By Gabriel Omonhinmin
The Chairman Bayelsa State Traditional Rulers Council, His Royal Majesty King Bubaraye Dakolo (FNAA), has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR attitude, manner and approach to state matters indicate seriousness and focus.
Gatekeepers News reports that Bubaraye Dakolo in a statement said this in a statement.
He said the President need to further consolidate the excellent job he has already started within this short period, all men and women of goodwill in Nigeria and beyond need to encourage him with genuine advice and suggestions to enable him to consolidate further and move the country to greatness.
He said that most experts in the country were not readily available or unwilling to advise past governments in the country, especially the immediate past civilian government, because of its unserious posture and poor body language, which did not encourage giving such advice or suggestions.
King Dakolo further explained, “Now that we have a leader who is showing some signs of seriousness in the handling of state matters, whatever should be done to make the President bring out his best should be done.
The King continued, “There is no doubt or pretence that all is not well with the Nigerian Police Force, the way things are now in the country. The hopelessness of the Nigerian Police Force, no matter the working experience and qualifications of the person who is appointed to lead the organisation, is glaring for all to see.
“For any major step or steps to be taken towards revamping the Police, there must first be a better understanding as to reason(s) why the Nigerian Police is throwing up its ugliest sides daily. The reason or reasons why the organisation has turned out to be what it is today. So, if we have this understanding, as a country, we will begin to know and appreciate better what to do to make the police better or where to go.
“Or how to improve the lots of the Nigerian Police Force and its members. I know that many of us have not yet been able to link the colonial experience of the Nigerian Police Force or the colonial least experience, the Nigerian Civil War, to the present attitude of the Police against its citizens. More appropriately, their attitude against themselves and other citizens.
Once this understanding is gotten, we will now design a way on how to pull the police out of this particular unpasse.
“I will prescribe that we get that understanding first, or more so, there has to be a way for Nigeria to get this understanding. Then, just like a dog, there is a way you train the pet dog as opposed to the training of a guard dog.
“So, when you are training members of the Nigerian Police Force, you must do this with an intent of civil duties. Their training schools must first reflect this. As a matter of fact, even the people you take into these training schools must be ready to reflect this attitude. For instance, if you take a semi-armed robber into these Police training schools, and the training is not intense enough, at the end of the day, you might or will end up producing a better-armed robber and sadly equip him and his likes with guns.
“For clarity’s sake, if the training in these Police colleges or institutions is intense enough, some of the people, or the bad eggs, so to speak, will be eventually eased out of the system before they get to graduate. Because the instructors in these colleges, in the course of time, will get to detect or see these bad qualities. The tendencies will show. Some of these intakes, who were bad, while in these police training facilities might change completely for good, as the training will transform them.
“This is exactly what is done in most military academies across the globe. So, if a hundred people are recruited into any good police college or institution, the training itself will make some of them not graduate as they will be forced to go out of the system. And if you are still in these institutions, you exhibit any act of sharp practices; you’ll be caught and shown the way out of the academy.
“In the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), for instance, as a cadet, you are going to be fed and be given all the things you are supposed to be given. But in the Nigerian Police Training Colleges or Schools, their big Ogas in the system eat up all their allowances and the things meant for their training; at the end of the day, the recruits or officer cadets go hungry. Some of them will have to steal to survive in the place virtually.
“For you to know the seriousness of what I am talking about, I will ask the Nigerian Police Authorities to open up their training facilities and allow Nigerians to tour some of these Police Colleges or institutions.
“Nigerians will be shocked at what they will meet on the ground in these training institutions. If this happened to be the situation, Nigerians would understand better that those institutions are not the right and appropriate places to train people who will come out to be civil to the Nigerian public.
“Again, if one takes a critical look at these training facilities, one will easily discover that those were not the right places to train people who will come out to be civil authorities, as these institutions, instead of reforming their students, end up producing thieves more or less. For example, a simple thief in the criminal den kind of, after undergoing training in these Police institutions, will end up being contaminated and made much more complex to manage.
“So, the training for every member of the Nigerian Police Force has to be right from the beginning. They must be made to understand citizen rules and rights, and whatever training they are given must be long enough to make it sink. As I said earlier, the intensity of the training must be there for it to have the necessary and required impacts.
King Dakolo further explained, “On the duration of training of police recruits and officers, for example, if their training usually lasts six months, the Police authorities should be able to put in place mechanism of detecting whether or not the majority of people they have been training comes out to be good men and officers who represent the Nigerian police force well as an institution. Or exhibit the desired character the police require.
” If this is not the case, then there is a need for this training to be elongated. The long and short story is for the police authorities to ask themselves what they want to teach these recruits and officers within the stipulated period in their colleges and institutions. Is it only to teach them how to shoot guns? Is it just to run about? Is it for their men and officers to understand the history of the Nigerian Police Force or the psychology of how to live with people?
“When these new courses are designed, the Police authorities, in collaboration with the experts, will begin to facilitate and impact these courses along the line the time frame the courses will take, for the new ideas injected into the Nigerian Police training curriculums to concretised and sink in the brains or attitude of the people they are training or want to train.
“So, let me not just say, six months, ten months or one year. The experts the Nigerian Police authorities will bring to design the curriculums will know the needs of the people they are meant to train for whatever period. If the police authorities do this, just like I pointed out in this interview, the money meant for these Police Colleges and other institutions must be judiciously used for the benefit of the recruit and officers of the Nigerian Police Force. Not for the big men in charge of these training institutions to steal all the monies allocated for these institutions.
“It is not for the recruit and officers to buy their uniforms themselves. It is not for these men and officers to be, to go and start buying their boots. You know the story of the Nigerian Police Force and their Colleges better than I, as a trained journalist. These things for a good training are not just there in the Police Colleges. So, when you take these people and put them through such inhuman conditions, at the end of the day, you’ll end up producing an anti-people human or, more appropriately, an anti-people member of the Nigerian Police Force.
King Dakolo explained, “Even with all these shortcomings, I have very strong doubts whether the Nigerian Police Force will, within its ranks, be able to produce an officer who will help bring about this much-desired reforms in the Police force.
“This is the bitter truth that most people would not want to hear. I am already a traditional ruler of my people, and this is a life-long assignment. I’m therefore not in search of any job nor looking forward to being appointed to any government position. Part of the reason why the Nigerian Police is not as effective as we all expect them to be is because part of the benefits, the money meant for Police officers at different levels, does not get home to the people concerned. For instance, the money meant for the feeding of trainees are never used fully. The money meant for the welfare of staff was never disbursed to them fully. This happened at different levels; therefore, everybody is waiting for their turn to do their damage to the Police system.
“So, among the Nigerian Police High Command, everybody is patiently waiting their turn. So, when a new set of people come into positions of authority in the Nigerian Police Force, they also want to behave like their predecessors. Saying it is time for us to eat.
So, if you want to change the system, you must fight this rot, or else, you’ll not succeed. It is the anti-corruption agency that could help sanitise the Nigerian Police Force. Unfortunately, the Police itself is supposed to be an anti-graft agency. But do you have the men and women with the liver and clean records, which some people in the high-ranking of the Police will not use to intimidate or blackmail them? Some members of the Police High Command, when threatened, could go and dig out these people’s records to blackmail them. Are there people like this appointed in these Anti-corruption agencies of government? I very much doubt it!
“Once you get a member of the Nigeria Police or an untrained person who is ready to allow the men and officers of the Nigerian Police Force to get their dues, for example, their allowances and other entitlements, who is prepared to do this transparently, possibly publish everything or records about Police welfare, we will begin to make headway in the area of transforming members of the Nigerian Police Force for good.
“Some members of the Police might begin to change their minds about taking bribes on the road. Once members of the Police start to see, at the end of every month, they now have the money to feed their families, pay their children’s school fees and meet other needs. There certainly will be a tremendous improvement in the behaviour of the majority of the members of the Nigerian Police Force.
“It will all depend on whether or not the Ogas at the top are willing to allow the resources to flow down to the last person down the ladder.
“Another major problem with the Police is that people who are willing to do the job who are also efficient never get to be promoted on merit. The lay about with very bad track records, who have godfathers and mothers, are the ones who get the promotions they do not deserve or qualify for. Today, if you ask most Police officers on the streets, they will tell you that they bribe or pay before they get promoted. So, promotions and all other things are not based on merit or competency, they are based on patronage. How does one, therefore, expect to get the very best from a system that rewards failure instead of excellence?
“In some countries, people are appointed outside the Police system to head the organisation. Qualified persons, who might have read other courses outside the Police training, maybe a military Psychologist is appointed to head the Police, and they do a damn good job out of it. They usually bring them from outside the Police system to sanitise the organisation.
“What I am proposing, therefore, is just like what the government did sometime back when they brought Chidoka to go and sanitise the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC).
Finally, my observation of what happened during the just concluded Gubernatorial election in Bayelsa State has further reinforced my belief that the Nigerian Police Force needs a head that will be appointed from outside the system.
King Dakolo added, “The British Metropolitan Police, which was founded in England in 1829 to maintain law and order in the then criminogenic British society, is the root of the problems associated with the Nigerian Police Force. In England, the Metropolitan Police, up till today, work assiduously and do everything within their powers to diligently protect citizens from harm.
“But when this same British Police came to the colonial territory called Nigeria, their mindset and agenda of Policing was entirely different. When they arrived in Nigeria, their principal mission was to protect what is today regarded as “the Lord Lugard pillaged.”
“This is why the British Metropolitan Police, which is known for its efficiency, expectedly, did not get a good scorecard while on duty tour in Nigeria.
“The British Police, sadly, became a brutal, repressive, anti-people police. They worked daily while in Nigeria to protect the colonial government and its officials but not the generality of the Nigerian people.
“Worse still, and to ensure that there are no errors in their agenda of five centuries Britain, some White Police Officers were made to stay behind to indoctrinate the Nigerians that were recruited into the Nigerian Police Force to their satisfaction. Hence, the brutality and dishonesty that is today associated with the majority members of the country’s police force.
King Dakolo further stressed, “Although the Nigerian Police Force started gradually after the country’s independence to have Black African face in its organisation, with time, the Nigerian Police Force turned out to be an organisation with Black faces but with European spirit.
“Any surprise, therefore, decades after, the Nigerian Police Force has further internalised this ugly mindset and spirit of their colonial masters.
“This has made the Nigerian Police to be one of the most brutal, self-annihilating, anti-people, repressive organisations in the world.
“This is why the Nigerian Police Force is not commanding the respect and friendliness of the people it was supposed to serve and protect.
King Dakolo explained, “For the Nigerian Police Force to serve Nigerians not and adequately consider the people it is meant to serve as enemies like their colonial predecessor, it needs to be indigenised in all forms and fashion.
“But unfortunately, with one military coup after another, including the well-known ones of January 1966, July 1966, 1975, 1976, 1983, August 1985, December 1985, 1990, 1993 and others in which members of the Nigerian Police Force were summarily dealt with by the then military power that be the Nigerian Police were gradually cowed and not allowed to evolve into an indigenised people’s Police.
He said, “During this period, when members of the Nigerian Armed Forces reigned supreme in the land, the military gradually took over some of the duties and functions of the Nigerian Police Force one after another, usurping their functions.
“With every protest by citizens, especially during the reign of the military juntas in the country, the army rolled out their combat boots, guns and armoured personnel carriers to quell the ordinary civil protest, how they know how best to handle such situations.
“The army did not only kick asses; they left sorrows, tears and blood of what they regarded as “bloody civilians”.
“This was, therefore, a powerful message everywhere on the streets of Nigerian villages and towns. It was as good as saying, “Do not ever call us for this anti-citizen operations. “but sadly, up till today, the authorities, including the civilian governments, have made the military their preferred choice in operations like this in the country.
“These were supposed to have been operations where the Nigerian Police would have been allowed to perform, make their mistakes and correct them in subsequent operations.
The King concluded some members of the Nigerian Police Force over the years have not helped matters with their conduct.
“Some wailed and cried out loud, while others frowned and even cursed. They gradually kicked, fell on the ground, and threw tantrums everywhere; like labour leaders, they threatened strike actions and issued several warning strike notices. In their numbers, they vehemently protested the idea of being made a pro-people organisation.
“Some members of the Nigerian Police Force craved and begged to be made the most effective anti-people organisation. They, in the process, threw down their shields and wooden batons, and with their made-in-England boots, they smashed everything to pieces.
“At some point, they eventually went on strike, marched on the streets, and demanded to be given Klashnikovs, Mortars, anti-tank, and anti-aircraft guns. These were severe sets of actions to ensure they ceased to be Police. Ultimately, they wanted to be soldiers, too. All this they did instead of concentrating on how to improve the Police/Civilian relationship, which is the core of their mandate.
