Guardian

Adewole Ajakaye, a former Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), served in many capacities in the force before retiring in 2008. He was a member of the team at the Special Fraud Unit (SFU), which laid the foundation for the emergence of what is now known as Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). In this interview, he speaks about the problem of the force.

WHAT is your view on the recent killing of scores of policemen in Nasarawa State?

I can understand the type of pains the families of the deceased policemen will be going through at the moment. They died while serving the country. Meanwhile, there is an urgent need for government to establish a panel to investigate this evil act by some group.

Government should as a matter of fact, set up a panel to critically investigate the killing process before deciding on how to check the insurgence. After all, reports had it that they were ambushed and the opposition had no casualty.

Secondly, I understand that there were some policemen who leaked the operational secret to group. This is the reason why government must look into the matter critically.

Don’t you think this persistent killing of policemen can kill their morale?

Certainly it’s killing the morale of the policemen and it is reducing the image of the police. And it is high time government rose up to the challenges facing the police force. Government needs to fund the police force properly and even provide more sophisticated equipment to help in their operations.

Nigerian Police force has been neglected for a very long time and the result is what we are seeing now. The reason for this neglect I don’t know.

The spate of insecurity in the country is something that should make the federal government empower the police force, but they resolved to use the military.

Government has been paying lip service to upgrading the standard of police in Nigeria.  And there is no way we can be claiming to be giant of Africa when the nation’s police force is the weakest in Africa. We are just deceiving ourselves and we are shameless.

What is your view on the compensation given to the families of the deceased?

The kind of compensation given to the families of the policemen that were killed is an indicator that government pays lip service to the overhauling of the whole service. It shows government has little or no interest in the force again. I don’t know why their compensation should be smaller to that of other security agents. After all, they also died in the process of fighting for peace.

Giving their families such meager amount as compensation will certainly discourage other policemen.

What is your advice to government on this?

The federal government needs to empower the police to face any situation the law asks them to face. Government should do what is right to the police so that they can in turn meet the obligations expected of them. The army should be left to fight war and the police should be made to take full responsibility of ensuring peace and orderliness in the country.

There is no reason why a police command should not have at least a minimum of 25 Armour Personnel Carrier s (APCs) and even 50 patrol cars. The federal government has the capacity to fund the police to ensure security of lives and properties. And if government thinks they don’t have money to fund the police, they should abolish it and create another security organization.  Police is a vital organ of the society and they have to be funded.

What can be done to check this insurgence and killing of police officers in the country?

I am one of the advocates for the decentralization of police in Nigeria. There should be state and local council police if we are truly a running a federal system as articulated. Doing this would enable effective policing of country without recording any casualty. I just believe that the instrument to protect the country must be well funded.