“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognised by its fruit.” — Jesus Christ
There exists in Nigeria a peculiar form of collective amnesia, one that allows us to curse the darkness while steadfastly refusing to light a candle. We have spent decades perfecting the art of vilifying the Nigeria Police Force, crafting elaborate narratives of their incompetence, corruption, and brutality. Our collective righteous indignation masks a more uncomfortable truth, that the Nigeria Police Force is our perfect mirror; it reflects with startling accuracy the investment, priorities, and values of the Nigerian state and its people.
The Arithmetic of Absurdity
Consider the arithmetic of expectation versus reality. The Nigeria Police Force operates with 370,000 officers policing 240 million people — a ratio that would make even the most optimistic administrator weep. Each police station receives precisely ₦45,000 per quarter for operational expenses, translating to roughly ₦500 daily. This is not a budget; it is pocket change masquerading as institutional funding.
To place this in perspective, Nigeria expects crime prevention, investigation, and community policing from stations that operate on less money per day than many Nigerians spend on lunch. We demand forensic investigations from officers who cannot afford fuel for their vehicles, if indeed they have vehicles at all. The sheer audacity of these expectations would be comical if the consequences were not so tragic.
Mohammed Sheidu, Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Police Trust Fund, captured this absurdity perfectly when he described Nigerian police officers as “miracle workers in uniform… (because) there is nothing really there to actually support them fully to discharge their duties.” Instead of marvelling at these daily miracles, we fixate on their inevitable shortcomings.
We expect American-standard policing from pocket-change funding, then express shock when crude reality intrudes. The truth is that raw police-to-population comparisons with American or European forces reveal another layer of our self-deception. The cruel mathematical reality says we should not even bother. While America allocates $277 billion annually for security, Nigeria’s Senate approved ₦11.3 billion — roughly $7.5 million — for the Police Trust Fund in 2020. No basis for comparisons.
These comparisons treat all officers as functionally equivalent while ignoring the massive technological and infrastructural force multipliers that American officers possess. A single foreign police officer operates with digital surveillance networks, advanced forensic capabilities, GPS-enabled vehicles, real-time database access, and integrated communication systems that can make them operationally equivalent to 5 – 10 traditionally equipped officers.
When Nigerian officers must rely on manual record-keeping, unreliable radios, and basic investigative tools, their effective capacity plummets dramatically. Nigeria’s 370,000 officers might have the practical capability of only 40,000 – 75,000 fully equipped foreign officers. The huge technological gap exposes the absurdity of expecting American-level policing results from officers operating with colonial-era tools and resources.
Theatre of Reforms in a Geography of Abandonment
Since 1989, Nigeria has staged an elaborate performance: establishing police reform committees in 1995, 2000, and beyond, each producing comprehensive recommendations that governments ceremonially file and forget. We prefer reform’s theatre to its substance, criticism’s comfort to solution’s cost.
This pattern has birthed Nigeria’s most understaffed, under-resourced government institution. While we demand European efficiency, we provide subsistence-level support, creating what can only be described as institutional starvation dressed up as policy.
Beyond Local Government headquarters, most secondary towns exist in a law enforcement vacuum. We have crafted a two-tier nation: urban areas with inadequate policing, rural areas with none. This abandonment explains why bandits and insurgents flourish in Nigeria’s countryside — when institutional presence vanishes, criminal elements naturally occupy the void.
Military involvement in internal security reflects not police failure but our failure to equip police for success. Proper rural policing investment decades ago might have prevented today’s security crisis, but prevention demands foresight and investment while reaction requires only outrage and blame.
After 35 years risking their lives daily, police officers retire to pension packages of N900,000 to N3.5 million — amounts that barely cover basic expenses in contemporary Nigeria. We ask these men and women to work “in the sun and in the rain,” maintaining order in a society that consistently undervalues their sacrifice. Then we feign surprise when morale craters, when survival trumps standards, when impossible conditions produce predictable outcomes.
Reframing Success
When properly analysed, Nigeria may rank among earth’s safest countries relative to police capacity. That any semblance of order exists with such limited resources represents extraordinary achievement, not failure. The question shifts from, not why our police perform poorly, but how they manage, to function at all.
The Nigeria Police Force needs what every functional institution requires: adequate funding, proper equipment, competitive compensation, and societal support. Not another conference. Not another white paper. Not another committee. They need us to align expectations with investments, criticism with commitment to solutions.
The biblical wisdom about trees and fruit contains profound truth about institutional health. We cannot poison soil and expect healthy growth, withhold water and demand flowers, create conditions for failure then condemn inevitable results.
The Nigeria Police Force is not our enemy — it is our creation. Until we accept responsibility for what we have built, we remain trapped in cycles of criticism without construction, blame without betterment, expectations without enablement.
The choice remains ours: continue cursing darkness or finally light the candle of genuine reform. The mirror is waiting.
