water is always in short supply. More often than not, policemen, or their wives and children carry basins, buckets or jerry cans in search of water from surrounding neighbourhood.
In addition, as a lawyer lamented at the Ikeja High Court most police formations lack office equipment. For instance, there is hardly any outside state or national headquarters, where computers are available. Stationery materials for daily office procedures are, almost always, in short supply or unavailable. Individuals who want their cases attended to with dispatch are made to pay for exercise books and other stationery.
Uniforms, including boots, are supposed to be provided for policemen by the government. That has since become a thing of the past. Or so it appears. Those who can afford to buy them do so at their own expense. The cost is taken care of by whoever becomes their prey later. Every uniform on the body of a policeman is bought by the policeman himself including the recruit in the Police College. Where is the money government released for uniform gone to?, some critics asked.
