Ehindero’s Bombshell: The “Great” Nigerian Police, no match for Boko Haram

Posted by admin Boko Haram, General Politics, Latest Politics, National Politics, Nigerian Police, Top Stories Sunday, December 11th, 2011

-Sun

Former Inspector General of Police [IGP], Mr. Sunday Ehindero, said at the weekend that the Nigerian Police, as presently constituted, lacks the operational capability to combat the rising crime wave and insecurity, especially the insurgence of the Islamist sect, Boko Haram.

He gave this stunning verdict in an exclusive interview with Daily Sun just as the Nigerian Bar Association [NBA] passed a vote of no confidence on the security agencies. Ehindero said the agencies have collectively failed in the discharge of their statutory duties.

The former police boss spoke during the second NBA President’s roundtable on human rights in Abuja with the theme: “Human rights and national security: The challenges of terrorism and response of law enforcement agencies in Nigeria.”
The former IGP revealed that the force has a moribund intelligence unit that does not have what it takes to gather and monitor intelligent information.

He blamed the current state of the police on the military whom he accused of incapacitating the force with the creation of National Security Organization [NSO].
His words, “the military incapacitated the police by the creation of NSO as the police no longer have functional intelligence outfit. If you go back to history, in 1976, the NSO was established by the military and when that happened, the E Department [Intelligence] that was in the police and gather intelligence information for the police was removed from the police.

“We have the Criminal Investigation Department [CID], but it is moribund because it does not have functional equipment. You see, the problem that I see is that we want to kill, we want that tree to die, but we are cutting the leaves without going to the roots. If you want the tree to die, go to the roots. What we are doing now is just looking at the leaves,” he said. The former police boss advocated for the creation of Homeland Security and Patriot Act as obtainable in the United States of America [USA] for the fight against terrorism and other crimes to succeed.
“How did the Americans tackle the issue of terrorism to the extent that they don’t have terrorism? Immediately it happened, they have come out with a new action plan and say it will never happen again. What do they do? That is what they have started doing now-to identify who the terrorists are, now when they come into the country, they are arrested and information about their operations extracted from them.

“They did not stop at that, they establish the Patriot Act which makes it compulsory for the Central Intelligent Agency [CIA] and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to work together. More than that, they established the Homeland Security which galvanized the entire intelligence outfits in the USA, both at the local, the state and federal levels and they have a source of management of such intelligence.

“We must have all these. We must establish something like the Homeland Act. Our intelligent outfits must be asked to co-operate not passing intelligence vertically to the Commander-in-Chief [C-in-C] but pass it horizontally so that those who need to use it must use it. More than that, what is intelligence? The security outfits are not magicians, they need this information from the public and members of the public must be in the position to volunteer information to the security agencies so that they can act on them.”

While acknowledging that corruption is another factor militating against the effective performance of the police, Ehindero noted that other sectors have overtaken the police in corruption ranking in the country.
“Corruption is everywhere now. The police are no more corrupt; there are other organizations that are now more corrupt, but I don’t want to mention names.” Meanwhile, the NBA said the security agencies have failed woefully in the discharge of their statutory responsibilities. President of the NBA, Mr. Joseph Daudu [SAN], had, in his speech at the event, noted that in spite of all the available laws in place especially the Terrorism [Prevention] Act, 2011; security agencies have failed to take advantage of such laws to address the state of insecurity in the country.

The beauty of the Terrorism Act, according to the NBA president, is that it gives the security agencies absolute powers to arrest, detain suspects without recourse to warrant of arrest.“The law gives sweeping powers to security agencies to more or less do as they please. For example, the Terrorism Bill allows a security officer to enter and search any place, person, or vehicle without warrant if he has reason to suspect that an offence is being committed and there is evidence of a commission of an offence under the law. The officer may also search, detain, and arrest anyone if he has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed or about to commit an offence under the bill.wp_posts