Policing failure

…also published in Daily Trust

Though the Nigerian Police has always been grossly undermanned, its ridiculously lopsided police personnel allocation formula where, according to the Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG), Zone 5, Rasheed Akintunde, over 80% of them provide personal security to what he called prominent people (who are apparently not more than thirty thousand) at the expense of approximately one hundred and eighty million vulnerable Nigerians, remains particularly responsible for the huge policing gap in the country, which even the six thousand policemen to be recruited soon as recently approved by President Buhari can’t bridge. 

This and its failure to keep up with high-tech-based policing techniques have rendered it practically obsolete hence incapable of guaranteeing the security of lives and properties in the country, even though the typical pattern of perpetrating a violent crime in Nigeria remains largely basic and, in fact, predictable.

In other words, though the typical method of perpetrating, say, murder, armed robbery, thuggery, banditry and kidnapping in the country isn’t that complicated, yet the culprits, in most cases, get away with it and remain anonymous or perpetually at large. Also, even on the relatively very few occasions the police manage to identify and/or capture them, it’s mostly by sheer chance.

By the way, it’s so sad that the police usually get appropriately prompted into action to prevent a crime or track down a culprit only when they expect some financial inducement from the victim, his associates or relatives, or when the beneficiary is a privileged individual who they can’t afford to disappoint, or when the crime committed happens to provoke a public outcry strong enough to induce a sense of shame among the otherwise largely unashamed police high command and political leadership in the country. Besides, even in the aftermath of such public outcry, the police high command usually only takes some supposedly “punitive measures” against some unlucky police officers by simply redeploying them to less “juicy” posts while business as usual continues.

Anyway, seeing the extent of police ineptitude in handling crimes, one can imagine their ineptitude in handling more challenging policing tasks e.g. crime prevention, which, being basically intelligence-based, requires up-to-date policing skills and, of course, adequate and sophisticated intelligence gathering and analysis technology. 

It’s against the backdrop of this gap that criminals who though operate in typical and indeed predictable ways yet continue to have a field day perpetrating all sorts of crime against vulnerable individuals and communities across the country and getting away with it. In fact, on many occasions, they even outmaneuver the police tactically or even overpower them in confrontations to carry out their crimes.

It isn’t surprising therefore that an overwhelming atmosphere of fear prevails in the country. Obviously, everybody lives or rather exists under a constantly looming threat to his life and properties. Perhaps one wouldn’t be exaggerating to claim that almost everybody in the country has a traumatic story of a life-threatening experience to tell, which he or at least one of his close relatives has suffered at the hands of merciless criminals.

Now, though extremely distressing situation indeed, the underlying policing gap against the backdrop of which it persists isn’t unbridgeable anyway. It only takes political will to achieve.

Though one may sound quite simplistic in proffering a solution to this crisis in a space- constrained newspaper column, and also considering the sheer mess and the deep-rooted culture of ineptitude in the country, yet, if only the Nigerian police would adopt basic but up-to-date relevant technology, leverage the available, even though poor, power and communication infrastructure in the country, and efficiently coordinate with sister security agencies and other relevant government institutions, it would certainly bridge a significant part of this gap.  For instance, if only the police, in coordination with all relevant government agencies, would collect and keep a comprehensive electronic-based national biometric database of all Nigerians and other people living in the country, the common frustrating practice of lodging a complaint or filing a crime case against anonymous in police station and court of law as the culprits weren’t identified, would begin to actually lead to identifying and apprehending the culprits. Because the police would be able to effortlessly identify the probable culprits by simply taking the fingerprints left on, say, the victim and/or any object found at the crime scene and comparing it with individuals’ biometric data saved on the electronic-based database to identify the identities of whoever had body contact with the victim or any object at the crime scene. Now, with the identities of the probable culprits known, the police would be able to track them down, subject them to interrogation and trial to eventually identify the real culprits and punish them accordingly.

Though criminals would always resort to different detection evasion tactics, this technology would certainly enable the police to police the country effectively. After all, technology would never cease to provide solutions to whatever detection evasion tactics criminals introduce.