Still on community policing

Ideally, the issue of security of life and property ought to be approached through comprehensive devolution and decentralisation in a federal state like Nigeria. There is simply no logic in centralizing the security arrangement and leaving local communities without anything to call their own. Elsewhere, the security of life and property takes off from wards and counties to states and the country as a whole. This issue was brought into bold relief recently with the passing out of a 1250-strong constabulary force at the police academy in Lagos. At the graduation ceremony, the desperate need to assist the regular police force with intelligence gathering was highlighted.

In many states of the country, the security situation is fast deteriorating. Banditry, kidnapping and armed robbery are the order of the day in many states. Worse still, the country is now regularly assaulted by the ugly phenomenon of mobs lynching and setting suspected kidnappers and armed robbers on fire. Sadly, nothing is being done to stop the jungle justice despite the negative consequences on the society. Starkly put, lynching by angry mobs could readily become a tool for settling personal and political scores: all that would be required is a false alarm.

It is certain that community policing, if managed properly, will bode well for the country. Many of the security lapses in the country will be addressed if people are protected by their own in their respective localities. If anything, the local people know one another and can easily tell when they have been infiltrated by strangers. Intelligence gathering usually becomes easier to effect and the people are thus safer. Community policing is about bringing security to the local level and getting the people to be active participants in their own safety. But the Nigerian government has over the years tended to approach security from the national level even though the federal system of government does not generally work out that way.

To say the least, successive governments failed to appreciate the fact that security of life and property is a function of trust and familiarity. They reposed absolute confidence in the centralised  and unitary policing system in the country instead of allowing community, state and regional policing to take root.  To be sure, the present community policing initiative floated by the Nigeria Police Force headquarters is welcome, particularly in view of the security challenges confronting the country, but it is still a product of the centralisation that has hobbled governance in general and security in particular over the years. There must be police formations wholly owned and controlled by states and regions.

State governments have to fashion their own police formations and complement the efforts of the NPF which is mired in crisis of distrust and inefficiency. But that is not all: they must demonstrate greater commitment to the security of life and property. We have not found the general disposition to the raison d’etre of a State satisfactory.

 

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