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Olusegun Obasanjo, Former President of Nigeria has faulted the appointment of former Inspectors General of Police (IGPs) as chairmen of the Police Service Commission (PSC).
President Muhammadu Buhari appointed former IGP Musiliu Smith as Chairman of the PSC in 2018, but Smith resigned in 2022 and retired Justice Clara Ogunbiyi took over as Acting Chairman.
In January 2023, President Buhari appointed another retired IG, Mr. Solomon Arase, as substantive chairman of the PSC.
Obasanjo expressed his misgivings at the public presentation of a book, titled: Policing the Nigeria Police, authored by Chief Simon Okeke, a former chairman of the PSC.
The ex-President said: “When you make a retired police officer the head of the Police Service Commission, it is like asking a thief to catch a thief. ”He said civilians should be appointed as chairmen and retired police officers appointed as members of the PSC to ensure effective and efficient service delivery. Obasanjo noted that the author believed that Nigeria, a federation, should not have unitary police establishment, as people had argued that state police would be abused by governors.
“I won’t say yes or no. But can they not be abused by the Federal Government?
“For a federation, it is contrary to the ideal of the country. This is because the unitary policing system is not close enough to the community where the police are supposed to be.
“The author argued whether the name should truly be the Nigeria Police Force or a police service. I believe the police should be a police service, not a Police Force,” he said.
Obasanjo said the author brought up a strong argument in support of state police as well as the training and retraining of police officers, which he agreed with.
The ex-President also noted that the author argued strongly against the authorised and unauthorised deployment of police personnel to private guard duties, leading to having many police officers in the security service of few individuals.
Of 380,000 police personnel at a time, 180,000 were on private duties carrying out duties corruptively, the author wrote.
Publisher of the book and frontline journalist, Mr. Ray Ekpu, recalled that the PSC was first created by the Independence Constitution of 1960.
He said it remained strong until the appointment of IGs was transferred to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
“Under the military, the PSC was chaired by the various Chiefs of Staffs until it was abolished by Decree 5 of February 6, 1989, backdated to August 27, 1985.
“For the period that there was no PSC, the IGPs worked under the supervision of either the Heads of State or Chiefs of Staff, Supreme Headquarters.
“During that period, it was the IGPs that handled the recruitment, appointment and discipline of police officers,” he said.
Ekpu said the lacuna contributed to the current conflicts between the IGPs and the PSC as the former found it difficult to surrender the powers they formerly enjoyed to an oversight agency, the PSC.
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