How can any Inspector General of Police,
any Minister of Police Affairs or of the
Interior be considered a success story if he
or she does not ensure that policemen are
adequately trained in forensics, ballistics and
all the other fields that matter in the
modern world of crime fighting? Any
Inspector General of Police, Minister of
Police Affairs or of the Interior who cannot
ensure that when a suspect is lawfully
arrested, he is promptly fingerprinted, mug-
shot, and otherwise properly entered into
the database so we never have another
case of trying to determining whether a
particular person is an ex-convict or not, is
a failure.
How can we have a Police Force of some
three hundred thousand plus men and
women yet we do not have a single crime
lab and are stuck with a Force that does not
keep records? It occurred to me that the
money Tafa Balogun was convicted for
embezzling would have built world class
crime labs for our police across all six geo-
political zones! It is not that the police is
necessarily underfunded. Yes, the salaries of
policemen and women remain
unconscionably low but there is money
there for such projects as forensics labs and
the requisite training pertaining thereto. It
just happens that rather than invest in these
projects, the money is simply stolen by
those who should take the Force into the
modern age.
What does the Ministry of Labour really do
other than negotiate with unions on why not
to go on strike? How can such a shamefully
narrow job description encompass the entire
gamut of implementing our labour laws?
Labour laws in Nigeria are mostly observed
in the breach yet we keep having high
profile minister after minister with workers in
all sectors across the country suffering
untold hardship and inhuman oppression at
the hands of employers, both local and
foreign. When last did it occur to the
Ministry of Labour to insist to private
employers to pay no less than the national
minimum wage to the tens of millions of
factory, household and sundry other workers
toiling in the private sector? Besides our
microscopic minority of civil servants in the
workforce, does the Ministry of Labour even
realise that its mandate extends to the
vastly greater army of house-helps,
gardeners, messengers, gatemen, drivers,
fuel attendants, secretaries, and nannies,
etc who toil daily propping up an economy
from whose rewards they have been largely
excluded?
How difficult can it really be for the Minister
for Communications to make history by
becoming the first of his kind to give us a
dedicated emergency short-code with which
we can all have access to the police,
ambulance, fire and similar services? The
present Minister has impressed me with his
vision for a post bank to bring financial
services to rural Nigeria. It is a most
commendable idea but if he can just get us
that emergency short-code, he would have
immortalised his name!
*Mr. Jesutega Onokpasa, a lawyer, wrote
from Sapele, Delta State.
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