Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has
described the reported reorganisation of the Nigerian Police Force by the
President Muhammadu Buhari administration as cosmetic and deceptive.
The Federal Government had a few days ago unveiled a major
reorganisation of the Nigerian Police Force as approved by President Buhari.
HURIWA said this in a statement signed and made available by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the
National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf.
In the reorganisation, the government carved out additional
zones from the existing ones, while some top police officers are re-assigned to
head the newly upgraded policing centres.
However, HURIWA described the development as a mere scratch
on the hard surface of the incapacitated Nigerian policing institution.
It noted that the Nigerian police had outlived its
usefulness, requiring much more fundamental reforms and restructuring which
could help bring it to terms with the twenty-first century compliant global
best practices.
The Rights group lamented that the current administration,
including the legislative arm, lacked the required political will to design and
implement the best kind of emphatic, comprehensive and strong constitutional
reforms of the police.
HURIWA said that President Buhari, by coming up with these
reforms, had jettisoned the amendments made by the last session of the National
Assembly, in which state Police was recommended.
The Rights group said it was unlikely that the current
National Assembly, which it described as a stooge to Buhari, can spearhead the
much reforms needed in the police institution.
According to the Emmanuel Onwubiko-led group, the Buhari administration
was embarking on mere ‘patch patch’ work or little by little damage control.
It noted that the Nigerian Police Force had faced extensive
collapse which has manifested in the sacking and destruction of several
communities and killings by unidentified gunmen and in some cases by suspected
armed Fulani herdsmen without the police taking steps to even prevent those
calamities and were unable to investigate, arrests and prosecute these
offenders.
“As it is now, there are hundreds of persons with blood in
their hands who have escaped the full wrath of the law because of the
operational collapse and incompetence of the Nigerian Police Force,” HURIWA
said.
For HURIWA, Buhari’s appointment of the Deputy Inspector
General of Police to take charge of zones is not the way out.
“The way out is to decentralise the command and control
platforms of the Nigerian Police Force by creating State and local policing
institutions to compliment the National policing infrastructure.
“The State and local police should be autonomous on
operational mechanisms and must be staffed by the most competent professionals
and these newly legislated policing platforms should be well equipped and
supervised efficiently to discharge their mandate of protecting the lives and
property of citizens in their areas of jurisdiction,” it said.
HURIWA appealed to the Buhari government to go all out in
carrying out far reaching legal reforms that will usher in a rebranded,
efficient and effective security architecture that will see the command and
control of the Nigerian Police Force decentralised in the real sense of it.
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