Pastor RUGA’s Community Policing: Too Little, Too Late, Won’t Fly! By Bayo Oluwasanmi
Laolu Akande, media aide to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (Pastor RUGA) in a statement issued on behalf of Osinbajo said over N13bn has been approved by the Federal Government to kick start community policing in Nigeria.
Arguably, Osinbajo is the most learned member of Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet. Osinbajo has an impressive resume. He earned his LLB degree from University of Lagos. He attended Nigerian Law School for the mandatory one-year professional training. He obtained his Master of Laws degree (LLM) from the prestigious London School of Economics.
With such outstanding credentials, we expect Osinbajo to be the guiding light of Buhari’s despotic regime. Rather, Osinbajo has failed to use his intellect to bring about innovative and creative ideas that will transform Nigeria into a true democracy that will benefit poor Nigerians. For example, the Tradermoni for poor market women that he champions is a disaster. The N-power he brags so much about is a colossal failure.
The community policing he is trying to midwife, will end up disastrously like Tradermoni, n-Power, and the insane RUGA policy. Records show no government initiative in Nigeria has been rightly conceived, designed, and executed. Nigerian Air (which I sarcastically refer to as Nigerian Hare), Ajaokuta Iron and Steel Industry, Operation Feed the Nation, Green Revolution, two million jobs every two years, two million public housing units every two years promised by Buhari regime, to mention a few, were either stillborn, or moribund. The projects have proved reliable legal conduits to siphon money.
The community policing envisaged by Pastor RUGA and his empty headed Fulani bureaucrats is to throw N13bn at Nigeria Police Force (NPF) that will miraculously transform it to a community policing. It is too late, too little, and it won’t fly! To create a real community policing, the following must be done:
The NPF must be dismantled, scrapped, and proscribed. Each local and state government will set up its own police. Community policing means police working in partnership with the community to address local public safety problems and make organizational changes to support these efforts. Why is it so impossible for the sickos ruling Nigeria to do things right? Why can’t they follow examples of advanced progressive democracies? Why? Without local and state police, there will be no effective and efficient community policing.
Three elements are crucial to community policing: community partnership, problem solving, and organizational transformation. The organizational structure of NPF won’t make for organizational transformation. It will not allow community partnership because very likely, an uneducated, ignorant Fulani will be the commissioner of police for instance in a Yoruba state who cannot speak Yoruba language, who doesn’t know anything about Yoruba culture, tradition, history, and unfamiliar with the neighbourhoods. In the absence of community partnership, there’s no problem solving.
The NPF as an ancient relic of colonialism, cannot be metamorphosed into community policing by mere pronouncement. The NPF moribund outfit is not structured to accommodate common implementations of community policing which includes:
. Relying on community based crime prevention by utilizing civilian education, neighbourhood watch, etc.
. Re-structuralizing of patrol by emphasizing proactive techniques such as foot patrol.
. Increased officer accountability to civilians they are supposed to serve.
. Decentralizing police authority, allowing more discretion amongst low-ranking officers, and more initiative expected from them.
Pastor RUGA knows very well that the community policing initiative by his Fulani masters is a ploy, a ruse, and unnecessary distraction. He knows full well that the Fulanis hate the modern police system made up of local and state police. Centralized NPF guarantees Fulanis the control of the NPF with a Fulani as inspector general of police. I watched Muhammed Adamu the IGP on Channels TV as he struggles laboriously without success to explain how N13bn will be spent on community policing.
The N13bn will be shared among the ruling thieves. At the end of the day, there will be nothing that resembles community policing. The NPF will still remain a defective, centralized, and mismanaged police outfit run by primitive Fulani IGP. As usual, the proposed community policing will end up as a ridiculous sham!
