Okey Wali, the NBA’s president at the body’s meeting in Yenagoa state: “The NBA calls on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in the police force with a view to making them capable of functioning appropriately.
“The Bar therefore calls for urgent funding, training and equipping of the Nigeria Police Force. Without adequate funding, the Nigeria Police Force cannot function. That is why they are getting overpowered and killed every day. If we have a well-trained and equipped police force, we never would have needed soldiers and military.”
The police need help. They do not have the training and professionalism to discourage, prevent, and curb acts inimical to the well-being of the society. The six-hour traffic gridlock in the Ikeja area of Lagos on June 6 was a consequence of the police’s unprofessionalism.
In a bid to apprehend a commercial motorcyclist, six policemen in a patrol van chased the rider who to avoid arrest, weaved in and out of traffic, eventually causing an accident involving a container-laden truck and a meat van and loss of lives.
Lagos suffered a traffic gridlock and loss of unquantified man-hours in Lagos that day from that incident. There could have been better ways of apprehending the man. The police have motorbikes they could have used. They could have radioed the bike’s registration number to other formations for the rider’s arrest, wherever he was heading. What was his offence that could have elicited that attention from the police patrol?
Once the accident occurred, the patrol team found its way out of the scene – and disappeared. It is the normal indication that the team was on illegal patrol, seeking resources for its benefit. When reports of these infractions are made, police authorities overlook them. Did they not hear about the June 6 incident? With all the equipment available to the police, when will they have the training on apprehending suspects?
Do the authorities not know that the police who caused that accident should be prosecuted for the loss of lives and property?
Arguments about welfare of the police, important as they are, should entertain training to curb abuses the police visit on Nigerians. No welfare package is substitute for professionalism.
Government in its continuous use of other security agencies for routine police duties shows an enduring disdain for the imperatives of improving the police in ways that they can save Nigerians from further agony. The police cannot serve Nigerians the way they operate.
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