‘Civil Defence’ To The Rescue – By Tunji Adegboyega

Tinubu deserves applause for replacing VIPs’ policemen with NSCDC personnel instead of pandering to the wish of the spoilt elite

Sequel to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s order to the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Kayode Egbetokun, to withdraw policemen protecting certain categories of Very Important Persons (VIPs), the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) has requested presidential approval to recruit about 30,000 additional personnel, to enable it cope with the surge in the demand for its personnel, as the sole security outfit to fill the vacuum created by the withdrawal of the policemen.

According to ‘The Punch:, the request was the follow-up to the meeting that President Tinubu held with the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, and the Commandant-General (CG) of the NSCDC, Ahmed Audi, last month.

The 30,000 personnel is separate from the ongoing 30,000 personnel recruitment currently being carried out across the paramilitary services.

President Tinubu last November said the withdrawn policemen should be deployed to concentrate on their core police duties. The presidential directive came days after a series of attacks that saw the kidnap of at least 300 people, mostly schoolchildren, across Kebbi, Kwara and Niger states.

“Henceforth, police authorities will deploy them (policemen) to concentrate on their core police duties,” a statement signed by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, read. According to Onanuga, “VIPs who want police protection will now request well-armed personnel from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.”

The President subsequently approved the recruitment of 30,000 additional police officers even as the Federal Government is collaborating with the states to upgrade police training facilities nationwide.

It is instructive that the presidential directive was issued at the security meeting President Tinubu held with the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Waidi Shaibu; the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke; Egbetokun; and the Director-General of the Department of State Services, (DSS), Mr. Oluwatosin Ajayi.

The IGP promptly complied with the order. “In line with the President’s directive, we have withdrawn a total of 11,566 personnel from VIP protection. These officers are being redeployed to critical policing duties immediately,” he said.

What followed was to be expected: the affected officials, suddenly discovered, like our credulous parents, Adam and Eve, that they were bare, without the policemen. They protested and pleaded with the president to rescind the decision.

One such protest came from the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, who spoke on behalf of his fretting colleagues. Akpabio told the President during the 2026 Budget presentation last month that “Some members of the National Assembly say I should let you know that they may not be able to go home today. We plead with the President to review the decision.”

It is commendable that President Tinubu stuck to his guns. This is especially so against the backdrop of what led to his order to withdraw the policemen in the first place, and the skepticism in some quarters that the order was a mere political statement that would never be implemented, and even if it was, it was not the answer to the country’s security challenge.

Of course, we cannot blame those who believed the directive would not last before exemptions from various quarters would render it useless.

President Tinubu’s order on such withdrawal was not the first. Successive IGPs had issued similar directives that lasted only as the ink with which they were written.

But there is hope that Tinubu’s order on it could be the last, other things being equal. This is because past directives, apart from coming from the IGPs (as against the President in this instance) did not provide alternative. Tinubu’s alternative is what has brought the recourse to the 30,000 more personnel that the NSCDC has asked for presidential approval for.

We never had any such arrangement before. What we have always had was a situation where the policemen were withdrawn without any alternative. That explained the relative ease with which such policemen soon returned to their previous beneficiaries. As they say, Nature abhors a vacuum.

What this tells us is that the president is not unmindful of the risks in exposing these public officials and political office holders to the general insecurity in the land. It is just that fair is fair. The old order of about five to 10 policemen guarding one VIP when millions of Nigerians are left in the lurch is ungodly and unfair. It is unsustainable.

It is this resort to NSCDC personnel as alternative to the withdrawn policemen that gave me the confidence that we may never have the recurring experience of such withdrawn policemen being surreptitiously returned to the VIPs. A source in the NSCDC reportedly said “The CG and the minister have met with the President. They explained the need for more personnel, especially with the increasing demand for VIP protection. He added that “The president has given his word that justice will be done to the request, with possible recruitment of about 30,000 personnel.”

At least Nigerians are no longer left alone to suffer for the ills that are plaguing our police force. Come to think of it, the force should not be in its present sorry state if those elites who protested the withdrawal of their police security men had been alive to their responsibility.

Let us even forget the military era when soldiers did not take good care of the police force, either due to fear of ‘rivalling’ them, or for whatever reason, politicians have had more than ample time to right the wrongs since May 29, 1999, when we returned to civil rule. That was 26 years ago.

24,202 promoted in four paramilitary agencies
‘Mad man’ stabs Civil Defence officer to death
FG approves promotion of 95 top officers in Immigration, Civil Defence, other services
That they failed largely in that regard explains why the country cannot boast the adequate quantity and quality of policemen to take charge of internal security that is their primary responsibility.

It is shameful that we keep failing to address the problems bedevilling our policemen; from being underfunded to being under-kitted, Ill-motivated, and what have you. We hear stories about police stations not having patrol vans; and where they do, there won’t be petrol to hit the roads in case of emergency. A few years ago, we saw pictures of some students in our major police training institution sharing one fish head!

It is like the changing never changing with our police force despite the reported efforts of successive IGPs to make things better.

Unfortunately, our elite, particularly the political elite (those in the National Assembly in particular) who have the power to turn things around in the police force have not done much, either to increase their numbers or even if they want to keep their figure manageable, at least it should be lean and mean.

Now that the country has serious security challenges and it has become obvious that it cannot continue to pamper a tiny minority at the expense of the larger society, it is the very people with the capacity and capability to improve the lot of the police but failed to do so who want to continue to enjoy the services of the few available policemen.

Our political elite should be taught that life should not start and end with them. They should know that life has no duplicate, whether for the rich or the poor. For too long, they have lived under the illusion that they are more special than their electors.

Apart from depriving the majority of Nigerians the adequate protection that is the inalienable right every government owes the citizens, allocating policemen to special people robs the policemen of their dignity. Many of those they are supposed to protect have turned them into glorified house helps, drivers, errand boys, etc. Nigeria’s elite have this penchant for showoff and turning virtually every privilege into status symbol. These are the same people we see comporting themselves in public trains outside the country.

The withdrawal of the VIPs’ policemen is also expected to boost professionalism in the police force. The job of the police is basically internal security; not VIP security. We have it on record that the country has some of the best policemen one can come by, in spite of structural and other deficiencies.

Our policemen had excelled among their peers at international engagements. Some of them had brought home laurels from such engagements

But the same political elite that needs the policemen for protection are pinchy when it comes to remunerating them. These same people who would have nothing to do with locally-produced vehicles do not seem to know that the police force deserves to be well taken care of so that it can in return do its job well.

The United Nations (UN) might not have set any single, official global standard for police-to-citizen ratio, but it often cites benchmarks suggesting around 222 officers per 100,000 people (or 1:450). Indeed, some sources mention 1:400 or 1:460 as a general UN guideline, while acknowledging that it varies greatly, with technology influencing needs. Nigeria’s police strength of about 371,000 to the country’s about 236 million population means about one policeman to 636 persons. This is far from the average even in countries where there are better facilities and the policemen are well kitted and well motivated.

Our political elite should aim at improving on this, particularly the lawmakers that are supposed to make laws for good governance as well as keep an eye on the executive to make sure they do the right thing.

If they had done that, perhaps they wouldn’t have needed any special protection because the country would have been safe for all.

At any rate, what is it that is pursuing our political class, particularly those in the National Assembly, who always want to go about in bulletproof vehicles and want security around them all the time? What is it that they are doing that makes them so vulnerable unlike their counterparts in other parts of the world who move about freely; no airs around them? Are they not supposed to be representatives of the people?

Something just does not add up here! Somebody help me!

Anyway, again, I commend the President for thinking out of the box in order to satisfy both the ordinary Nigerians and the affected VIPs. He should do all within his power to ensure the new deal works. If the NSCDC is well taken care of, better trained and kitted, it would rub off positively on security generally in the country.

It is also time to pay more attention to the needs of the police force, even as the governments, state and federal, continue to keep State Police in view.

Culled from The Nation