SWAT: SYSTEMIC OVERHAUL AND THE NIGERIAN POLICE FORCE.

 Nigeria, 60 years after independence we are still struggling with the evil of police officers brutality and abuse of the fundamental rights of Nigerians as a result of misconducts due to over militarization of the police force.

Nigeria streets and neighbourhoods have become battleground or rather killing fields with families crying daily over extortion, extrajudicial killings and false accusations etc.

Recent events have shown vividly the chasm and distrust between the citizenry, the police and administration officials which have led to citizenry questioning the legitimacy of law enforcement organisations because of their disproportionate use of lethal force and underminning citizens liberties.

It should be noted that these liberties are citizens rights which are inalienable because they are not predicated on states boundaries as a result of their universalizability and inherent human virtue. These are the rights that Nigerians are fighting to protect since and from independence.

The ENDSARS protest is a testimony to the fact that enough is enough and that zenith of toleration for these dastardly actions have been reached there is the need therefore to put an end to the violations of these fundamental rights by law enforcement agents of the state. 

The militarization presently adopted in policing Nigeria as earlier pontificated in my view is to build social boundaries, hegemony or compartmentalization a counterproductive approach in democratic settings rather a communialistic policing philosophy seeking partnership with the public would be a welcome methodology in achieving social harmony that is missing at the moment. COMMUNITY POLICING.

Two days ago, I watched the Inspector General of the Nigerian Police Force talking about the establishment of a new unit to replace the blood thirsty FSARS. The new unit he reiterated would be intelligence led, ooh my God! I murmured soliloquizingly, I do not think he is serious.

Why do we keep repeating the same rhetorics everytime, surprisingly, he said we will "collect intelligence" I wonder how can you collect intelligence, from his statement I knew we are heading for another failure.

To be succinct, information gathering is not intelligence. Intelligence is the outcomes of the analysis and evaluation of the information and data collected. Therefore, intelligence is a product of evalution and analysis.

The next question that comes to mind is do we have enough trained intelligence officers who can intellectually decipher, analyse and evaluate various data generated via information collected and computer sequenced data dispassionately?  I do not believe we have enough qualified professional intelligence analyst in the force. My position can be justified by merely analysing the security situation in the country coupled with the multiple intellectually ridiculously childish intelligence report dished out regularly from the stable of our security enterprise.   

We do know that good analysis inbued with logical reasoning and thoughtful contemplation are prerequisites for delivering result oriented conclusion cum recommendation since decison making processes in law enforcement depend on it.

I wonder how the Inspector General of the Nigerian Police Force is going to achieve the herculean task of creating an intelligence led unit SWAT from the rag tag police officers scrambled from different units of the force in the shortest possible timeframe considering the fact that he has surrepticiously, indirectly confirmed to us that FSARS was never built on intelligence a-binitio. 

Are POS weilding FSARS "collecting intelligence." Is extrajudicial killing a genre of "intelligence collection."

I do not have any confidence in the solution provided by the force management team. Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.

My opinion, the reform must be systemic because the problem is systemic and merely dismissing few officers and creating a new unit SWAT would not do justice to finding lasting solutions to the problem that is culturally deep-rooted. 

OTUNBA ADE ILEMOBADE IS A PHILOSOPHER. TWITTER: @PEARL2PRINCE