Police Service Commission (PSC) - Former Inspector-General of Police, now Chairman of the Police Service Commission (PSC), Sir Mike Mbama Okiro and his team at the Commission have a huge task on their hands presently.
President Muhammadu Buhari, about the middle of August, last year, gave approval for the recruitment of 10,000 police personnel. A country whose population has gone past the 170 million mark, Nigeria is policed by 370,000 policemen at the ratio of one policeman to over 100,000 citizens; whereas the population-police ratio recommended by the United Nations is one policeman to 450 citizens.
But just three weeks after the PSC extended invitation online to job seekers to feel the 10, 000 vacancies, reports said 705,352 applications had been lodged by applicants, a situation that clearly buttressed the level of widespread unemployment and desperation in the country.
But the Commission requires the services of just 500 Cadet Assistant Superintendents of Police, 500 Cadet Inspectors, 1,500 Specialist Officers and 7, 500 Constables.
Okiro says he is excited by the spectacular interest shown by Nigerians in joining the police; and the Commission has assured the applicants of fair and equal treatment, as well as promised committing itself to conducting a transparent recruitment process to usher the country’s best brains into the police.
Nigeria’s security challenges presently are, indeed, so daunting that the protection of life and property - the cardinal responsibility of the police - has become an uphill task.
The nation is not just battling to rein in the excesses of armed bandits, kidnap-for-ransom gangs, fraudsters and all manner of criminals, but is also grappling with insurgency in the North East.
When the poor numerical strength, inadequate funding and kitting of the police are weighed against their day-to-day tasks, it may puzzle many that the police are still visible to some extent in maintaining internal security. For the same reasons, bad eggs in the nation’s police are legion.
But public expectation is that with the injection of 10,000 new hands into the police, they will perform better, especially if backed with improvement in funding and working tools.
But all will depend to a great extent on the quality of men and women police authorities are able to pick from the ongoing recruitment exercise.
Though the Okiroled Commission says it is gunning for the ‘best brains’, it is obvious, from the outrageous number of applicants, that a lot of them are seeking police jobs not because of their passion to serve as police officers, but to wriggle out of the penury of unemployment.
Thus, the first major challenge of the Commission will be to explore ways of isolating qualified people with the zeal to serve. Besides, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in 2004 faulted recruitment exercises in the Nigeria Police and other law enforcement agencies, saying the processes lacked proper scrutiny.
“One of the things we have found, not just with the police, but other law enforcement agencies, is that the recruitment has not been with scrutiny; we now have armed robbers legitimately recruited and people don’t overnight change their toga. The issue of fingerprinting with which you sift the good from the bad in the past must be reinstated”, Obasanjo stated.
The challenge is even scarier at this time that not only armed robbers, but kidnappers, insurgents and all manner of criminals may be desperate to join the police and use the institution as an official shield to perpetrate heinous crimes or sabotage the nation.
Yes, the PSC’s avowals on ensuring a transparent recruitment exercise based on fairness and equal treatment may be inspiring. But ours in reality is a country where ‘long-leggedness’, influence peddling and quota principles (reflection of federal character) conspire to make a mockery of merit in school admission and recruitment into the public service at the federal.
The recent reported contentious recruitment conducted by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is still fresh in memory. Therefore, Okiro and his team should be ready to demonstrate iron cast will to be able to recruit into the police men and women that are qualified, trainable and psychologically sound for the job of policing.
Perhaps more importantly, the injection of fresh blood into the police will be a huge waste of public funds if, in the end, the services of those recruited are personalised by the political and economic elite, while countless communities suffer without police presence.
The PSC should also be mindful not to allow the recruitment to be scandalised like the Saturday, March 15, 2014 tragic recruitment exercise conducted by the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS).
Source: National Mirror