FAILURE OF COMMUNITY POLICING
Community Policing is a policing system that proactively involves & engages d local communities in policing activities, from crime prevention to intelligence gathering. It is a paradigm that can be implemented differently in different communities...

...cities and nations as long as the community centric approach is adopted in its overarching design.

This adaptability and flexibility of Community Policing has made its implementation difficult to comparatively capture since different nations will be doing different things...

...all in the name of Community Policing. This factor has also made it easier for lip service to be paid to implementation when in fact nothing happens in reality.
Since 1999 return to democratic rule; Nigerian Police has been discussing the implementation of Community Policing.

Strategy after strategy documents have been produced; yet this form of policing is yet to be operationalised effectively in Nigeria.
In fact, the community perception of the police has deteriorated further in the years since 1999 and confidence in the NPF is at an all-time low.

Since 1999; there has been three Presidential Panel on police reform in Nigeria. One under the administration of President Obasanjo. Another in 2004 under President Yaradua and then in 2008 under President Jonathan.

One thing common to all these panels is a recommendation that Community Policing should be rolled out in Nigeria. The reports of these panels (despite government White Papers being produced for two of the panel reports); were not acted on my successive governments.

This habit of abandoning reports of expert panels has made many within the Nigerian Police to be tired of talks of change and reform in an environment where nothing seems to change after each panel reports.

This ‘change’ or ‘reform fatigue’ has led to loss of inertia and a form of hopelessness that the police will ever be reformed. This has further entrenched antiquated and bad practices within the organisational system.

Many years ago, the Nigeria Police Force established in Nigeria Policing Programme (NPP). NPP was supposed to champion the operational design and implementation strategy for Community Policing. While NPP made some progress; there is still no effective outcome on the ground.

Research conducted in d University of Liverpool School of Law & Social Justice has shown that a £30 million UK Department for International Dev programme to improve the Nigerian police’s relations with d community failed because of corruption & inefficiency among d law enforcers.

The Security, Justice and Growth Programme, funded by DFID and managed by the British Council, was set up to overcome the reluctance of Nigerians to report crimes or help the police with their enquiries. The research, conducted by Dr Aminu Musa Audu.

According to Dr Audu; “the programme, which ran from 2002 to 2010 to train officers in Community Policing roles in 18 of Nigeria’s 36 states, had failed because “members of the public do not trust the police in Nigeria on account of a huge perception of corruption.”

The Community Policing policy initiative, brought in as an alternative to “top-down, coercive, non-accountable, paramilitary policing,” had not been taken seriously by d police.” This finding is an indictment on d management & leadership of d Nigerian Police in no uncertain term.

Are the police self-sabotaging their own reform agenda? Why has delivery of Community Policing been just words and few practical actions have actually been taken. Why is such a simple and direct policy framework made to look complicated and unworkable in Nigeria?

Dr Audu further added: “The government of Nigeria, after the introduction of d Community Policing policy in 2002, sent some police officers to the UK and the US for training in the fundamentals of Community Policing. They were then meant to ensure the transfer of the knowledge...

...to other police personnel in Nigeria. However, only a few officers attended the overseas training and there was a lack of consistency in the training policy on the part of the Nigeria police management.

In the view of police participants interviewed, such training abroad was undertaken only to achieve promotion and an overseas trip-related allowances, rather than training in its original sense. In his research; he narrated the story of a police officer who told him that...

...many in the Nigerian Police (leadership and rank and file included) were afraid that bringing in Community Policing would end the benefits they got from corruption.

According to this respondent; “Some experts from UK and US came to train some of our people in the act of...

...community policing, and they got the certificate of attendance. At the end of the day, it was an addition to their curriculum vitae. Now what happens?

Nobody is ready to promote the ideals of Community Policing because it will assist not only in curbing crime among the citizens but will also do some justice to the issue of corruption in the system. The system is seeing community policing as a burden.

My latest book on how to deliver Community Policing at little or no cost was written to show that money is not d main problem, but lack of political will & entrenched corruption within the system. With ideas & solution, I hope the Govt can learn to keep it simple & do the needful