Criminals As Law Enforcers

The detection of a criminal suspect among recruits at the Nigerian Police College in Kaduna State few weeks ago was as disheartening as it was frightening. According to the Commandant of the College, Sanusi Rufai, a gang of robbers arrested in Abuja, in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, identified the suspect as its member.

The unnamed unscrupulous applicant was among the 25 people accused of sundry allegations, including falsification of secondary school certificates and age. Beyond the strange discovery, there are arguably many of such criminally-minded elements who have found their way into the rank and file of the Nigerian Police and, by extension, other security agencies in the country.

This, alongside many atrocious cases against the bad eggs among them, is the real reason the public has continued to view the police through a very dirty prism. It is more depressing that these criminals would someday bear arms and be charged with the responsibility to protect lives and property. It equally provides a veritable insight into how police-certified arms and ammunition have persistently found their way into the hands of men of the underworld.

Such unpardonable laxity is not peculiar to our security institutions alone, but every other sector, including the civil service where complaints about ghost workers are rampant.

The situation is a sad reflection of a country that is bedevilled by corruption, official ineptitude and misplaced priorities. Ours is a joke of a country; a bazaar that benefits only the cults of power-wielders in politics, business, religion, among others, at the expense of its citizens’ welfare, development and general security. It cannot be gainsaid that adequate security and economic development are mutually inclusive. Besides, investors would not want to invest in a crime-infested country where their personal security and that of their businesses are entrusted in the hands of criminals masquerading as law enforcers.

This obviously reinforces the urgency for the federal government to have a centralised bio-metric data as it is done in advanced climes. Rather than have a functional National Identity bio-metrics data, the country is replete with its duplication by various agencies of government, including the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC;  National Communication Commission, NCC; National Population Commission; Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, and Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS.

The National Identity Card scheme has been bastardized to serve as conduit pipes for corrupt politicians and pubilc officials to funnel the nation’s resources into their private pockets. In 2003, under former President Olusegun Obasanjo , the project was awarded at a princely sum of N38 billion without any tangible results amid messy revelations of embezzlement and fraud by those who handled it.

Yet, the incumbent administration announced last year that it would spend another N30 billion on a similar project.

Sad as it may be, the political establishment and their acolytes must understand that it is in their enlightened self-interest to protect their loot by providing adequate security in the country and, by so doing, protect the impoverished and oppressed masses. There is no auspicious time to carry out a genuine data registration of everyone than now!