THE GOVERNANCE OF REFORMS IN THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE, 1999-2014

Abstract

The governance of reform is the process of designing and implementing measures to effect positive change in the quality of an institution’s outputs. Previous studies on police reforms have focused on political control, weak legal procedures, operational incapacity, and over-centralization of authority without paying sufficient attention to the governance elements of the reforms, such as levels of human rights violations, transparency and accountability, civility, participation and community partnership. This study, therefore, examined the governance of reforms of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) from 1999 to 2014.

Historical and sociological institutionalisms, with emphasis on critical junctures and path dependency of the reforms process, guided the historical research design was utilised for the study. Primary data were derived from 20 in-depth interviews, comprising (seven) police officers, (four) civil servants, (four) former members of Police Reform Committees, and (five) leaders of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) working on police reform. Levels of human rights violations, transparency and accountability, civility, participation and community partnership, were used as indicators of reform performance drawing on several reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Cleen Foundation and archival materials. The qualitative data were content analysed.

The reforms were triggered by four principal factors: security threats posed by ethnic and religious militancy, internal dissension within the NPF, public outcry about poor performance and extra-judicial killings by the police and donor pressures for reform. With regard to path dependency, two earlier waves of police reforms, 1967-1979 and 1989-1993, provided the background to the 1999-2014 reforms. Path dependency further manifested in the committee, patrimonial and centralized approaches, hard power-focus, and failure to integrate police reforms into broader security sector governance reforms. The reforms emphasized administrative and coercive capacities, without focus on attitudinal change and community partnership in policing. Other governance deficits include: non-strategic scope of reforms, non-adaptation of NPF Normative Documents and Doctrines to citizens’ human rights needs, and the non-inclusive approach to policy formulation and implementation. The strategic framework of the reform diverged from the operational context, without a stable structure as seen in the establishment, abolition and reestablishment of the Ministry of Police Affairs. The Police was reported as the most corrupt institution in Nigeria and the 8th most corrupt in the World. Reported degrading treatment of citizens by the NPF appeared to be on the increase between 2008 and 2014. Many citizens did not report crimes to the police due to distrust. The NPF remained the most-implicated Nigerian institution in human rights violation. The thesis is therefore about the collapse of values, paradoxically within the context of unending reforms.

The goals and objectives of police reforms in Nigeria were largely not achieved between 1999 and 2014. Implementation was poor and characterized by wastage of time and resource wastages due to inadequate focus on governance elements of the reforms. Strategic, inclusive, transparent and integrated formulation and implementation of reforms are required to transform the Nigeria Police Force.

Keywords: Reform governance, Path dependency, community partnership in policing, Nigeria Police Force. Word count: 478