The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria HURIWA had identified possible reasons why Southerners did not participate in the ongoing police recruitment.
Daily Post recalls that the Force Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba, on Wednesday, said the Nigeria Police extended the online registration in the ongoing 2021 police constable recruitment to Saturday, January 22, 2022, to allow eligible Southerners apply.
But in a statement on Thursday, HURIWA said except the police is “unbundled and professionalized to legally enforce federal character principles in its top hierarchy rather than the skewed status which favours Moslem North, youngsters from some parts of Southern Nigeria would not want to enlist in the current Nigeria Police Force.
HURIWA called on the National Assembly to rapidly amend relevant sections of the Nigerian constitution to make room for comprehensive police reforms including the creation of state police.
The rights group said it thinks the current President unleashed significant verbal harm and made toxic opinions that dangerously imperils the institutional image of the Nigeria Police Force.
”By making public comments rejecting state police which goes to show that northern moslem section of Nigeria is comfortable with the skeweMuslimership structure of the Nigeria Police Which favours the North.”
“We think that President Buhari’s opposition to any sort of police reforms is one of the fundamental factors which have made a lot of Southerners not to come forward for enlistment into the police force since the status quo means that only police operatives from the Moslem North will get to the peak of their career whereas Southern Christians are alienated and frustrated out in their prime”.
“All that an observer needs to do to know that the present-day National Police is Northernised is to listen to public conversations of top or middle-ranking police officers. The language of public conversations amongst Nigeria Police is Hausa. How can you assure non- Hausa speakers that what we have is Nigeria Police And not Northern Police?”.
HURIWA also urged the hierarchy of the Nigeria Police Force to embark on a thorough in-house cleansing to weed out the bad eggs amongst the officers “who are usually posted to the Southern States to set up cash extortion rackets as checkpoints”.
The group stressed that so long as professional misconduct and criminality are tolerated at the highest levels of the present day Nigeria Police Force, there won’t be a lot of useful youths in the South who would be willing and available for enlistment into the Nigeria Police Force.
