IGP’s lamentation

A few weeks ago, retired Major General Garba Wahab, the Director-General, Nigerian Army Resource Centre,  declared that the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, had lost control of the Nigerian Police Force. He was responding to questions relating to the state of policing in the aftermath of the lawlessness that followed the #EndSARS protests across the country. According to him, the continued refusal of a majority of police personnel across the country to get back to duty, the rise and persistence of civil unrest as hoodlums torched police stations, government properties and looted and destroyed several private businesses in some parts of the country, especially Lagos, Cross River, Edo  and Delta states, showed that the IGP had lost control of the force.

Earlier, the IGP had visited Lagos to assess the police assets vandalised after the protest and to commiserate with residents. He declared that official records showed that six police officers were lynched in Lagos and 36 critically injured, while 46 police stations were torched. The IGP lamented the extent of damage caused by hoodlums who attacked police officers and stations in the wake of the #EndSARS protests. Although the Police Force headquarters retorted that General Wahab’s assertion was wrong, there is no doubt that there is trouble in police-citizens relations.  Indeed, the attacks on the police and policing facilities, the hesitation of police officers to return to work and the waves of crimes that continue to sweep through many cities, call for a major intervention to return the policing ecosystem to normalcy. Indeed, the IGP himself was to later lament that Nigerians had no confidence in the force.

The situation clearly shows that the country is in a dilemma with policing . On the one hand, the protest was against police brutality, and on the other, the police are required to ensure law and order. Many police officers were clearly traumatised by the attacks. Many have not recovered from the trauma.  Some are yet to regain sufficient confidence to wear their uniforms publicly, let alone wear them with pride. Many citizens were also traumatised by police brutality and the violence and destruction that followed the hijack of the #EndSARS protests by hoodlums. It should also be noted that the #EndSARS protest went on after SARS was disbanded and replaced by SWAT because the protesters did not believe that the government was committed to genuine police reform. Many protesters  remain sceptical because over the past three decades, the Nigerian government has repeatedly promised  to reform the  police without real change.

In  December 2017, the  IGP announced plans to reorganise the SARS team, prosecute cases of human rights abuses and spearhead a better training programme for recruits. In the same month, President Buhari signed the Anti-Torture Act into law, criminalising torture without any impact on the behaviour of the police. In 2018, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo demanded that Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, restructure SARS once again, ban stop-and-search raids, and require officers to wear uniforms with full identification. A federal human-rights desk was also created to address violations. But between January 2017 and May 2020, at least 82 cases of torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial executions by SARS officers were documented by Amnesty International.

We call for a conscious programme of healing for victims of the frosty relations and distrust between the police and citizens. We believe that the leadership of the police should recognise that this is a trying time for policing and make efforts to mend fences and rebuild trust and confidence in the police. The leadership must recognise that the force was not popular with citizens and that the fallouts from the #End SARS protests worsened the situation. The reform of the police must commence in earnest with a strong commitment to improving police-citizen relations. It is essential for reform success, intelligence gathering and for the effective implementation of the community policing  initiative.

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