POLICE WELFARE AND THE HYPOCRISY OF A NATION 20022006

The other day, the media carried reports of the statement credited to the Inspector General of Police (I.G.) regarding the welfare and remuneration package of members of the Police Force.  In that statement, the I.G. revealed that a Sergeant’s monthly take home pay was less than N10,000!  In real terms, this would mean that a sergeant’s monthly salary will buy a bag and a half of rice and nothing more.  Admittedly, our sergeant’s family may also consume other food items in place of rice, but the current market prices of garri, yam, cassava and other staple products may in fact encourage the patronage of rice in place of other farm produce.  The critical point being made here is that the sum of N10,000 can barely cover the monthly feeding expenses of a family of husband and wife and 2-3 children; yet, our sergeant under reference is also expected to meet the educational, transportation, clothing and health requirements of his family every month from his paltry net pay.   We can expect that officers in the lower cadres of Corporal, Lance Corporal, and Private would have a net monthly take home pay of between N7,000 and N10,000 in spite of similar family sizes and basic requirements as their superior officers!

Policemen would generally consider allocation of barracks residence a priviledge.  It is unlikely that new barracks facilities  (with the exception of Abuja) have been constructed in the last 30 years and even the barracks which were established by our colonial masters have become dilapidated, unmaintained and overpopulated with poor standards of hygiene.  The senior cadres of the Police Force do not fare any better, although they may qualify for higher salary packages, as per their ranks, but there is no gainsaying that family demands and the social expectations of higher office would still make their salary and welfare package not much better than the level of inadequacy suffered in the lower ranks.  Indeed, knowing critics have observed that if the members of the Police Force were to live solely on their official net income, there would be no policeman left standing at the end of the day, as they would have become veritable victims of hunger and malnutrition!

These critics maintain that the fact that we still have policemen patrolling our streets is the result of the grace of God and the support provided from the pool of N20 collected from the ‘save our souls’ toll gates unofficially mounted by our ‘men in black’ at various strategic locations throughout the length and breadth of our country.  There have been speculations that the senior police officers do not have the will to put a stop to the daily harvest garnered by the foot soldiers because their own welfare and the education of their children and other social needs all depend on their share of ‘revenue’ brought in from these unofficial toll gates!

The Police Force is not the only government agency or parastatal that is steeped in this kind of self preservation, as the Customs preventive service, Immigration and indeed, the administrative and executive arms of the civil service, be it federal, state or local governments have all established various forms of toll gates at their desks or offices to supplement their grossly inadequate remunerations!  Nigerians, individual or corporate have learnt to live with unreceipted expenses whenever they have transactions involving government or its agents.  In many cases, the unreceipted toll fee paid will generally be multiples of the official government declared fee.  Again, cynics have argued that it is this egunje or kickback that in fact keeps the wheels of government turning albeit inefficiently and often in the wrong direction!  Without the contrived tollgate, most civil servants would be pauperized beyond measure; they would be unable to feed themselves adequately or send their children to private schools in Nigeria or abroad or even seek overseas medical treatment or acquire choice houses in the best areas of Abuja or indeed wherever they fancy!

So, why do we play the ostrich and pretend that no one can see the corruption in other government establishments outside the Police Force?  A friend of mine states the obvious when he maintains that you cannot stop a hungry goat from eating yam.  It is unreasonable, therefore, to underpay key players in our body polity and expect these servants of the public to go hungry in the face of ample opportunity to redress their condition of deprivation and ensure their basic survival and subsequently affluence from their official duty posts.

So, the question we would ask is, “why have we not done anything about the grossly inadequate emolument of the Police and other civil servants in the last twenty years of so, especially when it is clear that the level and prevalence of corruption in the country derive from this imbalance?

President Obasanjo recently inaugurated a committee headed by Chief Earnest Shonekan, to review the salary structure and realign and harmonize job contents with remuneration throughout the federal civil service.  However, observers are of the view that it does not require any study or committee to confirm the abysmally out of date structure of salaries, particularly as a result of the reckless devaluation of the naira in the last 20 years; but the issue of job evaluation and remuneration would require a careful and thorough work study in each Federal Ministry to ensure appropriate staffing and remuneration.  This exercise, analysts believe, would take more than the four months or so allocated to Shonekan’s committee and in any case, these analysts argue that this is a job that should be handled by professional consultancies in human resources and management.

In any event, there can be only one development from this exercise; that is, if civil servants are expected to remain committed and put in their best, salaries would need to be increased five to ten fold its present levels to ensure that government officers do not need extraneous income to meet their basic needs.  Meanwhile, a recommendation for an across the board increase of salaries of such a magnitude would unleash an inflationary spiral, a kind of which was last seen with  the Udoji awards of the 1970s on the economy.  The inflation index would rise close to 30% or more and government’s tottering reform programmed encapsulated in NEEDS would become unrealizable as increased salaries may not in fact add much value to the purchasing power of the beneficiaries of the wage increases!

So, if it is not economically realistic to redress the salary imbalance with substantial wage increase, what then can we do?

I have maintained that a realistic way of addressing this dilemma may be a serious look at the prospect of improving the value of the naira in our pockets.  Thus if the value of the naira consolidates to N60=$1, this would imply that the same nominal salaries would command 100% more value over goods and services in the market; in this manner, you can improve the salary structure without increasing nominal cash and thereby put a lid on inflation!

We have suggested several times in this column that the adoption of the instrument of dollar certificates for the sharing of the dollar component of the federation pool would be an economics compliant process for redressing and reconciling the series of dilemmas facing our economy but the authorities have refused to listen!  Sooner than later, it will be clear that there is no other choice!

(This piece first appeared in this column on November 7, 2005 but the threat of a strike  by the Police Force increases its relevance!)