Nigeria is a country where leaders plan without figures – Osayande

FEC meets only to award contracts

By Ozioruva Aliu

PARRY Osayande is a retired Deputy Inspector General of Police, DIG and former chairman of the Police Service Commission, PSC. In this interview, he spoke on the state of the Nigerian police, how it could be reformed, expectations from Nigeria’s politicians and other issues.  

What is your opinion on the recently introduced dress code for the police?

Though the 1999 constitution was imposed on Nigerians, the same does not give the IGP the constitutional right to wake up one morning and say ‘baba (President Buhari) has approved the use of hijab as part of the uniform for certain category of police personnel.’ That is a Muslim way of dressing. We call it Nigerian Police not Bini Police, Hausa Police or Igbo police, not Muslim Police or Catholic Police but the Nigerian Police. This decision is wrong and I am surprised that Nigerians are keeping quiet.

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The Nigerian constitution is the supreme law of this land, it is the highest law.

There is Section 27 of the 1999 constitution that sets up the Nigerian Police Council.  The Police Council is a body made up of the President as the chairman, and all the governors of the 36 states as members. The chairman of the Police Service Commission is a member as well as the Inspector General of Police. Their function is the administration of the Nigerian Police and the administration includes the approval of uniform for use by the Nigerian Police, so a part can never be equal to a whole. That decision is a breach of the constitution.

If the Attorney-General does not know his job it is unfortunate. There are people, who can teach him because he cannot just take us for granted. The IG has no powers to make such a pronouncement; nobody can give what he doesn’t have. To alter a button in the police uniform must be approved by the Police Council.

I was chairman of the Police Service Commission for five years, the Police Council did not meet one day; for over 20 years now, the council has not met and then you are talking of the Nigerian Police and you are buying guns, are you going to shoot antelopes? Instead of modernizing the police they are not doing that.

There are certain things you can use in having an effective police organization; one is trainable manpower and that is not there because they have bastardized recruitment, they bring in their brothers, cousins, etc  who are not qualified. Then you need transportation. They said that we have  774 local government areas in Nigeria, the number of vehicles that the police have is not up to 800, how do you expect them to do well, is that policing? The least paid police in the whole world are the Nigerian Police yet a senator is getting 2.8 million dollars every year in Nigeria. 

We also do not have communication, if you put men on road block which is supposed to be an emergency outfit maybe to check an immediate crime, there should be a control room fitted with communication gadgets and then police patrol vehicles fitted with communication gadgets so the control room controls all of them and then they report to the control room. These are not there.

There is no close circuit television anywhere, not even in Abuja, not anywhere in Benin City. Go and murder anybody in a street in London, they will go back and play the circuit camera until the person is caught

You see state governors buy vehicles for the police without any communication facility. Are they going to use them to carry yams? You know how powerful communication is in combating crime all over the world.

When I was chairman of the PSC, because of our record, the FBI offered to sell to us some equipment that we can use to locate kidnappers wherever they are, at least three metres to where they are. Did they buy them? People are being slaughtered every day, needless deaths.

No schools, our universities are closed, no employment, we have over 100 universities, yet there are no jobs and then you want to fight crime? The people you have trained don’t have anything to do; a hungry man is an angry man and an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.

Who do we blame for these deficiencies?

Who do you blame, do we have a government? Democracy is government of the people by the people and for the people but do they report to Nigerians, who are the people? What they are doing? The leaders have already taken Nigerians for granted and are exploring our weaknesses and the poverty of the whole country. Parents will borrow money to train their children; they will pass out and after that, no job.

What is the way forward for the country security wise?

Dismantle all the politicians and bring the young ones who have ideas because these people have no vision. They are clueless, bloody rogues, and are taking all of us for granted. They have no clue to our problems so let them leave the stage for the upcoming ones. People have been hungry for four years and when it is time for election, you buy rice and start distributing. Is that not an insult? And our people will go and line up and vote because there is no education of the mind. They are just deceiving them.

What are your thoughts ahead of 2023 polls because the young ones you talked about don’t have the money?

Who are the moneybags? Are they going to vote for themselves? It is the voters who determine their election. I went to Singapore, I bought the book by Lee Kuan Yew on how he uplifted Singapore from a Third World country to a First World country within 20 years, you go there, you won’t find a piece of paper on the streets yet you won’t see a policeman. The journey he went through, he reduced it to writing, I bought it and gave it to a head of state, I regretted it, I wish I could recover the book (laughter).

What kind of president are you expecting since we operate a democracy that ensures periodic change of power?

What president? They just go there to steal and to collect salaries or to go and be a big man, to decorate their movement with policemen carrying guns. This is the only country on earth where they blow sirens for prisoners. The queen of England whose people invented siren don’t blow siren so when you are talking politics, we want people who want to serve that this thing here, that the country is here today and this is not where it should be I want you to vote for me and after four years this is where it will be but these people have no idea. 

Now what they do in Abuja is that they hold executive meetings every Wednesday, what do they do? They go there and award contracts that could have been done by permanent secretaries. This is a country where our leaders plan without figures and that is the plan for failure because population changes every day yet our leaders don’t know our population.

What do you think should be done to bring about police reform?

Crime is part and parcel of humanity. I have a report on police reform. Go and ask Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari what they have done with the report. When I was chairman of the PSC, there was the presidential committee on reformation of the Nigerian police which I headed, what did they do with it? The police are underfunded, underpaid to a point of criminality and Obasanjo did a lot of havoc because he proliferated security services in the country. Whereas the constitution says there shall be only one police organisation but now we have FRSC, EFCC, ICPC and others so the money that should have been used to service the police, you now spread it to other people that are doing the same job. 

This is the only country among the Commonwealth of Nations where there are more than five organizations with different names doing the same job. Now, we are talking of Abba Kyari, I asked you how many governors have been investigated and are being prosecuted that have not seen the light of the day, they are not less than 10, is that not alarming? 

If they ask me to come and reorganize the force, I will ask for one year and the first thing is to dismantle the entire police force and start afresh. Give them a good salary. Have you ever seen where our police men stay? You have dehumanised them and they want to assert that they are now human beings that is why they take on other human beings the way they do.

I led a police unit to Namibia in 1990, they brought 41 forces from across the world including Germany, Norway, Great Britain, Nigeria and other countries to go and nurture Namibia into independence, the Nigerian Police was one of the 41 forces and it was headed by a Commissioner of Police from Ireland. Under the auspices of the United Nations, you have an average two and a half police to one vehicle, policemen including our own were treated like human beings and they were paid on UN standard, they had equipment to work with, they lived in decent environments so their attitude to work changed.

When we were leaving, the then Namibian President, Sam Nujoma invited me to his house for dinner and made a request that I should please prevail on my home government, General Babangida then to allow the Nigerian police to remain after the departure of the other 40 forces so as to help train their police.

 But I thought, if we allow them to remain on N8000 a month, then we are going to export road blocks to that place so I wrote to the head of state through the Inspector General of Police that we have performed very well and we were adjudged the best performing police organization among the 41 and this is the request by the Namibian government and the only way we can carry it out successfully is to look for money and pay them the same salary that United Nation was paying them which was 2,000 dollars a month. Babangida upheld it but it was not implemented.

Here, because they are poorly paid, poorly housed, harassed, the media used them as cartoons to give appetite to thieves, so they resorted to violence to fight back so either we continue like this and Nigeria will sink or we dismantle it.

What is your view on the secessionists’ agitations across the country?

What they want is reorganization of the country and you are oppressing them yet the constitution says there is freedom of expression.

 Over three years ago, people said these bandits in the North are terrorists and they are just declaring them terrorist now. You open all borders to the world and being the most prosperous country in West Africa, everybody must come here to eke a living. What they want is reorganization of the country.