Victor Ezeja
Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA), has condemned the current structure of the Nigerian Police Force, saying youths from the Southern part of the country would not have interest in joining if it is not reformed and profesionalised to legaly reflect federal character principles in its top hierarchy.
The civil rights advocacy group stated this in reaction to a statement credited to the Force Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba, that the Nigeria Police extended the online registration in the ongoing 2021 police constable recruitment to Saturday, January 22, 2022, in order to allow Southerners apply, “to ensure equal opportunity and even spread of the applications.”
Mba had said that out of the 81,005 applications received nationwide as of January 7, 2022, only 1,404 applications which is less than 2% of the total applications were received from the five states in the South East.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelHURIWA equally charged the National Assembly to quickly rediscover its parliamentary independence, political will and the will to serve Nigeria, and amend relevant sections of the extant constitution to make room for comprehensive police reforms including the creation of state police.
In a statement signed by the group’s national coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, it alleged that the present structure of the Nigeria Police Force is skewed and only favours the Northern Muslisms, and also advised the force’s hierarchy to conduct a thorough in-house cleansing to weed out the bad eggs amongst the police force that are usually posted to Southern States to set up Cash extortion rackets as checkpoints.
It noted that as far as such professional aberrations are allowed to fester within the hierachy of the force many right thinking youths from the South won’t make themselves available for the police recruitment.
HURIWA also countered President Muhammadu Buhari’s position on state police, alluding that such stance equally contributes in making the Southern youths to lose interest in enlisting in the force.
“We think the current President has unleash significant verbal harm and made toxic opinion which dangerously imperils the institutional image of the Nigeria police force by making public comments rejecting state police which goes to show that northern moslem section of Nigeria is comfortable with the skewed leadership structure of the Nigeria Police Which favours the North.”
“We think that president Buhari’s opposition to any sort of police reforms is one of the fundamental factors which have made a lot of Southerners not to come forward for enlistment into the police force since the status quo means that only police operatives from the Moslem North will get to the peak of their career whereas Southern Christians are alienated and frustrated out in their prime.”
“All that an observer needs to do to know that the present day National Police is Northernised is to listen to public conversations of top or middle ranking police officers. The language of public conversations amongst Nigeria Police is Hausa. How can you assure non- Hausa speakers that what we have is Nigeria Police And not Northern Police?”, HURIWA asks.
HURIWA also demanded the reformation of the near-moribund and hijacked Police Service Commission to ensure that they discharge their mandates optimally and desist from the current modus operandi of incessantly indulging in skewed promotions of Police personnel which substantially graphically signposts to most Southerners that the police is not Nigeria but a Northern Police Force or better still an Hausa/Fulani Police.
The rights group further demanded that the Inspector General of Police should make serious “commitments to Nigerianise the Nigeria Police Force so that competent and qualified Southerners who have the passion for law enforcement career can be free to enlist into the Nigeria Police even as the lasting solution to Nigeria’s Policing nightmares is the setting up of functional State police to operate side by side with a very lean National police as the Americans have with Federal Bureau of Investigation and the various State policing institutions such as the New York Police,” HURIWA stated, concluding that “rebuilding the Nigeria Police Force is of imperative need.”
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Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with seven years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication.
