Though, sounds biased, however, officers and men of the Nigeria Police are one of the best in the world despite the various constraints and obstacles they face. This fact is attested to in the various awards , honours and commendations they receive anytime they are posted outside the country on peace keeping operations and other assignments.
No doubt, in the last few years , Nigerians are increasingly losing hope and confidence in the nation’s police force, especially the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a Nigerian Police Force unit popularly known as SARS that is expected to maintain law and order as enshrined in the constitution due to unethical or unprofessional conduct of some erring officers.
However, there are some major factors hindering the efficient and excellent performance of the Police and they are as follows:
1. Inadequate funding : Sufficient funds are not always made available to the Nigeria Police to enable it meet the ever increasing challenges springing up on a daily basis to ensure an excellent policing of the country. It is a notorious fact that the budgetary allocation of the entire Police Force in 1999 before the swearing in of the democratic government was just four billion naira; an amount that was grossly insufficient and unrealistic.
2. Lack of sophisticated equipments: Policing is more often than not the efficient gathering, collation and use of intelligence. To achieve this objective, sophisticated and modern equipments coupled with monitoring devices are needed. These are not readily available to the Police.
3. Lack of adequate compensation : Policemen who are victims of attacks from armed robbers and other criminals when they are on duty. Sometimes such policemen are left to foot the hospital bills and other expenses incurred for treatment.
4. Lack of interest in the job: The job of a policeman is professional in nature. Some young men only enlist or get recruited because of lack of employment and not due to the interest they have in the job.
5. Shortage of manpower: The present number of the officers and men of the Nigeria Police is grossly inadequate to ensure an efficient policing of the country. To this end, the directive of the federal government that 40,000 men should be recruited yearly is a welcome development.
6. Training and retraining : The inadequate or lack of training and re-training of some officers and men of the Nigeria Police make them rustic and their duties boring, dull and uninteresting.
7. Posting policemen outside their states of origin: The posting of non natives outside the places where their local language is spoken could be a hindrance to an efficient performance of a policeman’s duty. This is more so if he is an investigating Police Officer. A Fulani or Hausa man posted to a police station in a remote Yoruba or Igbo area will surely be requiring the service of interpreters.
Sometimes, it is easier to police a well known terrain that one is quite familiar with.
8. Lack of promotion to the next rank: Some officers and men of the Nigeria Police have been on the same rank for ten to fifteen years without promotion. This sometimes leads to deep frustration and the tendency not to put in their best into their jobs.
9. Undue pressure from the government and other powerful individuals: On the police to find perpetrators of crimes by all means as quickly as possible sometimes put investigators on edge and lead to avoidable mistakes
10. Tribalism and other cultural and traditional influence: This has been aptly labelled ‘Na my brother syndrome ‘. The desire to protect and please kinsmen sometimes hamper policemen in the performance of their legitimate duties.
