Reforming the Nigerian Police: The institution, broken limbs and spirit, By Adéwálé Àjàdí

This new intervention focuses on police trauma and psychological experiences. The programme, which has its origin in UNDP’s effort at stabilisation in the North-East of Nigeria, has evolved into a further pilot of ways in which we help the police care for themselves. It recognises that traumatised people, if unhelped, often inflict trauma on others. Our pilot of Psychosocial and Trauma Support and Leadership for the Police is to break this potential cycle.

Since 2021, the Foreign Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany has been providing funding to support the reform agenda for the Nigerian Police Force through the lead of the United Nations Development Programme, with the able partnership of GS Foundation of Germany. This programme was initiated from a meeting between former President Muhammadu Buhari and then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to provide institutional investment in the development and evolution of the Nigerian Police Force. It continues with the active support of President Bola Tinubu’s administration. It has been one of my great privileges to lead its focus on Training. In practice, it has led to a major educating exposure to Police Officers and their humanity. Unfortunately, this is the first casualty of Police engagement with the Nigerian Public.

The training of police officers has been a catalyst for moving the Nigeria Police Force reform, starting with the improvement of training provision to recruits, especially repositioning this towards Adult Learning and ensuring that tutors become the facilitators, and not just lecturers. We have especially built learning partnerships, rather than just ‘chalk and talk.’ Over this journey, we have trained at least a thousand facilitators to improve the capacity of the police to evolve in professionalism and become genuine friends of the law-abiding Nigerian people. It is especially true, too, that the NPF has needed to turn the Police Act 2020 into a professional habit in its spirit and letter, making every officer a habitual practitioner of best practices.

This goal of translating the Police Act 2020 into the standard for their rank and file remains an ongoing and long-term change process. Hopefully, it will transform the police from simply functioning as the Nigerian Police Force to a police service to and for communities and the wider society. Inevitably, it’s a journey of continuous improvement, one that requires proper analysis of the strengths and areas that need improvement in policing in Nigeria. It is a never-ending journey of adapting its service, with the government’s direction and the people’s consent.

Unfortunately for the police, every negative incident that comes out of their interaction with the public is turned into a collective reputational issue that indicts their brand. At no point in time did we seem to see the balance that has to be struck between the strengths of the Nigerian police, the valuable service that they have to deliver and the weaknesses or areas for improvement that are inevitable in the process of serving over 200 million people.

In the end of November 2024 and start of December, we piloted or pioneered a new intervention, as we have done with many other activities in training the Police. This new intervention focuses on police trauma and psychological experiences. The programme, which has its origin in UNDP’s effort at stabilisation in the North-East of Nigeria, has evolved into a further pilot of ways in which we help the police care for themselves. It recognises that traumatised people, if unhelped, often inflict trauma on others. Our pilot of Psychosocial and Trauma Support and Leadership for the Police is to break this potential cycle.

The origin of this work was under Dr Moncef Kartas, who was the leader of the UNDP Stabilisation Project in the North-East, and Dr Paul Turay, of the same team, who specifically guided the initiation and design of a intervention to support our security forces in their relationship with local communities. This work also looked at the experiences of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and that of the officers protecting them. The work started with data from the experiences of IDP and returnees about the security forces and the narrative of their complaints about them in frontline areas. Our work had the desired impact to focus on helping the frontline officers develop standards for engaging local communities positively; ensuring that they maintain the security of their lives, whilst reducing the toxic and traumatising side effects that post-conflict communities face.

Our pilots were done in Maiduguri and Yola. In both places, the workshops evolved as new emergent issues shifted some its elements to increasingly recognise that the security forces were also deeply traumatised. It was a major unplanned effect that an aspect of the workshop that was looking at trauma exposed the depth of experiences of security officers, and how they needed more time and focus. We realised that these officers had a lot of unprocessed traumas that needed to be addressed. The toxicity of traumatised security officers interacting with traumatised communities is a critical contributor to the deepening of toxic relations.

With the lead from colleagues from University of Jos, our team built around our multi-disciplinary approach, a programme that will help Police officers work through their trauma and develop coping strategies for themselves and their colleagues. We also built on our customary use of Theatre as an amplifier of issues and giving voice to the dynamics that might be difficult for participants to express. Our delivery team, aside from the Theatre practitioners, included a renowned Police historian, two psychologists, and a lawyer/facilitator.

This new idea was dramatically catalysed by the experience of watching a senior military officer break down during the trauma segment, when we opened conversation about their experiences. This singular experience confirmed to us that we are confronting a very deep well of pain and dysfunction. So, we put a proposal to our seniors in the UNDP to look at the possibility of sensitising security officers and later specifically Police officers on their trauma. We wanted to ensure that their painful experiences did not become an obstacle in the discharge of their duties or breeding grounds for further damage to themselves and others.

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Our proposal for the pilot was also guided by the observation of self-medication that is being carried out, especially through the use and abuse of alcohol and other potentially illicit drugs. We knew that we are dealing with the visible part of a larger challenge. Our pilot looks exclusively at police officers, whose work deals with daily engagement with the worst crimes, in the course of trying to help the society deal with what we now call insecurity.

With the lead from colleagues from University of Jos, our team built around our multi-disciplinary approach, a programme that will help Police officers work through their trauma and develop coping strategies for themselves and their colleagues. We also built on our customary use of Theatre as an amplifier of issues and giving voice to the dynamics that might be difficult for participants to express. Our delivery team, aside from the Theatre practitioners, included a renowned Police historian, two psychologists, and a lawyer/facilitator.

Our pilot now had an agreed date and location with the support of the NPF Training Directorate. We moved forward with the strategic support of Deputy Inspector General of Police Frank Mba and the direct intervention of Commissioner of Police Rashid Afegbua. They helped identify officers across the North, the North-West, the North-Central and the North-East (our piloting start) who have experienced trauma and could lead others to recover. It was agreed that this pilot would be for over two weeks at the Nigerian Institute of Police Studies in Abuja. Each class would last one week, with 40 participants. I hope this gives our context and explains the journey of the pilot.

We invited officers who met our criteria to the pilot workshop. We started on the 25th of November and completed the two week pilot on the 6th of December. It was and has been a very humbling experience. It was two weeks of exploring the pain and challenges that are distressing to many people in their service to our society. For example, we had a Police Inspector whose husband and son have been missing for years after an attack by Boko Haram. We (especially the officer) do not know whether they are alive or dead. Shortly after, she woke up one day to find a side of her body paralysed, without any physical ailment, and it remains till today. She was one of the participants in this course.

There was also a Deputy Superintendent of Police whose two sons were killed within a month of each other by insurgents, besides his own wounds and injuries. There was an Inspector whose legs and arms had been amputated at different joints. She could barely stand with one leg because it was half a feet. Her husband, who also suffered the same attack, is totally paralysed and confined largely to his bed. Many individuals, and officers, in the cohort, were victims of kidnapping, with scars. Some of them suffered burns. One had lost an eye. They were all there in the last two weeks, with much more to share.

A DSP, in the course of duty, was driving a vehicle and chasing some robbers as part of a wider team of police and soldiers. He was fired at and his vehicle was then hit by another car and it burst into flames. The fire burnt his body, and his hands were disfigured as a result. All these different experiences, without exception, were all in the service of the Nigerian public and to protect lives and property.

I pray and hope for a renewal for all of our participants. We thank them, especially for their sacrifice and service to Nigeria, which is rarely ever fully recognised. The NPF has all the spectrum of Nigeria present in its ranks, as it mirrors the rest of our society. In the past four years, I have met and trained close to two thousand officers in various areas of professional improvement. Nothing is more humbling than the sacrifice of many of these people without the basic protection needed to do their jobs effectively.

All these individuals are still serving police officers, dedicated to bringing security, enforcing our laws, and maintaining order for our society to function effectively.

As if this was not enough, in the course of the second cohort, one of the officers who was there with her trauma got a call in the evening of the second day. Her husband, who was studying for his Masters Degree, had slumped and died while she was at the workshop in Abuja. The many pains and struggles that we have seen amongst the participants are without doubt unprecedented in scope and magnitude. It puts a lie to the simple stereotype that the Nigerian police are just there to make money and are only recognisable for corrupt practices. Suffice it to say, like all humans and institutions NPF has its failings but also its strengths. Not the least being the unheralded sacrifices of its officers.

It is obvious and easier to focus on the pain in the room – this overwhelming, extraordinary pain that each participant seemed to carry like their uniform. Thankfully, we had such a great facilitator in Ms Utek Ishaku and especially the theatre group from Heart Heartist; Police doctor, Dr Banji, who was there to also work with the participants. With the support of the team, inclusive of the DSP, we worked on identifying their traumas, while expressing ways in which they can manage their pain and reduce the distress they face as a consequence.

In due course, we built a bridge for them to move from despair to repair. Additionally, the Psychologist gave them exercises to practice that would give them takeaway skills. These will increase their understanding of themselves and how to care for themselves. Also, they would be able to apply emotional intelligence to work and manage their engagement with members of society and with their colleagues.

The officer who was amputated by insurgents captured the hope many had at the end of the training, when she said her “thank you.” She revisited her husband’s paralysis and the pain that it entails, she thanked us because this was now an opportunity to use the breathing exercises as a gift to him in his ongoing battle with his health, and it also allowed her as well to address the pain and the challenges that she was facing as a result of the physical and emotional wounds that have changed her life.

I pray and hope for a renewal for all of our participants. We thank them, especially for their sacrifice and service to Nigeria, which is rarely ever fully recognised. The NPF has all the spectrum of Nigeria present in its ranks, as it mirrors the rest of our society. In the past four years, I have met and trained close to two thousand officers in various areas of professional improvement. Nothing is more humbling than the sacrifice of many of these people without the basic protection needed to do their jobs effectively. As we review our last pilot, it is and has been important to ensure we work to encourage the best behaviour from our police and sanction bad choices. We need to do both diligently without ignoring their humanity or else then we will diminish ours.

Adéwálé Àjàdí, a lawyer, creative consultant and leadership expert, is author of Omoluwabi 2.0: A Code of Transformation in 21st Century Nigeria.