Policemen threaten strike over transfer to troubled states: I am not in the business of joining issues with any contributor or else where. However, making spurious allegation is not only misleading, it is dangerous in this heightened season of security challenges. By all means, present facts as you know or has witnessed them. To tar the Police with hearsay beer-palour talk is without justification. The Police as an organization in modern Nigeria has huge faults and incompetence at its heart (like other sections of the polity); however, making wild and spurious accusations will not help to improve it. I say this as one who is an ardent critic of the Police. Lastly, the transfered officers should be honourable, and honour their new postings; the officers they are replacing have been in that intense operational zone for a minimum of six months (or years); it is operationally correct to detail or deploy fresh officers to bring new valve to the efforts to checkmate the madness of insecurity in that zone. The officers they are replacing are Ibos, Yorubas, Urhobos, Hausas, Ijaws, Ibibios, Efiks, Tiv, Anaangs, Fulanis, Kwales, Edo, Igbira, Afemai, Nupe, Ishan etc etc etc. They all have emotional commitments: wives, kids and sundry. Similarly, the Police authorities must begin to put their acts together: Police College Ikeja was a depressing indictment on the Police Management Team - and the fact that the Nigerian Army Engineering Corps was drafted to effect repairs/upgrades was even more telling; where was or where is the Police Works Department, headed by no less a Senior officer in the rank of a CP, AIG or even a DIG, entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining Police facilities (Barracks, Colleges/Institutions and Police Offices )? Agreed the Police allocation is not up to scratch, however, how is the little allocation spent? How be it that officers spend disproportionate time wasting away on one rank cadre? Whilst other sister Services pay promptly at the end of January every year, what accounts for Police officers waiting two to three months to get their January wages? The Police Management Team must urgently put her house in order. The current IGP is a hard-worker, nonetheless, he must throw everthing into the works to correct the many fault-lines in the NPF for Nigerians to take him and the organisation he superintend seriously.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 21:02:18 +0000