NPTF Executive Secretary: Nigeria police neglected for over 40 years

Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Police Trust Fund, Mohammed Sheidu, shares his thoughts with The Punch correspondent on the hurdles facing the organisation, its achievements, among other issues

The welfare of the officers and men of the Nigeria Police Force is paramount to their effective performance. How are you handling the situation as the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Police Trust Fund?

Our mandate as a special intervention agency for the Nigeria Police Force is to provide welfare, training, and equipment, and anything that will help boost the Force’s morale and performance.

So, one of the things we’re looking at and primarily focused on since I came on board is the training of the officers as well as the training institutions.

In September last year, you described the police training schools in Rivers State as a disaster because of its poor condition and called on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency at the training school. Has any step been taken to address the issue?

The truth is that we need to have a constant cry for appeal on the current situation of the training facilities across the board. I mean nationwide. Most, if not all, the police training facilities are in very bad shape. So, we need to make society as a whole aware of this current situation.

This is where you, as the media, can help portray these things as a constant cry to appeal not just to the government, but to society as a whole, to understand that these are the policing issues that we have, which have also cascaded and affected our internal security as a whole.

Has anything been done to ensure that renovation work begins in the Rivers State police training school?

I spoke with the governor then, and he said one of our major issues was the funding of the Police Trust Fund. Rivers State was the state that took the Trust Fund to court. So, one of the major issues is the financing.

But going ahead, we looked at it and put some budget line items like the renovation of facilities as priorities. But at the end of the day, it’s not just having the budgetary allocation; it’s actually having the funding and finances for us to be able to carry out these activities.

A former Commissioner of Police, Mr Joseph Mbu, in 2015, decried the poor condition of police training institutions nationwide. According to him, such dilapidated institutions cannot produce effective police officers. Why has the problem remained unsolved since that time?

I’m happy you brought this up. I said earlier that the training facilities and training institutions were the problems. But what I can say, and this is me speaking from my background, coming from a police home, is knowing that this problem that we have with our training facilities and the Nigeria Police Force as a whole, is not a problem of today; it’s not a problem of 2015, it’s actually a four-decade problem.

It’s a problem that has been ongoing since maybe 1983, when we had the late Shehu Shagari as president, and we had the late Sunday Adewusi as Inspector General of Police. After that, the police had not been funded. And I think the reason why I say this is that we are coming from a militarised mindset in our country today.

When I say militarised mindset, it’s that we’ve always had the military at the helm of affairs, or some affiliation with the military at the helm of affairs in this country, and this is the first time in over 40 years that we have a demilitarised president.

I think that, for now, maybe God has blessed us with this demilitarised president so that things might start to change. But again, we need to constantly cry for this change and appeal for this change to happen, because there is a need to raise awareness that there’s a problem.

Once there’s awareness that there’s this problem, it’s now about how to tackle that problem, and I think for the first time, we do have a president who is capable of tackling this problem.

An average policeman still earns poorly. Most times, their condition forces them to misbehave in public through extortions and other unfriendly acts. What do you think should be done to ensure officers and men of the Nigeria police are well paid, like their counterparts in other climes?

This militarised mindset that we have is the problem. The police are in charge of internal security. It is not the job of the military. It’s not the job of any of these other agencies. It’s the police’s work. It’s called policing for a reason. That’s why it’s called the police force. But internal security is there.

They are first in charge. But we do not emphasise even the financing and adequate resources for this police force. This is just what I say; it is a collective responsibility of the government — the executive and the legislature. Officers and men of the Nigerian Police Force are human beings at the end of the day.

You need to cater to their welfare. Their needs need to be provided so they can discharge their duties effectively. But the truth about it is that they are not being taken into consideration. That’s why I say it’s a four-decade problem that has not been taken into consideration from then until today.

So, it is for the government and its agencies to be able to do this outcry and let us know that this is an issue, and this issue cascades. Once the police are well funded, they will tackle this insecurity. And this insecurity will also help this country’s economy. So, we need to actually look at it across that line.

Does inadequate funding also affect the dilapidated police barracks that we see in many places?

It is always a cascaded effect over the years. It hasn’t changed. That’s why I keep saying we are coming from a militarised mindset. Everybody knows the military and the police have not been the best of friends over the years. If we go and check our history, when the mobile police was formed, these were the people who could have prevented coups.

That was in those days, and because they were going to be the ones to counter coups, they made sure they stifled them. They stripped the police of a lot of things, not just the finances, but even the duties that they did perform.

They created parallel agencies that perform the same functions as the police. That’s what we see here in Nigeria. There’s a lot of replication of the duties of police officers across the board. Those are the ones that are funded. I don’t have to mention the Federal Road Safety Corps and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.

A lot of agencies duplicate the same job that the police are doing. This also ensures that the funding that should actually go to this police force is not going to them, but to other places.

Sometimes, policemen fight crime with rickety vehicles, and this does not speak well of the image of the force. Is it that the NPTF is not prepared to address this particular challenge?

One of the most visible things that the NPTF has done since its establishment in 2019 is the purchase of vehicles. To date, we can still see vehicles on the roads across the nation that were purchased and donated by the Nigeria Police Trust Fund. The Toyota Buffalo is a primary example because it almost became a signature police trust fund vehicle across the nation.

You are very correct about the image, which matters. The image matters in how we carry these things. It is something that we are addressing. And like I said earlier, the resources and finances to be able to do this matter a whole lot more. Currently, we are also looking at partnering local companies that assemble vehicles, even if they are not producing.

They can help us mitigate some of these challenges and reduce the cost of purchasing and maybe having to convert naira to dollars for the purchase of all these types of vehicles. But it is quite key for the operation of the police that we have these vehicles on the ground.

State governors and some corporate organisations help to provide vehicles and other items for the police. How far has this gesture positively affected the organisation’s objective of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Nigeria Police?

This is a very positive initiative by both the state governments and corporate organisations. The whole truth about it is that at the end of the day, it is still the same Nigeria Police Force that we are looking for its effectiveness. The essence is for them to be able to work better for us.

So, it is an initiative that we believe is welcome, and they should continue. The only thing I can also add is that which is what we are trying to do now with the state governments. It is to channel everything under one umbrella.

So, there is some form of uniformity and checks and balances in the sense that we, as a trust fund, have audited accounts, so some governments now say we want to do these donations; we can do it through you.

At the end of the day, the end user is still the same end user, which is the Nigeria Police Force. As I said earlier, it is a very welcome and positive initiative taken by state governments and these corporate organisations to help the effectiveness of the police force.

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