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The elephant is a unique animal that exudes all the paraphernalia of flamboyance, massiveness and greatness, yet this animal sometimes habours pettiness and jealousy.
The Nigeria Police (I deliberately removed the word ‘Force’; will explain in the course of the write-up), since its establishment, has used the elephant image as its symbol, thereby depicting its strength and awesomeness in capacity. Truly, the elephant is one of the strongest and most intimidating animals in the jungle, just as the Nigeria Police is the only security institution with the largest human population and it its ability in executing its assignments relies largely on providing security for the people of Nigeria. There are elephants and there is also an elephant that oversees the activities of the other elephants. Zoologists describe the bigger elephant as the Great Elephant, which can be regarded as the Police Service Commission (PSC), whose constitutional mandate is to regulate and supervise the activities of the lesser elephant, the Nigeria Police.
Interestingly, despite its massiveness, the elephant is usually controlled with just a simple stick. This writer witnessed one of such scenario in New Delhi, India, where a young man controlled more than 10 huge elephants effortlessly. Such is what ought to be happening to the Nigeria Police that wants to exhibit its inate rough mannerism by attaching “Force” to its name. No wonder, many of its men have consistently been exhibiting brashness, harshness, aggression and unnecessary wickedness to members of the public. The end result is the confrontation we are witnessing in the country today. It is either the police are using force against the people or the people are avenging by attacking police facilities.
Over the years, the PSC, created by the Constitution for specific purpose of helping to carry out oversight functions with the constitutional responsibility to appoint, promote and exercise disciplinary control on officers and men, due to overloaded responsibility, mistakenly shed one of its major roles to control the recruitment into the police institution by inviting the police to play a participatory role. That was where the PSC shot itself in the foot. When it dawned on the PSC leadership, after to recruitment scandals, every effort to retrieve the partispatory role of the police during recruitment was vehemently resisted with force.
The spirit of “Force,” which had over the years been attached to its name “Nigeria Police,” was awaken for action. Even court decisions on the issue were not obeyed nor complied with. Show of force became the name of the new development. Even the intervention of the Presidency could not resolve the quarrel of the two elephants. It is yet to subordinate the police as a civil authority. Over the years, the commission has been known to be at the forefront of every police recruitment exercise by involving the police at every stage.
On November 23, 1957, the British colonial secretary constituted a commission and appointed an armed old chum, Harry Willink, and other erudite administrators in what was known as the Willink Commission that would critically look into the many ethnic problems and security issues in Nigeria. Among its recommendations were the setting up of a unified police, a central prison system, and a civilian supervisory body for the police, adding that the police should be under federal control. There is no police institution in the world that is devoid of supervision. If not, they will be a law to themselves. There is wisdom in ensuring that a body is set up constitutionally to appoint, promote and discipline the officers and men like the PSC has done with the Deputy Inspector-General of Police in charge of training for an unofficial leakage of the yet to be ratified soft copy of the compiled list of candidates for police recruitment.
Are these not dust-raising enough, with the internal insecurity still raging like wildfire? Fire that is already attracting public attention. When it is not the police in operational combat with the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, then it is with the Army or members of the public.
The police should be concerned over their image and professionalism. Must it be heard that the same police that are supposed to be the instrument to enforce the law of the land have turned to be the law-breakers?
But the story becomes more critical when constitutional intricacy is involved. Deep issues of what is referred to as “constitutional mandate.” Indeed, no institution is expected to carelessly wish away its constitutional mandate, no matter the premise.
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Death of an officer (2)
The sudden death of Deputy Inspector-General of Police in charge of the Federal Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), Mr. Joseph Egbunike, medical experts who read the first part of this series, believe that most cases relating to cardiac arrest could have been prevented had all precautionary measures been promptly and adequately taken.
Strenuous mental and physical exercise that is not only exerted on any aged body and can also drain their energy by afflicting exhaustive tendencies that are often associated with drills and other security assignments. It is these unchecked health issues that usually aggravate internal problems. According to a medical practitioner at the National Hospital, Abuja, Dr. Samuel Shonibare, “Force men are usually exposed to lot of health hazard, including
HIV and some of those affected don’t usually take good care of themselves. If somebody stands for a very long time ,the natural thing is that the persons blood pressure will drop and so the natural thing to happen next is for the person to collapse, but because the police force has not trained its personnel very well to know that if someone collapses he or she should be left at the point of incident or on the ground and I immediately invite an ambulance or a medical doctor to attend to that person and carry him or her straight to the hospital.
In the emergency procedure of somebody who collapses, the way they handle the emergency leads to some of them dying and another thing is that even in the best of centres, how many of them have emergency response team that, if someone collapses and has a heart attack, they can resuscitate the person immediately there? So, it’s a compounded issue.
This thing you’re writing is an indictment of our society generally like the way we handle our health, the way we don’t take life very meaningful because, if it was in America that they are noticing a rise in a sudden death of their policemen due to collapsing while doing a parade or standing, they would have done a lot of research and they would have established a department that to make sure they take care of such things.
So, many things are wrong, but the first thing is for the police to build a mandatory order to every policeman that, every six months, they must do a comprehensive check and it should not be submitted because if they submit they will forge or do scam ones and the police should now say there are policies stating that anybody who comes out with any ailment, the police would be responsible for his care; it’s not as if the person is going to be taxed because of that. Ideally, even in labour laws, if I employ somebody and he catches any disease while he is under my employment, he has the right to be taken care of under the employment. So, if they let them know that the police will take care of them and then they demonstrate it, not that they will say it this way and act the other way.”
(Concluded)
