Guest
Tell an average Nigerian that officers of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) are coming and you are likely to get one of the following reactions- a cold shiver running down their spines despite their innocence, an expression of rage at the loss of a friend, loved one or relation through accidental discharge of police bullets, or an unpleasant comment about corruption and the impotence of our police personnel in the face of the unrelenting onslaught by officers and men of the Nigeria Armed Robbers Force. Very few Nigerians justifiably so make complementary remarks about the police.
Police men and women themselves are not helping in any way to lauder their discredited image. Most Nigerians have had or know someone who has had an unpleasant or fatal encounter with our police. Some are even arrested “for wandering” in a supposedly free country, while bus conductors and drivers are regularly maimed/killed for refusing to give N20 officer-on-duty allowance. It is such conduct on the part of some of our police personnel that has led to a majority of Nigerians querying the sanity of some of our men and women in police uniform. Such appalling conduct is also responsible for the call by some Nigerians for the introduction of psychiatric tests for police recruits as a way of sifting the sick from the sound-minded.
Given the tremendous negative impact of public perception of our police force and the battering the image of the NPF has suffered in the process, most Nigerians will agree with the recent call by the Minister of Police Affairs, Ibrahim Lame for compulsory psychiatric testing for all aspiring police recruits. The question however is whether administering psychiatric tests on potential recruits will restore the battered image of the police, considering the thousands more who are already in post who both require psychiatric examination and hospitalisation under the mental health act. Very few people will disagree with the fact that it takes a sick person to collude with criminals but shoot innocent citizens dead at the slightest excuse.
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The fact of the matter is that the NPF is sick from head to toe and eradicating the fallouts of a failed police force on our society demands much more than psychiatric examination of recruits. If such psychiatric tests could solve the myriad of crimes our country faces- from corruption in high and low places to prostitution in our institutions of higher learning, armed and pen robberies, militancy and brigandage by politicians and social miscreants, etc- then it is not just police recruits require psychiatric examination.
Politicians who are sick enough to loot state coffers in the face of dehumanising and pervasive abject poverty, soldiers who beat up innocent citizens they swore on oath to protect, health care professionals who discard their Socratic oath to embark on strikes and turn a blind eye to dying members of the public, Governors, Presidents and Ministers who drain our coffers but ply insecure, pothole-ridden expressways minded by convoys of fully armed security details, etc., require psychiatric testing as well.
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In fact, every Nigerian should undertake a compulsory psychiatric test since we must all be sick to condone the sort of political leaders, military, and police personnel we have. After all, people deserve the kind of leadership they get. Behavioural change should therefore not be limited to the rank and file and leadership of the police force but should be the norm at all levels of governance.
Those who advocate psychiatric examination of police recruits seem to forget that those recruits are drawn from our midst and not from Planet Mars. Recruits into the NPF exhibit character traits that they developed over several years as conditioned by our unique environment where wealth is worshipped irrespective of its source, and those in positions of authority who fail to loot public coffers are perceived as stupid by their constituents for refusing to take their share of the national cake. Moreover, many of the recruits see their enlistment in the NPF as an investment and are oftentimes prepared to bribe their way through the process since a police uniform has come to be an accepted tool for extorting money from unarmed members of the public on the flimsiest of excuses. Like the Minister of Police Affairs himself rightly observed, the police force is a mirror of our society and has become a part of the problem. Only a holistic solution therefore will solve the problem called the NPF.
First, it is about time the NPF is decentralised to reflect our federal character. Nigeria is probably one of a handful of federal nation-states with a unified police force. Every state in the Nigerian federation should be permitted under the constitution to establish its own police force as done in other civilised federations worldwide, with the NPF’s role restricted to acting as a national police to tackle cross-border crimes and crimes against the Nigerian state.
The NPF has so grossly failed to achieve the purpose for which it was established. Despite the reservations of opponents of regional police forces, its advantages outweigh the perceived disadvantages. After all, what benefits are Nigerians deriving from the NPF as it is currently constituted that makes it a preferred option of policing to state/regional police forces? Amongst the criticisms levelled against decentralisation of our police force are that police forces controlled by regions/states would tend to be exposed to nepotism and the possibility of being used by unpopular political leaders against the people. Our current police force is not immune to such malaise either and has been used to much more devastating effects against political opponents and politically-aggrieved communities as well.
