According to Temitope Olodo, a retired Metropolitan Police officer in the United Kingdom, the Federal Government should introduce a Key Performance Indicator mechanism into Nigeria's security system to measure the performance of all security officers in the country, from the rank and file to the highest ranking officers.
The recommendation was made by Olodo, a preventive terrorism consultant and President of the African Security Forum, during a virtual meeting in Abuja on Friday with the theme "Security challenges and community policing," which was jointly organized by the Nigeria Diaspora Network (UK chapter) and monitored by journalists.
Deji Adebayo, a cybersecurity professional and one of the NDN coordinators in the UK, said during the program that the meeting was organized as part of Nigerians living abroad' efforts to see how the security challenge could be solved in order to create a better and more secure society for the country.
Dr. Aminu Ahmadu, a lecturer and academic consultant at UK universities, and Offor Okpanachi, an AML expert, were among the NDN members present at the conference.
“I was a former public servant,” Olodo explained. If you ask me today, I've never seen an Inspector-General of Police job description, and I'm not taking it personally.
“I'm not sure what type of KPI he's being held to, but I can tell you that we know the Commissioner of Police KPI for the Metropolitan Police Department, as well as the ones for New York, Australia, and other cities.
“We are aware of the standards by which police officers are judged. I used to work as a policeman and have KPI. I was measured on KPI when I was on secondment from the Metropolitan Police. They presented my KPI as the foundation for determining whether I am entitled to additional perks, such as a raise in my pay.
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But I'm not sure what KPIs the Nigerian police use. What do you evaluate them against if there isn't a KPI?”
Security personnel' performance indicators would not be appropriate to their duties if there was no KPI, he added.
“Let me give you an example: the new IGP came out and said that they have been working hard and that they just found 231 various weapons, and he was congratulating himself.
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What is 231 firearms in a nation where the former Head of State claimed there are around 2 million light weapons in circulation and we know there are approximately 60, 000 AK-47 riffles in the hands of approximately 120 bandits?
“If the IGP is serious, if the IGP shuts down my small hamlet in Osun State, I am telling you, he would collect over 1000 guns in a day when a stop and search and thorough screening is conducted,” he said.
“So, when we talk about key performance indicators, if you don't offer them the right performance indicator, people will evaluate themselves against the lowest sort of performance,” he explained.
