- It is one of our nation’s big acts of shame
At the budget defence session at the Senate, Suleiman Abba, Inspector-General of Police (IGP), represented by Mamman Tsafe, his deputy in-charge of logistics and supplies, bemoaned the N5billion proposed for police vehicle maintenance and fuelling in the 2015 budget. He said the police required N24billion to effectively discharge its operational and other salient functions.
The IGP at the session described the proposed sum as ‘grossly inadequate’ and we perhaps share his sentiment on this issue. The available statistics: The nation, according to the IGP as at today has 332,756 policemen; 6,693 traffic wardens; 11,999 civilian workers; and 3,756 police stations spread across the country. To make the Nigeria Police Force work effectively, government must adequately fund the institution. As things are, it is not sufficiently funded given the facts available on what was budgeted and what was released for spending. The funding of the force is not only decreasing despite its increasing workforce, but more worrisome is the expose on budgetary shortfalls and the fact that the ‘overhead and capital budget proposed did not reflect the actual need of the police.’
For instance, out of the ‘N56 billion overhead proposed by the police in 2014, only N8 billion was approved out of which N5 billion was released. For capital budget, of a proposed N218 billion, N7 billion was approved and only N3 billion was released.’ In 2015, the budget estimate of the force is reportedly put at N329 billion, with the following breakdown: capital expenditure – N17 billion; overhead cost – N5 billion; and personnel cost – N306 billion. Judging from the antecedent of police budget shortfalls, it is almost certain that precise amount for each overhead would not be released to the force, which in itself portends danger to policing in the country.
Rather than help resolve this nagging challenge, it is bad that the Senator Paulinus Nwagu, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs, in flagrant insensitivity to the country’s poor state of policing, in his annotations, advised the police leadership ‘to seek ways of generating internal revenue to augment what has been budgeted for its operations … going by falling oil prices and attendant cut in the budget of all government organisations.’
What we gleaned from the outcome of that Senate committee appearance of the IGP is that the Federal Government has become overwhelmed by the burden of funding the institution. What services do the police render to the public from which they could make legitimate revenue? Is it from being peace enforcer or from the duty of guaranteeing safety of lives and property? This move can only throw the already rotten police into irredeemable corruption. This is not good enough, especially with the general elections barely two weeks away.
It is only in this part of the world that we have policemen, who while on operational duty drive in rickety trucks and jalopies all over town, and getting money to fuel and maintain them from bribes collected from motorists and criminals. Consequent upon this, the policemen are usually negligent in the use of vehicles given to them and a need for re-orientation becomes inevitable in this regard.
In most states where the police are doing well, it is because the state governments have taken it upon themselves to provide for their needs even though such is not part of their constitutional responsibilities. We call on the Federal Government to quickly accede to demands for state police, having failed in its constitutional duty of providing for this important institution of state.
