The ongoing police reforms are noteworthy, but it mustn’t be allowed to end up as a mere academic exercise simply to score a cheap political point.

A situation where the morale of the our police force is continually low and dampened due to poor wages and dehumanising welfare packages doesn’t augur well for the security of lives and property in our nation.

How can a police constable be receiving N20,000.00 salary monthly? How can he and his family be living on less than N1,000.00 daily? A salary that can’t even take care of his personal bills not to talk of his family.

It will be recalled that before the review of emoluments of the police force by the Yar Adua Administration, the condition of the Nigerian police was so deplorable. A police Inspector for instance was earning a little less than N14,000.00 monthly

After the review however, things brightened up a little. But even with that, the welfare of the Nigerian policeman is still far from okay. Even a whole superintendent of police salary with the last review is
still far below N150,000.00 monthly. Yet government officials in the last two years has reviewed their emoluments upward by over 800%; forget about the so-called miserly slash of their allowances being
mouthed about in recent times. A senator of the Federal republic of Nigeria for instance currently gets more than N45m annually, where a police commissioner gets far less than N10m annually as his emoluments; some others in the force and the general public gets far less than N500,000 annually, and yet we all buy and sell in the same market. How then can the police properly maintain law and order with such pay? This is why they degenerate to criminal acts albeit in a somehow glorified manner. But this is not to say that it is right for
the police to take to extortion and criminal acts because of poor remuneration and humiliating conditions of service. After all before a man is offered an appointment, the conditions of service are first
made known to him, and he has the ultimate choice of then accepting or rejecting the offer. There is therefore no reason whatsoever for a man to now accept a job based on the conditions of service given him and
then turn around and start whining or taking to acts inimical to the job. It is an eternal shame to officers of the force that they have debased themselves so low to the public, as they have no justifiable reasons for their lawlessness. However, this is a matter for another day.

The Nigerian police aside from the poor pay is also forced to buy his own uniform and shoes, whereas government provides the same for the armed forces free of charge; different strokes for different folks.
This is double standard and it is unfair. The officers of the force equally don’t have access to quality information and training needed to do the job. There are no state of the art gadgets or modern scientific methods for the battling of crime available to the force. More often, they are forced to face superior firepower with nothing.

Our research reveals that the Nigerian police is so poorly kitted and shabbily treated that it breeds frustration and anger amongst the rank and file of the force. This frustration and anger often snowballs and is vented on innocent and harmless citizens that it ought to protect.

Even the huge sums of money that is voted for the police force in the annual budgets is always mismanaged by the corrupt top brass of the force in collusion with other corrupt government officials; it never really gets down to the middle or lower cadre of the force.

Government must therefore use this reforms opportunity to overhaul the police force and clean up all of the mess it is enmeshed in, re-orientate the policemen, pay them better wages and kit them up properly to meet the realities of today’s world. Only then will the police start living up to expectation, and public confidence in the
force will be restored.

Comrade Eneruvie Enakoko
(CLO Chairman in Lagos)



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Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Lagos 13, Soji Adepegba Close, Off
Allen Ave, Ikeja/Lagos. Tel: 234-1-08033188864, 4939324-5, 7746694.
Fax: 01-4939324, P.O Box 53328, Ikoyi, Lagos. Email:
clolagosnigeria@gmail.com, clolagos@yahoo.com, Website: www.clo-ng.org