Policing With No Touch of Renewed Hope

By Alabi Williams / Posted June 2, 2025

President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda promised to deliver a Police Force that is professional, intelligence-driven and world-class; one that is citizens-centric. Specifically, the document itemised areas where transformation would take place to include, boosting public confidence in a Force that is availed of high-tech, non-lethal capacity and competency to align with other development schemes of government.

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There was the promise to reform the Force to deliver better on community policing through crime fighting and prevention. Most profoundly, it promised to free personnel from extraneous duties such as VIP security and guard duties. It said that VIP duties and provision of security for government buildings, installations and other critical assets will be transferred to the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), which itself shall be evaluated and reformed to be better integrated with the overall internal security apparatus.

It’s two years and there is yet no remarkable difference between policing under Tinubu’s renewed hope and when hope was suspended. Just slogans.There are still reports of crude methods in use by the police that are not in alignment with the world-class and professional handling envisaged in renewed hope. Daily encounters with police officers along highways and in city corners give the impression that the campaign to upgrade and retool the Force has not even started.

A colleague shared a news story originally published on May 24, 2025, in an online newspaper, which accused four inspectors of abducting a foreign-based Nigerian and extorting N151.5 million from his family after he was whisked from Lagos to Abuja. This encounter, the report revealed was contained in a petition addressed to the IGP, Kayode Egbetokun, on May 2, 2025, which the newspaper claimed it cited.

According to the story, the petition was written by a Law Professor and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Yemi Oke, on behalf of the family of the diasporan Nigerian, Segun Okubajo. The story went on to reveal the identity of the police officers and how Okubajo was arrested on October 9, 2024, held incommunicado until his family was forced to cough out the said sum.

Could that be true? Why would anyone be forced to part with that sum of money and for what? According to the story, the officers invaded the home of Okubajo, switched off the CCTV cameras, seized his phones and took him away with chains in his leg. The story added that the man was exposed to the police by two named notorious informants who specialise in targeting foreign-based Nigerians for extortion. That led to framing up of Okubajo with imaginary allegation to establish grounds for extortion, the story said.

One hopes that the IGP will get down to the details of this petition to expose officers who terrorise the people and inflict pains on them. It is unbelievable that such characters are still in the Force. They make nonsense of the renewed hope agenda.

Indeed, there have been attempts by the current police leadership to make the force more accountable. The police have announced platforms through which citizens are to report erring officers who go outside their brief to molest and extort. These efforts are not enough because too many wrong things are happening across the 774 local government areas.

The unitary police system is resistant to reforms. Along the highways, police officers are not aware that there is a renewed hope agenda anywhere. In a forest between Akungba and Owo in Ondo State, there is a drunken police officer, Emma, who is Lord of the manor. As early as 7.00 a.m. commercial motorists donate canned drinks to feed his wayward ego. He doesn’t bother to ask them for vehicle papers. His targets are private motorists going to Lagos and the paper he asks for is “Allocation paper.”

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Allocation paper is issued to motorists before the number plate. Not many motorists bother to carry the so-called allocation paper once they have their vehicle’s license, driver’s license, road worthiness certificate and insurance certificate. This is what Emma and his fellow officers exploit to extort motorists along that route.They are doing as if those territories have been allocated to them by the IGP to plunder.

There are worse stories by motorists in the hands of police officers. They need to be trained to behave like world-class professionals as this government promised.

A video trended of a crime scene where persons shown as police officers vandalised a vehicle and a bike somewhere at Ekewan-Ugbowo road, in Benin-City, Edo State. The voice in the video recording lamented the wickedness of the officers and how they descended on the people they were paid to protect.

Reports published on May 28, 2025, said the Edo State Police Command had arrested several of its officers of the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) in Benin City, for the atrocities captured in the video. The IRT officers were reported to be transiting through Okhuimwum community from Lagos when the act was committed on May 20, 2025.

The story told in the video was different from what the police reported as the reason for the assault on the vehicle. They claimed they were waylaid by a youth protest. Whatever that led to it, the sheer sight of police officers engaged in that level of collateral damage showed a descent into brigandage. Why not arrest and charge the suspects to court for proper prosecution? For justice to be served, those officers should be levied to pay for the damage they inflicted.

There is still a rash of extra-judicial rascality in the system, with officers and men reluctant to adapt to democratic ethos. There are daily reports of officers and men taking laws into their hands in wanton disregard for the rule of law. It’s as if the police haven’t learned lessons from the #EndSARS protests of 2020, which saw young Nigerians demand accountability in the management of internal security.

Though that exercise was frustrated by the intrusion of violent elements in the ranks of the organisers, the efforts sent clear message of what could happen when citizens determine to demand good governance from leaders and agencies of government.

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In commemorating President Tinubu’s two years in office, last week, citizens lamented encroachment on their civic space. They raised concerns over clampdown on dissenting voices, protests and protesters. The Programme Officer of Security and Human Rights at Global Rights Nigeria, Ajeole Enamarie, in assessing the civic space said the situation requires urgent solution. She identified weak institutions, state capture and uniformed security operatives as some of the factors constraining the civic space.

She said: “The fears and concerns of Nigeria’s shrinking space is not just fear; it’s an urgent concern. Over the last two years, we have seen deliberate efforts to stifle dissenting voices. You even hear rhetoric by some political elite coming online to say social media is demonic and all that. You have media journalists who have been abducted or forced disappearances of journalists and human rights defenders. Democracy is actually under attack in Nigeria. But when we have violent elections and violent responses to people’s complaints, can you then say that we’re practicing democracy…?”

What the civil society is demanding of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is to hold security agents accountable as provided in the Constitution. They want the President to stem the killings and abductions that have escalated since 2024.

Amid these challenges, citizens are miffed that the police has not seen the need to properly utilise their numbers to effectively secure life and property. The common complaint is that there are not enough men to police the country. Yet, there are enough personnel to assign to members of the political class, the business class and wives and children of big men in high offices.

Some officers have been seen carrying bags for wives of governors. Detachments of MOPOL have been assigned to first ladies and first sons of politicians despite the pledge by President Tinubu in his Renewed Hope Agenda to free police personnel from extraneous duties such as VIP security and guard duties. The reform to assign VIP duties and provision of security for government buildings, installations and other critical assets to the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), is yet to take place.

Instead, the IGP has set up a special police unit to train personnel for the protection of the elite, according to reports. The IGP was reported on May 8, 2025, to have commenced training of the special unit to provide adequate security for the elite in the country. The Commander, Special Protection Unit (SPU) Base 23 of the Nigeria Police, Minna, Niger State, Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP), Hassan Sani, announced during the passing out of 50 participants of the so-called SPU that the new unit was established by the IGP due to increasing demand for elite protective services in the country. Really?

The two-week comprehensive basic training, he said, was designed to instill discipline and sharpen practical skills in the personnel of the unit and to uphold professionalism. The training module, Sani said covered VIP protection; escort and convoy movement; combat parades and formation; fire arms handling and shooting range; martial arts and self defence; first aid and basic fire-fighting skills. They forgot to add how to lace shoes and cook food for politicians.

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Despite going contrary to the police reform promised in the Renewed Hope Agenda, the IGP along with the police authorities may have elevated the protection of the less than one per cent political and economic elite above the protection of over two hundred million Nigerians. The Constitution provided for the welfare and protection of all citizens, not just the elite. Using tax-payers’ resources to secure an already over-fed elite is an affront on the Constitution and a disservice to the principles of democracy.

How about training and licensing private elite squads to provide security for those who can afford it and allow the police cater for the needs of ordinary folks? Let the political class not take this joke too far. Democracy is sweet if handled with common sense!

Note: This article was first published by The Guardian Newspaper.
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