USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Prof. Olukotun's Column

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

On Thu, 29 Nov 2018 at 15:28, Ayo Olukotun

<ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com> wrote:

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

On Thu, 29 Nov 2018 at 13:34, Tobi Adewunmi

<tadewunmi@isgpp.com.ng> wrote:

WILL PAY RISE END PREDATORY POLICING?

by Ayo Olukotun   

"From Taraba to Sokoto, to the South-south, people don't feel secure

until they see the military. I am pleased to make the increase in

salary and allowances in the hope that it will increase the

performance index of the police"

-    President Muhammadu Buhari, The Punch, Tuesday, 27 November, 2018

Conversation has collated around the recent increase in the salaries

and allowances of the Police by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Information remains patchy on the actual size of the mark up, with at

least one source informing that a memo attached to the letter granting

the pay boost contains details of the rent subsidy, while remaining

silent on the actual salaries. Nonetheless, the trickle of information

available reveals that the Inspector-General will take home N3.3.

million as rent subsidy, police commissioners N1.5 million and a

corporal, N88,000. It is still unclear whether the rent subsidies took

account of differential rent charges in cities, suburbia and the rural

hinterlands; what is known, however, is that pay rises for the police

are few and far between, causing many to draw a linkage between

predatory policing and startling welfare deficits.

As Buhari himself admitted, the police are increasingly overwhelmed in

their efforts to maintain internal security, to the point where they

are fast losing credibility. Mentioned in this connection are ongoing

challenges to national security such as kidnapping, daring robberies

and sundry violent crimes across the country. Interestingly too, the

upgrade in police pay has come barely a fortnight after the disastrous

attacks by Boko Haram insurgents on the Metele stronghold resulting in

scores of deaths of Nigerian soldiers. That apart, hotspots like

Zamfara, Southern Kaduna, Benue, Plateau, Kogi, Delta continue to

seize national attention, creating apprehensions about the capacity of

our law enforcement institutions. In other words, even though

questions have been raised about the timing of the enhanced police pay

suspiciously close to General Elections, it is nonetheless a fact that

the upgrade is badly needed to shore up the flagging morale and

ethical outlook of the Nigeria Police.

As known, for several years, there have been complaints, even from

retired senior police officers about the capacity, efficiency and

hand-to-mouth character of the force. It was not so many years ago, to

give an example, when a former Inspector-General of police, Mohammed

Abubakar lamented that, 'The Nigeria Police force has fallen to its

lowest level. Police duties have become commercialized and provided at

the whims and caprices of the highest bidder'. Such moans were

corroborated in a 2017 survey conducted by the United Nations Office

on Drugs and Crime, in collaboration with the Nigeria Bureau of

Statistics ranking The Police as the most corrupt institution. In the

same vein, three global think thanks - World Internal Security and

Police Index, Institute for Economics and Peace, and the International

Police Science Association, in a 2017 report rated our police as one

of the least capable on the globe. Expectedly, the force rebutted the

classification, citing the superior performance and valiant output of

our police when they go on international assignments. However that may

be, it is pertinent to recall that there are some other reports which

speak to the lack of capacity as well as, shortfalls in process,

legitimacy, and outcomes.

We do not denigrate the police, considering that several of them are

laboring in heroic circumstances, often lacking as they do, in,

weaponry, supporting infrastructure, as well as skills to efficiently

tackle hardened and highly organized crime rings. To take an aspect of

the problem, at a time when other police forces are brainstorming

about terrorism, social media, and cybercrime, increasingly

constituting new crime frontiers, our police appear to be trapped in

elementary stages of crime bursting. That is not all. Apart from an

inadequate police to citizen ratio, there are serious welfare issues,

some of which came to light sensationally a few years ago when

Channels television focused its searchlight on the deplorable

condition of the elite police training institute at Ikeja. Of interest

is the fact that very little has changed between then and now in the

area of police welfare. Indeed, it is pertinent to wonder why a

political elite with a national project would leave an important law

and order institution in the disheveled state in which it has existed

under successive governments. Two further points are worth making in

this connection, the first is that police squalor, which has given

rise to police predation, that by its own admission, uses bribes to

supplement an inadequate budget, is a metaphor for most of our

national institutions which are far from healthy, a point to which I

shall return shortly. The second is that the current status of the

police has not persisted for want of proclamations and commissions of

inquiry. Since the inception of the 4th republic, every administration

beginning with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has set up a Presidential

Commission on Police Reform presumably with a view to understanding

and doing something about its problems and challenges; hence, we had a

presidential committee on police reform in 2005 under Obasanjo headed

by Dan Madami, another in 2008 under President Musa Yar'Adua headed by

M.D. Yusuf, and yet another one in 2012, by President Goodluck

Jonathan, under the leadership of Parry Osayande. In a pattern

characteristic of state futility, these inquiries did not translate to

any significant changes in the fortunes, capability and topicality of

the force.

The underlying problem amplifies the issue of the status of our

national institutions, security institutions especially, namely, the

absence of a state building project which will grapple with endemic

dysfunctions in order to produce a capable and developmental state. A

capable state does not come into existence by mouthing slogans but by

the conscious programme of a reformist elite taking the necessary

steps to build one. You cannot have a reform without reformers and a

reform template; and there is a world of difference between a wish

list and a programme of action driven by social purpose. When, about a

decade ago, Georgia decided to reform its police, it came as package

of interventions which tackled predatory policing through a crackdown

on corruption in a bid to end police linkage with organized crime, a

purge of officers linked with stupor and corruption, as well as, a

reform of cognate institutions undergirded by a public demand for

wider reforms. It begs the imagination to assume that merely

increasing the salary and allowance of the police will translate into

an efficient and effective force. We are making the same sort of idle

assumption in believing that an anti-corruption programme targeted

mainly at the opposition will result in a reformed public service. It

takes much more to bring about these outcomes.  In essence, raising

police pay is a necessary but far from sufficient step to bring about

a capable and reformed police or state. More important is the need for

a political elite, armed with the correct political vision and script

of transforming security institutions, as part of a wider state

building project. Unfortunately, we do not seem to have that kind of

reformist elite on the horizon, as even the mainstream opposition

party is reduced to picking holes in the agenda of the ruling party,

instead of advancing a truly renovative project.

This is the dilemma of the hour.

-    Prof. Ayo Olukotun is the Oba (Dr.) Sikiru Adetona Chair of

Governance, Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo

University, Ago-Iwoye

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.