•Says seniority, Competence should count in  appointment of IGP
•Service years should not be extended
•State Police is the answer

By Emma Nnadozie, Group Crime Editor

He was the Commissioner of Police when dread cult gangs and other deadly criminals were holding the
city of excellence, Lagos at the jugular. As soon as he came on board, notorious cult gangs like the badoo boys, Awawa boys, 1 million boys etc, were terrorizing the city almost on a daily basis.  However, he succeeded in fighting them to a standstill thereby reducing crime rate in the state. Imohimi Edgar who later retired as an Assistant Inspector General of Police was cornered at the highbrow Lekki area of Lagos where he reluctantly opened up on his activities during his area and other issues about the Nigeria Police Force. Excerpts: 

Critically analyze the security situation when you were serving in Lagos and what is presently obtainable? 

Well, if I am to be objective and truthful, there are differences presently.   This is not to say that the officers and men of the command are not doing their best but, this is not peculiar to Lagos alone.  It is like this issue of insecurity is prevalent almost in every part of the country.   Talking about Lagos where I served earlier as a commissioner,, during my time, security was better.   I remember when I came onboard, I promised Lagosians that within the first three months, I will reduce crime rate by well over 60% and collectively we did that.   I am no longer in the service so I cannot give you very reliable statistics. However, I stay in Lagos. I work in Lagos. I have my private business here in Lagos. I have family members in Lagos.  I have friends in Lagos and they call me. I also read the papers and I am conversant with daily news as they break.   
There is need for the police and the government to take another holistic look at the security architecture in the state.  First and foremost, to restore back, community policing that was introduced in this state and was very effective. Why did I talk about community policing? It is because that was the center piece of my strategy as police commissioner in Lagos.
And you know that when you talk about community policing, you are talking about in simple terms, community involvement in policing and telling the people that it is their responsibility to police themselves, putting forward intelligence gathering and intelligence dissemination in the fore front of your policing activities.  I don’t know whether some of these activities and strategies are still in place but when I was the Commissioner of Police, we usually had regular inter- agency meetings and operations and what we did then was to crime- map the entire Lagos state and take them based on areas that were more crime prone. Regularly, every weekend, we made sure we pulled resources, not only from the police but from other para-military agencies like the military also.

And this was facilitated by the Lagos government in terms of allowances and other logistics support. We also made sure that there were no areas in Lagos that was unoccupied.   Black spots, red zones, other areas of interest were regularly policed, raided.  And the first thing that should be done to secure a state is take over all unoccupied d spaces.  Once you leave unoccupied spaces un-policed, then at a point, the insecurity snowballs out of control. So, I don’t know if this is still going on.   We also had a joint patrol both at the divisional, area commands and command levels.   In fact, there were times when at the command level, we pulled patrol vehicles from all divisions to patrol in convoys not only to show strength but also to ensure that people are aware that the police are on ground and alert.  We also relied heavily on intelligence and that is where the state government comes in. In those days, as younger officers, we used to know that our Divisional Police Officers had intelligence funds. And these funds were used to buy informants, gather intel for credible and even non credible sources because once you gather information, it is now left for you to filter the information and turn it into intelligence. But I don’t know whether there is still that support from the stage government to the command in terms of provision of necessary supports like logistics to increase the intelligence capability of the command. This is because, one of the major principles of community policing is proactive policing. I have never believed in reactive policing.

When an incident happened and everybody is racing armed there, given assurance that it will not repeat itself. No, no! You must try as much as possible to prevent it from happening. I am not saying that once in a while, it will not happen because you cannot prevent all crimes from taking place. But if you are proactive, and you can only be proactive if you have good intelligence network, there were lots of serious crime issues we had in Lagos, that we dealt with based on cooperation, based on synergy, based on intelligence. 

You were able to dismantle cult gangs, criminal hideouts and a whole lot of them. Unfortunately some of them are back now. Can you delve deep into what was the magic wand? 1 million boys, Badoo boys, all these deadly cult gangs, like in Ajegunle now, you have cult killings in excess.. 

 Let me start from the beginning, a police officer can never give what he does not have, and that is when training comes in. Let me use myself as an example. As a younger officer, I was DPO Ikeja then and some of my colleagues who were DPO’s didn’t want to leave their seat for further training.  I don’t know how they went about it; they were able to remove their names from the training program. I remembered that a few of us were taken by DFID, the British, and some other senior officers that were trained by the British in England on community policing. I was taken to Awka in Anambra state for a two months training.  Thereafter, we moved to Jos for another lengthy period of training.  Then Lagos, before we did the practical. So, by the time I now rose through the ranks and became Deputy Commissioner, Operations and Commissioner of Police, I was well grounded in principles, the strategy of community policing.

Immediately I became the CP, the first thing I did was to initiate 22 town hall meetings. In those town hall meetings, everybody was there. The traditional ruler in charge of that area or the Baale as the case may be, all the stakeholders – the informal policing sector, because I identified that your biggest partners in policing are those that we term informal policing sector, the vigilante -some call them social cultural groups, OPC and other such groups. You also have in some rural areas, the hunters, the traditionalists, the fishermen.  
 These are groups you must identify and include in your security strategy for a state because they are your eyes. There is no way the police can be everywhere. You can only know what is going on in certain parts of the state.  If you have cooperation, If you have eyes there and if you have seamless communication. What I have noticed now with this set of younger officers coming up is that they are too aloof from the people. Policing is about the people. And it is grassroot item, you are not supposed to sit down in your office and say you are policing.

Who are you policing? You should be out there relating with the people, holding meetings with them, finding out their security problems and fashioning out strategies to solve those problems.   That in itself is the principle of community policing. But, I don’t know, I doubt if that is what is going on now. And if is going on, it is taking back stage.   It is not being strengthened. I expect that it should be strengthened. 

In the face of complains of logistic, does it mean you were getting enough and managing whatever came into your hand?

Let me say this and say it very clearly, there is no time in the history of Nigeria police force, either before now or in the future, that our logistics demand can ever be met by all tiers of government. Policing is a very costly business.  It has huge cost implications and the reasons being that the technology involved in policing, the concept involved, and the nature of crimes are changing. As a force, you must move ahead with such changes. Now we are talking about using technology to fight crime. We are talking about using artificial intelligence to fight crime; we are talking about using other community policing techniques to fight crime and all these things cost money. Now, what I did when I was CP, Number one: It is very important you have a very cordial working relationship with the governor and its executive. Yes, you get support from your IGP as police commissioner, you get support from the federal but it’s not enough. And I must say, it is far below expectations and that is why I keep wondering all the time when I am told that there is approved budgetary allocation to the police. When I am told that a security Trust Fund has been passed into law and it is operational, the reality of their existence and effectiveness does not reflect on the field. And the situation now on ground is that most Police commissioners on ground look to their governors for help. 

What is your view about community policing?

Well, because I told you earlier on that am a student of community policing I don’t consider it unhealthy. Since I became a chief superintendents of police, I started to question the structure of the Nigeria police force and when I mean structure, I am talking of the present federal control of the police. And I must say very clearly, it is high time, if we need to legislate, if we need to tinker with some aspects of our constitution, to make room for the creation of state police speedily.  We must do so, we will be deceiving ourselves if we think that the present structure of the police force where we have an IGP and his lieutenants in Abuja, controlling both operationally and physically, all policing activities in the country, no it will not work. It would have worked then. In fact, the period when such worked we didn’t even have the federal structure; we had regional government, so we had regional police. 

But they said we are not matured, for state police because of abuses. 
I disagree, totally! 

Why?

It’s just like saying that the country is not matured or ripe for democracy. It is a process.  There will be mistakes. We will grow, it is a country, all the country that you see in the world that have provisions in their laws for state police, community police, airport police, university police,  county police, and all that, at one time and the other, they had Federal policing structure but they came to realize that such policing systems was not longer achieving the desired result. So, they sat together. I remember community policing was brought together by a group of about six countries; Great Britain, the USA, Canada France, Germany and China.  They came together and said look, our traditional policing methods are not working and then they decided to say no, we need to involve the people more and that was how community policing came about and it is the same way, the same argument we are not canvassing for state police.

The benefits are numerous. Number one; we must realize that crime, criminality is a local affair and is best handled locally. Number two; the police personnel themselves will be recruited locally from within. They would be accountable to the people of the state. And because they are local and accountable to the people of the state, they would offer better services. Their stake in the well-being of the state is higher. In terms of financing, if a state has state police and the Governor knows that it is his duty to provide security. In fact it is one of the most fundamental and constitutional duties he has, he will do everything possible to equip the police because the police will now be under the list of the state and not on the

federal list. So, it has a lot of advantages and, of course, you can best practice community policing in a state police structure.

Can you talk about the intelligence building then stationed at the Lagos state secretariat,Alausa?

At a point in my career when I left Lagos as Assistance CP, Lion building, Area commander, Lion building, I was posted to force intelligence, Abuja as the Assistance Commissioner, Force Intelligence Bureau, FIB.  The present Chairman, Police Service Commission, Arase, was first of all, AIG intelligence and later DIG, Force CID.  So, we were all under him and one thing about him is that before he gives you assignment, he prepares you for the job.  The first thing he did was to send me to various training activities. I first went to Defense Intelligence School, Kano for a lengthy training programme and thereafter, I proceeded abroad, first of all to China, for another lengthy intelligence training  programme. When eventually I was posted back to Lagos, I had audience with the then Governor,Amobode, and I told him that for effective policing in Lagos, there is need to establish  an Intelligence Control Room, ICR, with two principal functions; crime control, traffic control.   We set this up in Alausa.  The equipment was such that we were able to capture more than 3 quarters of the entire state on screen.   From Alausa, we could easily in real time find out, I mean see clearly what was happening in localities all around Lagos.  Right from Alausa, our operative, some civilians some policemen,  based on the map on the screen and based on activities in real-time, we were able to pass information to field operatives in point A.  We were telling our operatives, there is traffic buildd-up, deploy more traffic personnel at point B, when we see problem bidding up, send patrol vehicle there at point D.   There were some suspicious movements, send plain clothed men there to check it out.  With those singular activities which were driven by technology, it made the whole of Lagos a small village.  The cameras were working, the technology was real. I had cause to find out how effective it is now and I don’t know whether the information I got was true but somebody told me it is no longer as effective as it used to be. That is if is still functioning. 

The stage is set for the appointment of a new IGP. How do you look at the emerging scenario? 
You will agree with me that some of these things are political.  First of all, you must realize that it is the prerogative of the new president to appoint IGP, and for reason of discipline and based on our force laws and regulation, you can’t appoint an IGP and have him superintend officers who were his seniors before his appointment. So, they have to give way. However, if you ask me what I think, I think probably the President should be looking into issues of seniority when making appointment for Inspector General. The reason is simple, if we have competence, Deputy Inspectors General who still have some years in service, who have distinguished themselves, who are apolitical ready to serve the nation, if they are appointed, the need to retire a lot of other officers will not arise anymore because they are senior. But, if you now pick a junior Assistant Inspector General of Police, for instance, you will need to retire all DIG’s who are his senior. There was a time it happened and generations of experienced senior officers were retired. It will impact negatively on the quality of policing we have. 

What will be the challenges for the new IGP?

The challenges a new Inspector General of Police will face are number one; discipline. I think that discipline has fallen below what can be tolerated in the force. We must realize we are talking about a force and discipline is the bedrock of force. So, before we talk about having a viable active, responsive civil force, the first thing you must do is to ensure that the personnel of that force are disciplined. In those days, we take the issue of discipline very seriously.  

And when I talked about discipline I am not talking about only commission of offences while on duty. I am looking at discipline holistically; how you turn out as a police man. In the police now, we have too many uniforms as the dress code. If there is going to be a new IG or the present IG, he must come and look at the dress code of the police force.

How many police units do we have?

What is their dress code? How are they expected to be dressed at every given time? And this must be enforced. I had problem when I was Lagos CP in enforcing it because some of those policemen, their deployment and control are from Abuja.  But I did my best. You go to a bank now, you see an officer wearing a singlet with our police camouflage trousers, with the police belt. I have never known singlet to be part of police uniform. And senior officers go there. They visit, they make entry and they don’t call those officers to order. That is indiscipline. 

 I know policemen generally are being overworked these days. At times when I demand that some certain things are done or I criticize, I always reflect back. I always take a step backward and say these policemen, the kind of work they do is difficult to ensure that they turn up properly. In those days, the time for police jobs for each tour of duty was specified. It was eight hours. After that, you sign off duty, you go and take a rest.   But now, because of shortage of personnel, you find a policeman doing 48 hours in a single beat before handing over. Now tell me, is it possible for a police man to wear his uniform with his boot and carry his raffle for 48 hours? It’s not possible. So, how do you discipline such an officer if you see him with t-shirt or wearing slippers?

So, we must come back to the issue of manpower shortage. Give or take, I don’t think the present police strength from the IG to the least constable is more than 600,000 and in this 600,000 you have specialists, you have those that are permanently attached to VIPs, you have those I call wastages either they have studied the system to the extent that they know how to give tips or bribe their supervising officers and those ones give them permission to go away for whatever reasons.

Their names are reflected in the divisional or command or staff strength but they are not performing any duties.  Now, when you remove this, how many policemen do we have actually doing police activities, the real policing? 

And more than 20 percent of its personnel are guiding individuals that are not entitled. Those that are entitled to permanent police guard and escort are spelt out clearly in the constitution on the police Act. All this business men and other politicians that we see walking around with policemen, what pains me the most is that you see some of them having as much as 10 men with them, their wives, relations also have police men in a country where we don’t have adequate police men to police the country.  

That is one area that I think this new administration must put their foot down. Yes, it will be difficult, and whoever that will be in charge needs a lot of political support to be able to achieve this. The political support will come from only the president who should be able to enforce this. We must obey our laws.  The force tried, some IG came and set up a special protection unit.  Do you know that even with all the manpower that was pushed to Special Protection Unit,SPU, it was not enough for them.  They are still using mobile police men as private escort and guard. This is unacceptable. So, apart from increasing the number of police men, we must also set our foot down and ensure that police men who are being paid with public funds do the public work for which they are being paid. They are not being paid to protect individuals. 
 
On the recent announcement that over 20 barracks will be demolished in Lagos and policemen thrown into the street, what is your reaction to that? 

This issue is a very sensitive one. It is also very, very important. I support that idea100 percent but with a caveat. Currently, those buildings are police buildings, the land is police land allocated to the police, be it by the state Government or the Federal government. If a state government now wants to partner with the NPF to build a better structure, under a PPA, public partnership agreement, I am on for it. However, the policemen who are currently staying there, first of all, must be well documented.  Secondly, for the period of the construction of the new structures, they must be given funds to rent accommodation for their family pending when the structure is ready and when the structure is ready, they should be the first beneficiaries of those structures because what is causing all this suspicion is the fact that those whose responsibility it is to explain very clearly to police men, the intention of government, are not doing so

What is your view on the proliferation of some other agencies that are usurping police responsibilities? Is it healthy for the nation? 

I have never believed that anybody can usurp police responsibilities. It is only a police man that does not know what his doing that will allow an agency to usurp his power or responsibility. It is also government prerogative to establish as many agencies that they can afford to finance and manage. However, I read in the paper recently that this present administration is thinking of looking at the Orasanye report. The report takes care of what you just talked about. Some of these agencies that have no business in security should be clustered together and handed over back to the police or merged with the police.

This is because before all this, all those agencies were part of the police. Why did politicians and successful government including the military allow the merger instead of developing this entire people in the police?  The truth is that government has to find a way to block wastages, to block linkages and if it means merging some of these units together to save cost and have more efficient mobile and effective security system in the country, I support it.

How can you apprise the current leadership of the Police Service Commission? And which area will you advise, they focus special attention on? 

If I speak about the Police Service Commission, I will be speaking because I was once a policeman. I know some of the provisions of the law establishing them not really because I know much about their day-to-day operations but because one good thing about the commission, for now, is that there is a round peg in a round hole. Everybody knows our boss retired IGP Arase, is a goal-getter, he is an achiever. The last one I read, he pledged that he was going to make policing very attractive for Nigerians, and I know he will achieve that.

But before now, I must tell you, I was a bit worried about that institution because it was like they had lost focus. The fight between the IG and the commission was embarrassing to some of us younger ones in the force. This is not the first time the IG and the commission will have issues.   They have been having issues, and they must have issues for them to take the force to the level that they want it to get to. There must be disagreement. But they have always managed to iron out those disagreements based on the fact that each person knows his constitutional responsibility and moreover, the leadership of the commission and the IG are from the same constituency, so nobody even hears.  

 But in the last few regimes, every day we open our papers it is fighting, fight, at a point, I was thinking that if I were the president as at that time, I would relieve them of their duties.  I talked about discipline just now. That is one of the responsibilities of the commission and they don’t owe the IG or any person in the police force any responsibility to explain. 

  They don’t derive their powers from the police act. The Police Service Commission is a creation of the constitution and they have specific responsibilities. They should carry out those responsibilities for crying out loud. Why do we hear from the grapevine that people can go to commission to bribe, that people can go to commission to kill their files when they have disciplinary matters?  I used the word grapevine because I don’t have any proof of it. But we shouldn’t even hear such, as a younger officer in the force, I didn’t hear anything, nobody heard about the commission, we were just seeing their work going on.
 I would advise now, and I already see it happening, that there is a closer synergy between the force and the Commission, both are working for the same goal which is to make sure that they create a better enabling environment for the force and ensure that we have a police force that is the pride of all policemen, and Nigerians generally. And so, if they are to achieve that, bearing in mind that other agencies are struggling for relevance and struggling for funds from the government, they must come together to speak with one voice. Because anywhere there is division, there can never be unity, they can never be progress.

How did you feel when you retired with all these numerous achievements? 

Oh, definitely I was happy. The joy, I am saying this for the benefit of my fellow colleagues, my fellow police officers whether retired or still in service, the joy of every policeman should be the day you retired with good health and clean record having served your nation meritoriously for 35 years. I am completely and totally against the move of some people to extend their service years. I believe that any man or woman who have served his nations for 35 years or attained the age of 60 has done his own bit. And should have been able to train younger ones coming up to continue to from where he stopped.