Challenges before the new police boss
By Levi Obijiofor

THE Nigeria Police force is like a decaying bad tooth that has defied many dental operations. Despite knocks and drilling by several dental surgeons to re-align the bad tooth, the problems continue to re-emerge on a seasonal basis. The pain of crime detection and prevention in Nigeria is as real as the pain that accompanies a really bad tooth. Unfortunately all leaders in the country - past and present, military and civilian - have left the problems unattended, to the point where it would now cost the nation more to address the problems of the police than it would to stitch up the bad tooth.

Nearly three years ago, President Olusegun Obasanjo contested publicly that his government had done more to lift the conditions of service of the police than all other leaders before him. Despite that assertion, the conditions of service of the police, in terms of welfare benefits, annual salaries, morale and crime fighting tools remain well below the level required for the police to have an impact on society. Members of the police force are also their own worst enemies. There are a significant number of criminals dressed in police uniforms, who are unfortunately serving as police officers, robbing and maiming people and property they are required to protect. That is the irony of policing in Nigeria. Some of the officers, including men and women in the police, who are expected to protect civil society, are indeed aiding in the mushrooming of crime and criminal groups across the country.

For failing to respond to public calls for protection when lives are in danger, for demanding incentives from civil society before responding to emergency calls for protection, for taking extraordinary interest in extorting cheap naira notes from impoverished motorists rather than checking vehicle particulars, the Nigeria police has damaged its reputation. It's all about poor police image, a problem acknowledged by new Inspector-General of Police Sunday Ehindero when he said: "Our image is at its lowest ebb and it is our responsibility to improve the image. We must change the way we police people. We must stop extortion of monies on the roads." Good talk but how many police officers are willing to listen?
The public has lost faith in the police. But there is something optimistic in the appointment of a new Inspector-General of Police. When things get so bad in an institution, everyone expects a new boss to become a tireless miracle worker, to change the battered public image of a force that needs to save itself before it could save the rest of our society. It is not going to be an easy task for Ehindero. First, his appointment is being overshadowed by his expected date of retirement. This implies that Ehindero's attention and concentration would be divided between watching the clock of his retirement tick perilously toward the end of the first quarter of 2006 (his expected retirement date) and concentrating on the challenges that confront him, his police force and the nation.

Left with such a short time to perform and overcome numerous problems, Ehindero is like a man holding a candle for others to enter into a dark cave. He is excited about his elevation but he is also a worried man. Why would fate lift him on the professional ladder when he has fewer than two years to retire from the police force? Why didn't his appointment come at a time when he was younger and had more time and energy to fulfill his dream in the force? Therein lies the dilemma before Ehindero. While his friends and enemies inundate him with congratulatory messages and wishes of success, Ehindero must work out within his inner self how he must proceed to confront and overcome the challenges placed on his path.

The next few months will be a testing time for Ehindero. In the police service, Nigeria is presented like a jungle. There are many hazards and many criminals; there are fewer policemen and women, as well as many laws and fewer people willing and able to respect the laws. It is a jungle in which people deliberately flout the laws because of their network of friends in higher positions of authority. How many times have the police arrested a high profile citizen for drink driving or over speeding or driving dangerously? Do we have traffic laws or any laws that are effectively enforced for a sustained period of time? How many high profile murders have the police solved, even in the most recent times, starting from the assassination of former Justice Minister Bola Ige? Of course I am reminded that a police force is as effective as the community that it serves. A community that provides timely and accurate information to the police makes the task of crime prevention a little easier for the police.

The Nigeria police are yet to cultivate that kind of community spirit that would lead to provision of timely information from citizen groups about criminal activities. The Nigerian public is yet to develop trust and confidence in the police. A genial relationship between the police and civil society in Nigeria is simply non-existent. It would take a long time, perhaps decades, to establish a good working relationship between the police and civil society. It would also take radical changes in the police, their attitudes to their job, as well as changes to how they respond to public calls for protection from criminal groups. Without the cooperation of the public, the police in any part of the world would have a tough task apprehending criminals. The first challenge really for Ehindero is to build public confidence and trust on the police to a point where people freely perceive the police as their friends or partners in progress. At the moment, many people perceive the police as an obstacle to crime prevention. Many people with information about criminals or criminal activities would rather remain silent than provide the police with useful information. There are accounts of people who provided information to the police who were later arrested, treated and tortured as suspects. The point is that, without public support, the police would be incapacitated in their determination to fight crime.

While Ehindero may be working on lifting the morale of his officers, as well as men and women in the force, and providing them with the state of the art equipment to fight criminal gangs, he would do well to establish a good relationship with civil society and community groups who constitute the primary constituency of the police. The new police boss must perform in order to etch his name in the history book of outstanding police bosses. To achieve that feat, Ehindero would require more than a combination of luck and skills. He needs the super strength of Tarzan, the agility of a seasoned crime fighter and a superior sense of smell to be able to sniff out criminal activities and strike first before the criminals execute their plans. In police vocabulary, this is known as crime prevention. As any police officer knows, it is better to prevent crime than it is to fight one. The problem is that Ehindero is a man in a hurry. Time is against him. He wants to complete in a short time what his predecessors did not accomplish in a lifetime. But Ehindero must be seen to be uncompromising, forthright, focused and determined. In the world of crime detection and prevention, tough language is the only language that criminals dread. And Ehindero has been talking tough since his appointment.

As the police boss talks tough about his determination to fight crime in society and corruption within the police, there are a few soul-searching questions he must ponder. One: how many officers, men and women are in the police force genuinely driven by a desire to serve the nation and not to be served by the nation? Two: how many officers, men and women are in the police because they want to use the uniform to achieve what they could not accomplish as ordinary citizens?