The Nigeria Police is full of senior officers that are more of viruses that are destroying the force than national assets, President Goodlcuk Jonathan said on Wednesday.
Speaking at the inauguration of the newly constituted Police Service Commission (PSC) at the State House, Abuja the president noted that some of the serving officers ought to have been either retired or sacked for various offences.
Consequently, President Jonathan charged the PSC headed by the former Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro to live up to expectation by indentifying those who do not deserve to remain in service.
He also lamented that merit is often being thrown into the trash bin on the issue of promotion especially from the Assistant Commissioner of Police level, charging the PSC to give priority to merit when it comes to promotion if there must be improved policing.
“One of the responsibilities of the Police Service Commission is to instill discipline. Another thing I believe is that people who have no merit to certain ranks are being promoted to those ranks. One of your responsibilities is to handle promotion. I believe with you only those who merit or deserve promotion should be promoted.
“Those who deserve to be disciplined or even dismissed must be disciplined. Few days back I did approve that the new comptroller general of immigration who brought the list of about six that were to be reviewed, some were sent from the ministry, some were picked from amongst the most senior.
“When we reviewed the six, from my intelligent investigation most of them were supposed to have been dismissed. But those were the people that were being forwarded for appointment as Comptroller General of Immigration.
“Among them only one is qualified to even stay and serve, others ordinarily are supposed to be dismissed from the records. And I believe that the story of Immigration is the same with most of our services. I believe that is why the performance of some of our military and para-military officers is abysmal. The yardstick that is being used for promotion is not based on competence, merit and performance.
“And that is one area I believe you will go into. People who are promoted to assistant police commissioner and above must merit the rank. If you don’t merit the rank you should be retired from the service because is better for you not have enough manpower than for you to have viruses and all kinds of characters in the police force,” Jonathan directed.
The President also said he would delay deliberation of the Federal executive council on the white paper on police reform so that the police commission could make input before a while paper is issued.
He spoke further, “at the Federal Executive Council maybe in the next one or two weeks we are going to look at the report because we want to come up with a white paper on the police reform report. But since we have just appointed you we give you privilege to look at that document before we come out with a white paper,” he said.
Fielding questions from State House correspondents after the inauguration, Okiro said the challenges facing the police today are enormous, saying that the Commission will look at how to motivate officers and men to make them perform optimally.
Okiro spoke further, “you have to work as the situation demands at the moment. So, what I am going to do now is to look at what is making the police not to perform optimally at this time, at this period of our nation’s history. I will try and address those issues
The PSC chairman also promised to give priority to staff welfare, saying “from ACP up, they are not feeling very happy. Many of them have no houses, the morale of the police is quite low, and they need to be motivated.
“You have to look into how to make them perform optimally. If you give somebody something to work with, he will work well for you. If you pay somebody very well, he will work very well for you. If you give somebody pittance, you get pittance service from him. So we have to look at the welfare of the police first and foremost”.
