…Laments poor funding, increasing crime rate
BY VICTOR BUORO, ABUJA – Former Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mike Okiro, has said that poor funding remains the major challenge of the Nigeria Police Force which has propelled increase in crimes and corruption in the country.
Sir Okiro, who stated this during a radio program, Public Conscience produced by the Progressive Impact Organization for Community Development (PRIMORG), in Abuja, stressed that poor funding constitute a major impediment to the effective operations of the Nigeria police much more than issues of poor management and corruption.
The former IGP, who was reacting to a newspaper (Daily Trust) publication which revealed that most police divisions received only N10, 000 monthly to run their operations thereby making Police stations in the country to resort to money raised from unlawful acts such as bail fees, bribes and extortion, sad that the Nigeria police had always struggled with low budgetary allocation.
Okiro, who served as IGP between 2007–2009, noted that only between 50 and 60 percent of the police budget is usually implemented thereby limiting their productivity.
In the words of Okiro; “When I was the Inspect General of the Police, I was forced to give money down to the division. I donated and distributed money to all the divisions, and how much was it; ten thousand per quarter, to enable them to do certain things for themselves but that is not enough.
“If there is a robbery, you tell the police to come and there is no vehicle, even if there is a vehicle there is no fuel for the vehicle. You don’t expect the policeman to trek covering kilometers to go and confront armed robbers.
“As a CP in Lagos, I was having three hundred and sixty thousand naira a quarter to buy a vehicle. Can three hundred and sixty thousand naira buy and cater for a vehicle? It is not an issue of corruption, you can only corrupt what you get when there is no money where you will get to steal,” Okiro said.
The former IGP gave his support for the planned decentralization of the Nigeria police to enable zones to receive their funds directly and distribute them to divisions under them even as he warned the government of the dangers inherent in poor funding of police in the country.
Okiro further said; “Police is the lead agency in our internal security. Technically and logically, if our police are not effective, our internal security will be in shambles and that is what we are getting now.
“No funding, no manpower in a country where we have millions of youths roaming the streets without employment, going into crime becomes easy and yet the police do not have enough manpower to do their jobs”.
Speaking in same vein, the General Editor at Daily Trust Newspapers, Hamza Idris noted that poor funding of the Police Force is largely responsible for the corruption associated with policemen at police stations and other areas.
Idris said that the idea behind the investigation carried out by Daily Trust is based on the prevailing security situation in the county, thus the quest by the media house to look at the systemic problems facing the Police in Nigeria.
According to Idris; “With a strong and viable police force, the nation would not have had numerous security outfits, and soldiers would hardly be seen on the streets. There is therefore the need to salvage the Nigerian Police by making more funds available and exploiting technology in policing”.
In his own contribution, the Head of Judiciary Desk of Daily Trust Newspapers, John Azu identified accountability as a major problem militating against proper utilization of funds approved for the Nigerian Police Force.
Azu noted that besides the challenge of under-funding, the Nigerian police are also faced with issues of corruption, integrity, or lack of moral status by some personnel.
He said; “There is a mystery in the aspect of the utilization of some of the support police gets, especially in logistics. Annually, state governments and organizations donate vehicles, equipment to the police which nobody gets to know the whereabouts of those facilities and vehicles.
Public Conscience is a syndicated weekly anti-corruption radio program by PRIMORG to draw government and citizens’ attention to corruption and integrity issues in Nigeria.
