EDITORIAL: Police withdrawal from VIPs charade must end

The insecurity spiralling out of control in Nigeria recently compelled President Bola Tinubu to direct the immediate withdrawal of the police guards of Very Important Personalities (VIPs) throughout the country. These officers are to be deployed to the now highly essential core policing duties. The president, more so, doubled down with a state of emergency declaration on security last Wednesday. A slew of steps to be taken by the police, the military, SSS, and the legislature, have been unfolded to give the emergency a bite. These appear laudable; but in diligence lies the real challenge.

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Under the new plan, 50,000 persons are to be recruited into the police, while their training institutions are to be upgraded. The military will ramp up its numbers also, to put more boots on the ground, whereas newly recruited forest guards are to be deployed to flush out criminals from their various dens.

Nigeria has an estimated police personnel strength of about 371,000. Over the years, thousands of them have been deployed to guard VIPs, leaving the larger society vulnerable to different manifestations of insecurity. Earlier efforts, administration after administration, to stop this aberration, defied both presidential directives and those of Inspectors-General, which were neutered by the transactional or corrupt economics of politicians, fraudsters and the corporate elite.

The VIPs are now to draw their security details from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC). President Tinubu had noted, in a release issued by his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, penultimate week, that, “Many parts of Nigeria, especially remote areas, have few policemen at stations, thus making the task of protecting and defending the people difficult.”

But the benumbing reality is that most communities, particularly in the North, with a huge landmass, have no police presence at all, nor any trace of governance. In some place, distances of over 100 kilometres separate these communities from the state capitals. This explains why 200 people could be killed, as it happened in Yelwata in June, without rapid security response from either the police, or military.

Farm lands have been deserted. In Benue and Plateau states, and across the North-east, living in Internally Displaced Camps (IDPs) has become a normal way of life for citizens. The humanitarian crises arising thereof from food insecurity, health hazards and the lack of education for children and youths, are incalculable.

To be clear, Nigeria’s waves of anarchy did not start under Tinubu’s regime. The death toll from terrorism, banditry, kidnappings, herders and communal clashes, for instance during Muhammadu Buhari’s eight years tenure, was 63,111, as reported by the Nigeria Security Tracker (NST), a project of the US Council on Foreign Relations Africa programme.

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Such horrific data should have precipitated a sense of urgency, immediately Mr Tinubu assumed office in 2023. Unfortunately, he dithered. Amnesty International claims that 10,217 persons were killed in his administration’s first two years. Therefore, the new wave of kidnappings involving 378 persons from schools in Kebbi and Niger states, in addition to a Kwara State church, were not fortuitous events. These deeply worrying incidents had been cascading, till the “Donald Trump effect” helped to ginger action.

While the new effort towards reinvigorating policing is a welcome departure from past shameful experiences, PREMIUM TIMES is highly concerned about the likelihood of its effective enforcement. A few days ago, the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun announced that 11,566 officers have already been withdrawn from VIPs. There is a doubt around the figure here!

The publicly quoted number of police officers attached to VIPs is 100,000 personnel. The European Union Agency for Asylum, in its report on the numerical strength of the Nigerian Police, equally mentioned this figure on 11 November, which is attributed to independent sources. Hence, we have serious doubts about the number recently quoted by the IGP as being the totality of those attached to VIPs.

Instructively, in 2003, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020, police withdrawal directives from VIPs were made by Inspectors-General Tafa Balogun, Ogbonnaya Onovo, Hafiz Ringim, Mohammed Abubakar, Solomon Arase, Ibrahim Idris and Mohammed Adamu, respectively. In some cases, there were threats of the “arrest and dismissal” of officers who failed to comply.

Mr Buhari gave the same order in 2015 to deepen the maintenance of law and order. Perfunctorily executed initially, the police subsequently relapsed in its VIP protection vocation, which has been alleged to be highly financially rewarding to the institution. Oddly enough, IGP Egbetokun had issued the same directive in June 2023, and April 2025, respectively. Such elite police protection duties, he rightly posited, creates a “distortion that weakens operational effectiveness” of the police. The fact is that if his earlier directives did not end up as a farce, the president would not have had any reason to give the same order, six months after the last one.

The bandits are still on the prowl. Barely 24 hours after the kidnapped 38 Christian worshippers in Kwara State regained their freedom, 11 persons in the same area, precisely in Isapa community, were kidnapped. Five minors aged between five and 10, a pregnant woman and two nursing mothers, were among the victims. In Niger State, 24 farmers, including four pregnant women, were kidnapped last week. These heartrending incidents forced the federal authorities to shut down 41 Unity Colleges across the country. About four states in the North had earlier pressed this panic bottom.

It is a notorious fact that Nigeria, with its estimated 250 million people, and landmass of 923,768 square kilometres, has a substandard police ratio of 1:637 persons, which is far below the United Nations recommended ratio of 1:450. This is even for climes that have reasonable degrees of law and order, and are not witnessing the depth of our insecurity challenges.

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It will take about three months to recruit and six months to train the proposed 50,000 new officers to make an impact on policing in the country. Certainly, this would not be the needed magic bullet. The more impactful solution would lay inmulti-layered policing, involving the state, communities and other jurisdictions, as practiced in federal systems like those of the US, Canada and Australia, etc., and including the United Kingdom, which is not even a federation but has 43 police services.

The National Assembly’s prevarication on the creation of state police is sickening. After President Tinubu has nudged it into action, and the majority of state governors have adopted the proposal, it is difficult to imagine why the parliament is still wavering on it.

A senator, Enyinnaya Abaribe’s condemnation of the lack of official decisiveness, amidst egregious mass killings and kidnappings of citizens, in a heated debate on insecurity in the parliament, is gratifying. Truth must be told to power; the senator rebuked the presidency’s double standards and tardiness in responding to the challenge. His submission, quoting a famous epigram that, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” resonates. Yet, the lawmakers, in our own assessment, are part of the problem, with their shoddy oversight of security institutions and misplaced legislative priorities.

The country has had enough of political correctness in combating terrorism. Ignoring the SSS’ intelligence in the schoolskidnapping of 25 students in Kebbi State and similar security breaches without consequences, erode public confidence in government and negates the required synergy in this struggle. Such chaarade will always set Nigeria up for the battle of the long night.