He knows what the problem is, and he knows what needs to be done to address it, and he is well aware that the purported order to arrest police still attached to VIPs is nothing more than a lame and pathetic grandstanding.
Our Nigeria is a lot like Indian rubber. A little causes it to swell and a lot will not burst it or make it snap. This makeup is what makes Nigeria intriguing in a troubling kind of way, and keeps the outside world on tenterhooks or in suspense. Our seeming penchant for absurdities leaves people in more rational and sensible climes gasping for air. It is why the president will issue a directive to the police force and the officers will ignore it.
One of the benefits of United States President Donald Trump’s unusual interest in Nigeria’s security challenges is that it has compelled the President Bola Tinubu-led government, which has often displayed lethargy and insouciance on critical matters of insecurity, to take decisions and actions it would not have taken otherwise.
Last week, President Tinubu declared a nationwide security emergency and the recruitment of more army and police personnel. According to a statement containing the declaration, the police will recruit an additional 20,000 officers, bringing the total to 50,000. He also ordered the withdrawal of police officers assigned to VIPs and deployed them to areas battling insecurity in the country. While all these directives and pronouncements are commendable and sound great on paper, there is no indication that they will or have translated to improved security in the country. For example, many police officers assigned to VIPs are yet to be withdrawn after the order, signalling a brazen disregard for the president’s directive making much of his directive a mere public rhetoric backed by no real intent or action.
It must be said here and now that not many hold their breath or believe that something will come out of the directive because this is not the first time such an order has been issued by the police hierarchy. Having said that, the fact that the rank and file of the police can defy the order of the president issued through the Inspector General of police can only mean two things; it is either the order was a performative and perfunctory pronouncement made to appear to be genuinely trying to tackle the nation’s perennial insecurity and had to make such histrionics believable to the public. This would then mean that the order will not be followed by any forceful enforcement or the government is serious about withdrawal of police officers from VIPs but officers attached to VIPs have become too comfortable with becoming sentries of important and influential public figures and are too set in their ways to the extent that they are willing to defy the order of the president and the IGP to stay in their current places of assignment and this can only mean a collapse in the chain of command of the Nigerian police force which is even more destructive that the first scenario painted.
However, whatever the case may be, there is more to the development than meets the eye, and we need to ask the right questions to get to the bottom of the matter. One thing that must be established here is that the assigning of police officers to VIPs for protection is a major cash cow for the Nigerian police and a source of illicit cash flow for the top brass of the police. On Tuesday, Benjamin Hundeyin, Police Force Public Relations Officer, stated that the enforcement of the presidential directive was on. According to him, “the IGP gave the order that any police officer found escorting VIPs be arrested because he’s definitely on illegal duty. Every one of them (police officers) has been recalled.”
Hundeyin wants us to believe that the Nigerian police have to resort to arresting their own men before the directive can be enforced. It will be somewhat ludicrous for anyone to expect the image maker of the police to be forthright and sincere about the matter as doing so will cast the organisation in a bad light. He knows what the problem is, and he knows what needs to be done to address it, and he is well aware that the purported order to arrest police still attached to VIPs is nothing more than a lame and pathetic grandstanding.
Many police officers vigorously and aggressively lobby and even pay huge amounts of cash to be part of the security details of VIPs. This means the upper echelon of the police is fully aware of the men it assigned to VIPs and VIPs it assigned them to. To then act in a manner that portrays it as incapable of enforcing the withdrawal of these officers from the VIP they are attached to is not only shameful and embarrassing but treasonable as it in fact goes to show that the retention of police officers as security guard by VIPs after the presidential directive as little to do with the defiance of the officers assigned to the VIPs but more about the refusal of the higher echelon of the police to enforce the directive.
The whole arrangement of having a huge chunk of our police force assigned to VIPs in a nation that is severely underpoliced and grappling with a devastating security crisis is not only disturbing but unimaginably diabolical. Even if the police officers attached to VIPs were to be successfully withdrawn and returned to real policing activities that involve protecting and securing everyday people and their properties, we would still be way short of the number of police officers needed to effectively and proactively police the nation. For the police hierarchy to claim that it is facing difficulties in pulling its officers out of VIP duties is not a sign of helplessness but a calculated move to sustain and keep a corrupt system that is detrimental to the nation’s security and stability running. It’s invidious and abhorrent. It is a broken system that needs a complete overhaul.