No matter how much the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and
its leaders emote about their resolve to foster a merit-driven system and serve
the whole country, their immersion in winner-take-all politics is obvious to
all. Of course, this is by no means out of sync with the party of President
Muhammadu Buhari who declared that those who voted for him would enjoy the
so-called dividends of democracy more than those who never supported his
election.
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| President Buhari and IGP Ibrahim Kpotum |
While it is
clear that Buhari has floundered in many other areas of governance, he has
demonstrated uncommon fidelity to this commitment since he assumed office. This
accounts for his appointing mainly his family members, political associates and
other close persons.
This
nepotism that has defined the Buhari government is set to interfere with the
recruitment of new police personnel. Such interference is alarming against the
backdrop of the persistent outrage at the unprofessionalism in the police that
is often expressed in their predilection for corruption. They shoot a motorist
who refuses to give them a bribe of N50; they collude with armed robbers to
prey on the citizens; they turn a witness or complainant into a suspect because
of pecuniary gain – and the list of crimes goes on. For all this, the blame
rightly goes to the method of their recruitment that shares no kinship with
meritocracy. Most police personnel join the force to make money through
corruption and not because of the competence and the passion they have for the
job. They easily bribe their way through the recruitment and once they have got
the job, they brazenly pursue an agenda to recoup their investment.
Thus, we would have thought that a time of recruitment of police personnel
would be seized as an opportunity to get citizens who are very competent and
passionate to enforce the law and protect the citizens and their property and
stop the rapid deterioration of the force into a hotbed for the proliferation
of criminals. But now, through the nepotism of the APC, only those who are
close to the ministers and leaders of the party are the ones who would be among
the 10,000 police personnel to be recruited this year. These ministers and
leaders of APC have disrupted the recruitment by insisting that only their
cronies should make the list. To placate them, the Police Service Commission
(PSC) has been removing the names of those who have meritoriously passed the tests
for the recruitment. They have been putting the names of their cronies who have
either failed the tests or did not even apply for the job in the first place.
Consequently, the recruitment that should have been concluded by now has been
stalled.
