The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) in a Sallah message on Thursday by the director of MURIC, Professor Ishaq Akintola, told President Muhammadu Buhari to direct the recruitment of more policemen, soldiers, and other security agents by the Federal Government to increase the capacity to tackle the intractable insecurity in the country; as well as procure a state-of-the-art equipment for the security agencies. MURIC argued that Nigeria’s weakest point in security management, especially, in the prevailing fight against bandits, Boko Haram terrorists and others, is inadequate security operatives, as well as including poor equipping of the security personnel.
Professor Akintola in the goodwill statement highlighted: “The present state of insecurity requires drastic solution. One area of our weakness is the inadequate number of security men. Whereas the United Nations recommends at least one policeman for every 450, 499 or 500 citizens, the numerical strength of the Nigerian Police falls below this world standard.
“We had just 317,000 policemen as at 2009. We had less than 100,000 soldiers and about 33,000 men of the Department of Secret Services (DSS). Unfortunately, no new recruitments were made from that period until 2016 when 10,000 policemen were added to police population. This has been an annual exercise and the number may have jumped to around 377,000 as at 2021. “Another 70,000 would have been added if previous administrations had employed 10,000 more policemen per annum since 2009. But they did not.
“With the projected 377,000 policemen in the country as at today securing a population of 210 million people, Nigeria can only boast of one policeman to every 557 citizens. But that is in theory. In reality, the ratio is poorer than that because more than half of our police population are on special duties trying to secure very important personalities (VIPs). In some cases, more than six policemen are assigned to protect a single official. The theory of ratio 1:557 crashes in the face of this reality.”
He maintained: “Even at 1:557, Nigeria’s situation still falls below global best practices. With a population of 58.56 million people, South Africa’s police-civilian ratio is 1:439. The US 2019 population of 328.2 million has a 1:420 ratio. Britain’s population which is 66.65 million (2019) has 124,784 policemen, i.e. 211 policemen per every 100,000 citizens.”
MURIC lamented: “What makes Nigeria’s case worse is the fact that a large number of the available officers and men are posted to guard politicians, judges, company directors, bank executives, etc. Although, this is not the time to advocate full withdrawal of such protection from their current posts, this must be done as soon as the security situation improves.”
The group argued: “If it is true that cities are conquered by numbers, we recommend the recruitment of at least 25,000 additional policemen and 20,000 soldiers this year 2021 alone with an annual recruitment of no less than 20,000 per annum over the next five years in order to overwhelm all criminal and separatist elements. We also advocate faster pace of training and the procurement of state-of-the-art equipment, particularly communication gadgets.”