As insecurity has continued to close in upon the Giant of Africa with an asphyxiating stranglehold, state-run agencies within the country whose task it is to maintain peace and security at all times as well as keep the enemies of the country at bay have increasingly continued to come under the spotlight.
A sense of overwhelm
Since Boko Haram began to widen the scope of its operations in 2009, Nigerians have unfortunately come to know the true extent that terror can go in turning lives upside down.
As communities, families and their children have been cut down in the fire and crossfire of terrorism, those who have rushed to their rescue in the name of the state have also been at the receiving end. The casualties have continued to mount with each attack.
For example, On Wednesday June 28,2022, Nigeria lost about 30 soldiers, seven policemen and two civilians when terrorists attacked a mining site in Ajata Aboki in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State. The terrorists also abducted some persons from the site including some Chinese nationals.
Before then and since then, Nigeria`s increasingly strained security situation has foisted on the country a situation where paying the supreme price by those sworn to keep Nigeria safe has become an all too regular and disturbing experience.
Almost always, whenever or wherever there is an attack, they lose their lives, leaving behind heartbroken families and a country short of firepower.
A broken system
For many years, the pervasive feeling was that Nigeria`s security architecture had only held firm because it was yet to come under desperate fire from the those who would contest the rights of the state over the sovereignty of Nigeria.
In the last decade, Boko Haram has made it is responsibility to test whatever Nigeria has in place as security architecture. It has been a desperate test and a desperate battle. Unfortunately, Nigeria has fared miserably.
The World Internal Security and Police Index
The International Institute for Economics and Peace aims to create a paradigm shift in the way the world thinks about peace. This it does by developing global and national indices, calculating the economic cost of violence, analyzing country level risk and fragility and understanding positive peace.
The research of the Institute is used extensively by governments, academic institutions, think thanks, non-governmental organizations and by intergovernmental institutions such as OECD, The Commonwealth Secretariat, the World Bank and the United Nations. The Institute is headquartered in Sydney with offices in 6 countries, and its research achieves over 20 billion media impressions across 150 countries each year.
In 2016, the Institute for Economics and Peace published the first edition of the World Internal Security and Police Index(WISPI).Commissioned by the Sharjah Police Department and the International Police Science Association(IPSA), the index measured the ability of the police and other security providers to address internal security issues in 127 counties, across four domains, using 16 indicators.
WISPI looked at four domains of internal security, to wit: capacity, process, legitimacy and outcomes.The capacity domain examines the resources that a nation devotes to internal security. The process domain looks at whether the resources devoted to internal security are used in an effective manner. The legitimacy domain is a measure of whether the public view security providers, particularly the police, in a favourable light. Finally, the outcomes domain assesses current threats to internal security.
A below par performance
Nigeria performed worst on the Index, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda and Pakistan. Alarmingly, sub-Saharan Africa was home to seven of the ten worst performing countries.
Nigeria was the worst performing country on the WISPI, with a score of 0.255. It scored poorly across all four domains, and had the worst score of any country in the index on the process and outcomes domains. All of its domain scores were in the bottom ten country.
Nigeria had an average sized police force, and a relatively small military and private security sector. There are 219 police officers for every 100,000 Nigerians well below both the index median of 300, and the sub-Saharan Africa region average of 286.
The loudest complaints about the poor performance of the police in Nigeria have always centered about their small number, poor training, poor funding and less than desirable commitment to their welfare.
Growing calls.
The police remains under the control of the Federal Government, but with its failure to rein in insecurity proving deadly, calls have been rising for states to be allowed to have their own police force. More than anything, this reflects the growing belief that the Federal Government has shown again and again that it cannot properly do what must be done for the police to operate optimally and check the insecurity convulsing the country.
However, what is clearest from all these is that there is an inherent distrust of Nigeria`s increasing fragile federal system of government.
Kene Obiezu
keneobiezu@gmail.com
