24th November, 2011
Nigeria Police is known to be highly challenged when it comes to welfare and conducive working environment for officers, but none of the police stations across the country can be compared with the Mpape Police Divisional headquarters in Mpape, a satellite town in Abuja, the country’s capital.
The division uses four discarded shipping containers painted in police colours as operational base. One of the containers is the office of the Divisional Police Officer and Chief Superintendent of Police, Mr. Musa Garba.
Two of the three remaining containers are used by the 93 police officers and the traffic control officers in the station as their office while a broken down patrol vehicle at a corner of the police station used to serve as the only one in use. Now they have none.
“As you can see there is no block building. The whole police station is made up of just four containers,†the Nigeria Police Watch quoted the DPO as saying during a tour of the station as part of the annual Police Stations Visitors Week (PSVW) in countries across five continents with the aim of improving police-public relations.
“This place initially served as an outpost but since it was upgraded about three years ago nothing has changed.
“We currently have only one non-serviceable vehicle which is presently grounded. This is what we have to make do with.â€
The station is also reported to have just one obsolete computer in one of the containers serving as the administrative block and the computer has no internet access.
The fourth container which has no light fittings and adequate ventilation is the place where male detainees are cramped up, according to the report, which also stated that female suspects and street urchins are kept in a rundown make-shift wooden structure constructed into a police counter and charge room.
“This does not qualify as a standard police station. It is just disheartening seeing the cell and how they are packed like sardine.
“No person, suspect or even criminal, should be kept in this kind of place. The conditions are terrible for human beings to live in. Even for the police officers, it is unacceptable.
This is really bad,†Umari Ayim, a lawyer and gender activist and first time visitor to the station said.
The Mpape Police station, the report said, has no running water or drainage. It relies on containers donated by Julius Berger Construction Company years ago.
At the Maitama Police Divisional headquarters also in Abuja, it was revealed that as many as 278 of the station’s total 397 officers are security guards to top government officials and politicians; leaving 119 police officers to insufficiently provide security to the larger community the report said.
“We are handicapped as we have insufficient number of personnel. Almost all the VIPs live here and 60 to 70 percent of the policemen deployed to their homes on guard duties are from here,†the station’s Divisional Police Officer, Hayatu Usman, a Chief Superintendent of Police, told foreign nationals and Nigerian visitors.
— Eromosele Ebhomele