Former Federal Commissioner for Information and Culture, Major General I.B.M Haruna (Rtd) has emphasized the urgent need for a fundamental reorganization of the Nigerian Police Force to effectively address the country’s growing insecurity.
Reacting to the abduction of the school children and teachers in Kaduna last week, Haruna in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday, said issues relating to internal and domestic security should primarily be the responsibility of the Nigerian police force rather than the military, because the ‘police are better suited for these tasks as they interact more closely with communities’.
“The security must be with the police in all aspects because they live with the people, they interact with them, far more than the Nigerian military that seem to be looked upon as necessary to be in the forefront of this disorder and insecurity. I think the Nigerian state must go back to the very basic fundamentals where before independence and soon after independence, it was known and realized that internal and domestic security must be maintained by the Nigerian police.
“They were very well equipped or being trained including sending the mopols to troubled areas like the mali but I think what we have now is that there is no cohesion in providing security, we should therefore go back to retrain, reequip and reorganize the police force.
He also expressed worry over the prevailing optimism regarding the improvement of the security situation, warning that without significant structural reforms, the situation could worsen.
“I don’t know the optimism about situations improving, if anything, it would probably get worse because the economy is getting into some tartars and disorientation. There is going to be continuous unemployment as a result, there is hunger in the country and I think all these fundamentally goes back to the fact that for ten years we have been trying to stop banditry, terrorism and all that and I believe that the Nigerian State has not gotten it right even though it started right because fundamentally, internal and domestic security is functionally that of the Nigerian police force and not that of the Nigerian armed forces.
“Therefore, the optimism being expressed that things will get better after ten years of battling with it is not likely to do so, unless we go back to the fundamental functional reorganization of the Nigerian police and while it is functioning under proper statutory acts that empowers the governors to be the prime movers of security in their state. Until we do that, I don’t think we will anchor the provision of security, peace, preservation of life and property and unemployment.”
Furthermore, the Major General, while calling for a shift in focus from military interventions, stressed the need for governors to seek a more localized and effective approach to addressing security challenges instead of seeking ways to relocate the rural activities to the urban areas.
“We just haven’t got it right. We are getting too much from the military. It’s not their function. They can perform their functions to aid the police but let the police be on ground. Let the governors be on the ground. Let the security fund and whatever security material they have be functional in obtaining the objectives and not having up to fifty grandstanding vehicles at the government house.
“The hierarchy and sharing of functions to ensure the security of properties and lives and industries is wrongly or dysfunctionally arranged. So, whether you have intelligence and operational groups, the fact is that they will not be coordinated and they cannot impact the required security objectives. It’s like having the legs and bodies and fingers or the anatomy of the person wrongly put around the body. So, we have to go back to the drawing board. Let the police be organized and be functional to do its job. It is not the business of bringing schools by the government to the cities because people have to operate in those rural areas. You cannot bring all rural functions to the city.”
Chioma Kalu
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