When you expect hungry policemen to defeat Boko Haram

Police officers assigned to Borno to battle terrorist sect Boko Haram, took to the streets of Maiduguri on July 2, 2018 to protest unpaid allowances.

According to the angry police officers, they haven’t been paid a dime in seven months.

SaharaReporters quotes one of the protesting police officers as saying: "We have about 50 squadrons here, we are all visiting mobile policemen. Can you imagine that we have not been paid our allowances for seven months? Some of our personnel here lost their children simply because they could not afford health services.

"Just go inside the commands, you would see where some of our personnel have been sleeping for months. They brought us here for special service but we have been subjected to slavery here. Soldiers are receiving their monthly allowances plus three meals per day, but we don't enjoy such. We demand explanations."

The police officers who hit the streets were chanting slogans like: 'IG (Inspector General Ibrahim Idris) is corrupt!' 'IG is a thief!' 'Where are our allowances?' 'Buhari is a good man but IG has eaten our allowances!' 'Buhari must hear this!'

And these are the men we expect to keep us safe and ward off terrorists in a restive northeast region? I really don’t know who we offended as a people to be 'blessed' with the leaders we have.

Why send ill motivated, hungry, demoralized and ill equipped police officers to the battlefront and expect them to defeat the enemy? Where else is this done? Are we not mad like this?

Of course police officers often share stories of how poorly they earn and how their meager salaries never arrive on time. It is often why they have to stand on the roads to shamelessly extort and beg for alms, looking as bedraggled and unkempt as ever. Our police force is a joke because leadership has turned them into a huge joke.

You would at least expect that police officers deployed to Borno—the epicenter and birthplace of the Boko Haram insurgency—are treated better by an administration that often cites security as its strongest suit.

What happened in Borno today is embarrassing and shameful. How low can we really go?