Reciprocating The Enhanced Police Salary Scale

PETER CLAVER OPARAH

Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari approved a new salary structure for the Nigerian Police. This increment has been well-received by Nigerians who feel that time has come to end the complaint of poor working conditions that is often given for the pervasive rot and corruption bedeviling the Nigerian Police. The new salary scale is meant to address this age-long excuse given for the filth that has ravaged the service which is the complaint about poor remuneration and working condition. There is no doubt that the Buhari regime is determined to deal with this age-long issue and re-position the service as the custodian of the lives and properties of Nigerians. It is certain that the new salary increase is not only meant to stop the malignant corruption the Nigerian police has been known for but also to make it compliant to the anti-corruption commitment of the present regime.

Soon after this new salary increase, the force started the process of recruiting new 10,000 constables into the force in a move meant to breathe new lease of life into the police service and re-jig it to fulfill its primary role to the citizens of the country. The recruitment process, which will be carried out online has already commenced and enthusiastic Nigerians are keying into this which will address the inadequacy in the ratio of the police to the citizens and rev up the protection of Nigerians against sundry crimes and vices. The new recruitment is also in answer to the implosion of the county’s population, which had seen many Nigerians not protected by the existing personnel in the Nigerian police. It is intended to address the problem of under-policing which is one of the noticeable shortcomings of the Nigerian Police.

The two laudable initiatives of the Buhari regime are commendable and will unarguably lift the police from the doldrums of shame and contempt where it had operated for long among a skeptical citizenry that has been at the receiving ends of the noxious values of the police. The two initiatives go deep in attending to the various cases Nigerians have against the police which range from extortion, miscarriage of justice, intimidation, human rights violation, dereliction of its duties to the citizens to ingrained bribery and corruption. All these have combined to make the police both hated and incapable to carry out its primary functions.. In response to these charges, the police has often pleaded poor remunerations, lack of capacity, inadequate personnel and lack of public cooperation amongst many other reasons for its poor services to the people.

However, with the improved salary package, which makes the police one of the best paid service sectors of the Nigerian public service, it would be difficult for its rank and file to explain the excessive extortion of Nigerians the police carry out both on the roads, in the homes of Nigerians and in their various stations. This singular penchant to subject Nigerians to forced extortion has been perhaps the greatest reason Nigerians hate the police. The police have not been in a haste to arrest this ugly behavior rather it had deepened these bad practices over the years thereby earning the indignation and contempt of Nigerians. It had earned the police such bad reputation that Nigerians rather see them as the vortex of Nigerian problem. The various processes through which the Nigerian police has turned its services into avenues for needless extortion and bribery must be stopped because the police would henceforth be well paid as to do its duties the way the law directs without making them points of mindless extortion, intimidation and harassment of Nigerian citizens.

If the police continue the annoying subjection of Nigerians citizens to brute extortion, even after this improved salary package, then we may need to disband the police force and seek a replacement for its services. Through its notorious actions on the roads where the mounting of illegal roadblocks for the purpose of extorting hapless travelers has become the primary business of the police, the force has earned such an irreparable bad reputation among Nigerians. The hierarchy and other operatives of the police have explained this bad act to the poor remuneration the police have been slaving through which makes this extortion inevitable. What could they give as excuse for the continuation of that act with the new salary structure? This singular issue had drawn so much unsavory comments from Nigerians and has attracted the attention of the police hierarchy who have applied several measures to address this notorious tendency without success. Often times, the hierarchy lacks the will to carry out these measures because it directly and indirectly benefits from the bad fruits of these mindless and criminal extortions. But they have often walked away among the citizenry by pleading that police remuneration has been poor and unable to attend to the needs of the personnel of the force.

With the new salary scale and the new personnel being added to the force, it behooves both the leadership of the force and the Police Service Commission to move into action to reform the police so that it will face its primary responsibilities. There is need to stop the illegal extortions on the roads and this could easily be done by monitoring this ugly trend and making scapegoats of culprits who flout this order. Nigerians don’t expect less from the police on this. Stopping illegal extortion points called roadblocks has become very necessary especially with the government’s commitment to ease business operations in Nigeria. One expects the Buhari government to give marching orders to the Police hierarchy and the Police Service Commission on this nuisance of mindless extortion on Nigerian roads and end the scourge once and for all.

Again, police services in the various barracks and police formations should be freed from the cobweb of bribery and extortions that have defaced police services all over the country. Bail must be really free and complainants must not be made to pay for police attention to their cases. Also, police operations must be closely monitored to arrest incidences of complainants or informants being exposed to injurious harm by criminals through police complicity. Police must be made to to stop the many cases of human rights violations of Nigerian citizens who they are paid to protect. The human rights desk in the various stations must not only be strengthened but closely monitored to make them attend to the citizens rather than the members of the police force. Various complaints of reluctance of police to respond quickly and actively to distress calls by Nigerians must be addressed such that where Nigerians prove that they were not attended to when they need the police, culprits must be fished out and punished. Yes, these may entail very deep, extensive and thorough re-orientation and reform but the time to start is now. The police must be made to be the friends of the people as their favorite maxim go even when the same masses see them as untrustworthy enemies who stand to betray their confidence to the enemy at the right fee.

One cannot go on repeating the need to match these improved conditions of service and increment in personnel with the proper equipment to make the police better and more result oriented. The case of Lagos police where the state has set up a Security Trust Fund to tap into the private sector to equip and prepare the police for better services and the improved yield from the service in the state, shows the police case is not irredeemable. Let the hierarchy and the PSC and every other interested partner start now to work on reforming and re-directing the police for greater efficiency in view of the better service conditions the government recently granted it. Let us start now to arrest the declining fortune of a critical sector that has become so repulsed and hated because of the negative factors that have been brought by its rank and file to deface it. We will all reap the collective benefits of such efforts. Most importantly, Nigerians do not need to stress they fact that they demand the police to reciprocate the good gesture in granting them enhanced salary scale and strengthening its personnel by making genuine efforts to do away with their bad reputations and serving the people better.

Peter Claver Oparah writes from Ikeja, Lagos.

E-mail: peterclaver2000@yahoo.com