How military ruined police, by ex-AIG
By Odita Sunday
FIVE years after the return to demoratic rule, a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), Alhaji Ahamdu Sheidu last week blamed the military for refusing to effectively equip the police.
Also, the Nigerian Railway Police command yesterday paraded no fewer than six armed robbery suspects, including a Railway employee, who are being held on armed robbery charges. They were arrested for allegedly committing various crimes at the Railway compound in Ebute-Metta, Lagos.
Sheidu said: " The Nigeria Police suffered an indescribable set back in terms of equipment and training because the successive military governments in Nigeria believed that there was an alternative institution of coercion for the maintenance of law and order , that is, using the military to handle internal security matters, instead of the police.
"Because of this, the equipment that the Nigeria Police had in the sixties for crime prevention and detection totally disappeared."
The former AIG lamented that "ill-equipment of the police became so obvious that when the Kano Maitatsine riot broke out in 1970 and the police were overwhelmed by the rioters, the commission of enquiry that was set up by the Federal Government acknowledged the fact of the total neglect of the police by the military, among other things."
According to Sheidu, the commission recommended additional equipment for the Police Mobile Force commensurate with their duties and a review of their training programme to enhance its operational efficiency."
He added: "Though I am not an alarmist, but I want to say here without fear of contradiction that the scale of equipment recommended for the police in 1982 to be able to deal effectively and decisively with internal strife is yet to be implemented to date-22 years after."
Parading the suspects, the Commissioner of Police in charge of Railway Police Command, Mr. Tsoho Usaini said: "One of the suspects nabbed is the kingpin of car vandalisation in the railway compound, Ebute-Metta, Lagos".
According to Usaini, the Police acted on information and the principal suspect, identified as a bus conductor who resides in the Railway compound, was arrested on June 14.
He noted that the prime suspect and two of his collaborators at night stole cash and vandalised vital parts of cars.
The Railway Police boss said that the suspects would be prosecuted as soon as investigations were concluded.
