Police Trust Fund: Challenges and imperatives

The Nigeria Police Force has been in the news, in the past one-year or so - this time, not for the usual ‘bad’ reasons but for its tremendous effort towards fighting crime, insecurity, and being more effective at policing. The current Inspection General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris who many Nigerians have described his approach as professional and forward-looking since his appointment appears to be making headway in his effort to reforming the Nigeria Police Force to meet international best practice. To sustain these efforts, requires a robust, more reliable funding mechanism, a 21st Century policing practice, and a better leadership are veritable head start for a comprehensive reform. What this piece argues about is that a timely passage of the two separate Police Trust Fund (PTF) related bills can better be achieved and realized by the convening of roundtable of stakeholders - harmonizing their views/positions - and the subsequent charting of a new policing doctrine.

In this time of worrisome crime and insecurity in our dear country, securing the nation becomes everyone’s concern: the government, stakeholders and a greater participation of every citizen - the least being awareness on security. We are confronted with two broad security challenges: first, is the nationwide threats, crimes, and violence at one end and the second is the challenges of the Nigeria Police Force itself in terms of its capacity, attitude and the know-how in carrying out its law enforcement and constitutional mandates. With new threats, demand the requirement for new approaches along with the provision of the right resources such as funding, state of the art equipment and training. Naturally, the current circumstance will also requires existing Police Act to be reviewed (which was last amended in 1968) as well as new ones to be crafted and enacted promptly to guide operatives and professionals in that area.

Despite the rise in threat levels across boards and the challenge of resources, the IGP with his men has made bold efforts and recorded modest achievements. These include the activation of advance intelligence facilities presently in limited locations, establishment of joint operations centres, highway and aerial patrols, and raids on criminal suspects including houses of the high and the mighty in the society. While boosting of morale and training of personnel are receiving greater attention, a public-complaint style service - the recently rebranded Public Complaint Rapid Response Unit - has been emplaced and empowered to interface with the general public. consequently, police personnel founding wanting, particularly the corrupt ones are being purged out of the system as the IGP is well known by his men to have zero-tolerance for corruption and indolence.

These measures have been quite effective as crime rates in some categories are reducing in the country. For instance, according to the police official records, incidence of kidnapping – reported cases - nationwide decreased from 1,830 in 2016 to 291 circa June 2017. The most spectacular of the police operations in recent times is the widely reported apprehension of “Evans”, the armed robberturned billionaire kidnapper which involve a trail to Ghana in order to identify the suspect’s network. The reform efforts so far were accomplished despite a paltry release of less than 30% of budgetary allocation to the Federal police in 2016; how much more if funding were to be higher and sustainable to aid the expansion of its operations.

For this piece, here is a survey of 2017/2018 budgetary allocation, in nominal terms across selected notable Cities and some African countries, Nigeria inclusive; although (these selected countries/ cities), they all have high crime rate and in some cases, terrorism or close to territories with all such in common – all with higher populations - and that of selected cities in some advanced countries – with lower population. Using very recent currency conversion rates (US dollar-based for easier comparison), the 2017/2018 budget for the Nigerian Police was USD54,828,829 (country’s population is estimated as 188 million); the police-dominant Kenya’s Department for Interior allocation was USD1,209,232,200 (country’s population is 46.05 million); and South Africa Police Service of South Africa had a budget of USD6,525,000,000 (country population is 53.5 million). On the other hand, New York with a population of 8.5 million, had its New York Police Department (NYPD) budget of USD5.2 billion for FY2017; that of Chicago Police Department (CPD) was USD1,493,969,321 (city population is 9.4 million); and finally, that of the London Metropolitan Police in UK was USD802,920,720 (city population is 8.7 million).

From the above, Nigeria with a population estimate of 188 million has the least budget for its police. This comparison becomes even worse if it is considered that just USD16,448,649 - that is, 30% of the budget - was actually released to the police in 2016. The implication of this is quite grim on staff welfare, training, equipment, recruitment and in general operations. Any wonder why an average Nigeria prefers not to seek redress at the police station for the rationale of not to incur personal monetary cost – because the Nigeria police is being under funded. Even criminals are likely to factor the fact that police is challenged with funding and as such cannot carry out, for instance, 24 hours patrol in some areas; hence it becomes a matter of timing for criminals to operate in any area after the police retreats. “Robbers just finished robbing and left and police are just coming” is a well familiar line of narrative in Nigeria.

A recent example is the Forensic Laboratory projects in Lagos and Abuja. Not much or serious has been heard about them talk more of the project’s expansion into other parts of the country. But the other foreign police in our study have thriving forensic laboratory services.

This is not to say that there are no efforts to address police funding needs but results the far less significant with growing threat levels. Such bolstering efforts are the two Police Trust Fund Bills undergoing the legislative processes in the two chambers of the National Assembly. Unlike some MDAs such as defense with powerful voice capable to secure more federal allocation and that of MDAs with developmentrelated projects of which, at least five members of the National Assembly of each state can most likely push for significant projects in their respective states, the Nigeria Police Force in this regard can be likened to an ‘orphan’ with bleak future-which is pointer to the inherent political dimension of resource allocation.

Finally, the ideas and observations in this piece, and that of stakeholders and wellmeaning Nigerians can best be considered with a position arrived at in a roundtable. Such event will engender consensus, rally support and ultimately create actionable voice that will lead the onerous task of interfacing with lawmakers, stakeholders and experts for the timely passage of the police funding bills and other related matters. A funding mechanism for the Nigerian Police Force that allows for a judicious utilization of fund - one that is compliant with the Public Procurement Act and that can be transparent as well as accountable - is not too much to ask for, as citizens of our great country.

Prof. Al-Mustapha, Ussiju Medaner is a legislative researcher and analyst.

Nigeria with a population estimate of 188 million has the least budget for its police. This comparison becomes even worse if it is considered that just USD16,448,649 - that is, 30% of the budget - was actually released to the police in 2016. The implication of this is quite grim on staff welfare, training, equipment, recruitment and in general operations