REPORT: Nigerian Police rated worst globally by International body

Adelani Adepegba

The World Internal Security and Police Index International has rated the Nigeria Police Force as the worst police organisation in the world.

WISPI, in its 2016 report, described the NPF as the worst globally in terms of its ability to handle internal security challenges.

The report showed that Singapore performed best on the index, followed by Finland, and Denmark.

The report was released by the International Police Science Association and the Institute for Economics and Peace based on the assessment of 127 countries.

The indices used in the assessment include capacity, process, legitimacy and outcomes, which the group said were meant to measure the ability of the security agency in a country to respond to internal security challenges, now and in the future.

WISPI said the NPF performed worst on all the four parameters with a score of 0.255 ranking 127 below Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Uganda and Pakistan.

According to the report, “There are 219 police officers for every 100,000 Nigerians, well below both the index median of 300, and the sub-Saharan Africa region average of 268. This limits the capacity of the force to measure up to its law and order mandate.

“In terms of process, legitimacy and outcomes, the story is not different which makes the Force fall short of the required standard.”

The report further scored Nigeria fourth on the political terror scale, noting that political terror had been an issue in the country since 1993.

It added, “Terrorism remains one of the greatest threats to internal security. Terrorism has increased dramatically in the last three years, with more than 62,000 people  killed in terrorist attacks between 2012 and 2014. The biggest rise last year occurred in Nigeria.”

The report further listed the top 10 performing African countries as Botswana which ranked highest at 47th globally, followed by Rwanda which took the 50th position.

Others are Algeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Ghana, South Africa and Mali.

But the police dismissed the report, and described it as misleading and lacking in empirical evidence, stressing that WISPI did not take into cognisance the significant improvement in the areas of capacity building, training and re-training of the personnel of the Force.

The Force spokesperson, Jimoh Moshood, in a statement, said the NPF had been rated the best in United Nations peace-keeping operations in the world, insisting that the force cannot be the worst under any known parameter.

It said, “Currently, the Nigeria Police Force is one of the only two African delegates representing the whole of Africa continent on the executive committee of Interpol, a position the Force attained based on high performance, merit and sustained track records.”

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