Nigeria Police has been ranked bottom in Africa and 127th in 2016 in the World Internal Security and Police Index (WISPI) released recently by two bodies, the International Police Science Association (IPSA) and the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).
Nigeria performed worst on the Index, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Uganda, and Pakistan.
According to the WISPI, the 127 countries were measures on the ability of the police and other security providers to address internal security issues in their countries across four domains, using sixteen indicators, capacity, process, legitimacy and outcomes.
Africa’s best police service is that of Botswana despite being ranked 47th best followed by Rwandan police as Africa’s second best (with global position of 50th), Algeria (58th), Senegal (68th) and Tunisia (72nd) in that order.
Completing the top 10 for Africa were, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Ghana, South Africa and Mali respectively.
Despite the failure of Africa to break into the top forty, the continent was very prominent in the lower rankings. Six African countries were in the bottom 10. Cameroon and Mozambique in the 120th and 122nd spots.
The report noted that Nigeria was ranked low due to the rising cases of terrorism in the last five years corruption and low number of police.
“he police rate is the most heavily weighted indicator of the capacity domain, and theoretically the most important aspect of internal security capacity, with an average sized police force, and a relatively small military and private security sector the 219 police officers for every 100,000 Nigerians, fell well below both the Index median of 300.”
At the top of the global rankings, Europe dominated by eight countries. Except for first place Singapore and Australia in the sixth spot, all the other countries were in Europe – Finland, Denmark, Austria, Germany (2nd – 5th), Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland (7th – 10th).
