Structural Reformation of Nigeria Police Force Through Strategic Human Resource Management Framework

David Love Opeyemi^1*, Adepoju Omoseni Oyindamola² and Akinkuotu Joshua Oluwagaloba^3
*Correspondence: David Love Opeyemi, Department of Social Sciences, University of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, Tel: 27627162560, Email:

Keywords

Strategic human resource management • Human resource management • Nigeria police • Structural reform • Police • Reforms

Introduction

The contributions of any institution to a country’s socio-economic development rest on the performance of its human resources. The management of these resources is vital to attaining the set goals and objectives. Globally, the police force plays a significant role in national development, as they constitute the pillar of peace and stability, which government builds its social and economic policies. The role of the police is essential as the absence of peace and stability deter the economic and social progress of a country [1]. The vital institution is accountable for maintaining laws and public order [2,3]. The Nigeria police force, which is under the jurisdiction of federal and state institutions, has the responsibility of law enforcement and maintaining order in the country. This responsibility is regulated by the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria, the Nigeria police act, international conventions, professional ethics, and other acts of the national assembly.

However, over the years, the Nigeria police force has been tagged with several accusations that reflect the institution's inefficiency. This is evident through reports such as unprofessionalism and gross misconducts of police officers, loss of trust in the force, and incessant record of insecurity in the country [4,5]. Obviously, there is a lack of public trust for the police institution for security of lives and properties, human treatment in accordance to fundamental human rights, which is a cornerstone for economic prosperity and political stability. There is also a high level of deviance among police personnel, which has made police protection a luxury unaffordable for the general public and the non-existence of toleration of fundamental human rights of the people in the eyes of the police [6,7]. Police deviance is considered an aggregate of negative behaviors of the Nigeria police, which negates their constitutional duties and moral duties [8,9]. These behaviors include corruption in the habit of demanding and collecting inducement, police misconduct through deliberate attempts to break internal rules and procedures, police crime involving aggressive and excessive violence on the citizens, and police brutality. Evidence report by Amnesty International reveals that Nigeria police has been responsible for large numbers of extrajudicial execution, deaths in custody and torture, and a sum of 1,049 people killed by the police as of 2009. The deviation of some police officers from expected norms, duties and standards shows a need for an overhauling of the approaches of the institution. Recently, this act of police deviance, which is largely construed as police brutality, led to mass protest across Nigeria against a police unit called Special Anti–Robbery Squad (SARS). The protest was named ENDSARS, which encompasses the SARS unit's dissolving and an end to Police brutality. The SARS unit was known for unlawful and extrajudicial killings, extortion of citizens (mostly youths), degrading and inhumane treatment of citizens [10].

Furthermore, there are several limitations faced by the NPF. These limitations can be categorized into two dimensions of resource inefficiency: the inadequate numbers of police officers suitable for Nigeria's population and the poor welfare of available police officers. Nigeria is under policed, with a capacity of 371800 police officers to a population of 200 million. Also, the Nigeria police is underfunded to fulfill its constitutional duties of protecting the citizens. They lack operational vehicles, modern forensics equipment, inadequate firearms, and a poor working environment [11]. These run concurrently with the poor welfare of police officers. This is evident from the terrible living conditions of police officers, such as the dilapidated state of the police barracks, lack of meaningful insurance, inadequate provision of working tools such as uniforms, shoes, and even writing materials, lack of promotion of police officers, and poor remuneration. Considering the NPF state in line with the assertion of Minhas and Alishah only a well–equipped, morally upright, political force and physically fit police force can safeguard a community. All these problems in the NPF indicate a deficiency in the institution's human resource management. Consequently, this calls for a need for Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) practices to reform the institution to optimize the purpose of its creation [12].

This change of approach in the management of the NPF is imperative as the fundamental principle of trust for the institution has been lost. This can be corroborated with Codreanu stating that public Institutions need public trust for optimal performance and a strategic management approach in its human resource functionality, especially in economic trends, technological influence, socio-cultural tendencies, and geographical trends. Hence, the SHRM approach is required to address the several issues faced in NPF, optimize the effectiveness of NPF towards integrative cooperation between the institutions and the people and enhance the performance of police personnel in the force. In the 21^st century, SHRM has become significant in managing the conduct of the police service and developing modern police with the required relevant skills to respond to evolving security threats and novel types of crime [13].

In the review of literature, it is observed that there is a dearth of research that has explored the role of strategic human resource management among public institutions such as the police force and more importantly, in the Nigeria police force. The perennial security challenges, ineffectiveness, police deviance, and other police related issues have consistently led to various police reforms in Nigeria. Over the years, these reforms have done little to assuage the situation, which to Nigerians is skepticism of hope [14]. The failure and ineffectiveness of the reforms from 1999-2020 have worsened the insecurity challenges in the country [15]. Considering the ineffectiveness of the institution of NPF and its ravaging impact on the citizen and the economy, this research sought to provide a recommendation for structural reformation of the Nigeria police force through the strategic human resource management approach. Consequently, the study attempts to achieve the following specific objectives:

• To examine the challenges hindering the effectiveness of the Nigerian police force.

• To examine the human resource management practices and their deficiency in the NPF.

• To develop a strategic human resource management framework for structural reform of the Nigeria police force.

Literature Review

Policing in Nigeria

Generally, policing is protecting lives and property within a particular jurisdiction. Globally police play a significant role in any nation as the crime rate keeps increasing and restoring social discrepancy becomes necessary. The police force is on the frontline in restoring social discrepancy, advocating for peace, enforcing laws, and supremacy of the constitution overall by the necessary agency. These functions help protect the fundamental human rights of the people, which need to be protected [16]. During the colonial era, the police force was introduced to Africa by the western world to protect lives and properties. Literature and research do not believe so and instead argue that the introduction of western policing to Africa was not to protect Africans but to protect colonial interests/ideology such as political, commercial, and strategic objectives which is financed to serve the economic needs of colonialism [17]. Thus, the police force performs a fundamental function by protecting citizens rights through enforcement of laws, order, and the maintenance of peace. In Africa, the police force introduced was quite evasive, oppressive, distortive, and forceful to suit the colonial imposters' taste. As of now, this evasive and oppressive endemic structure is still evident in the Nigerian police force. This is as a result of the fact that the police force is considered a political instrument in the post-independence political elites' hands. Müller clarified that the post-independent era focused on regime protection rather than promoting rights, welfare, and building up the nation for everyone; neither did they focus on protecting and serving the citizens.

The Nigeria police came into existence as a result of the merging of two Nigeria police (Southern Nigeria Police and Northern Nigeria Police). It is considered the principal law enforcement agency in the country. Across the nation, there are several staff deployments in the 36 states, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), with 2,000 functioning police stations.

Over the years, the Nigerian Police Force has failed in its duties such as violation and failure to protect the rule of law and human rights and failure to report crimes, resulting in self-help [18]. Madubuike-Ekwe and Obayemi opined that the failure in the force is caused by the methods adopted in carrying our operations and response to issues and problems relating to law enforcement. Examples of such include arrest without investigated proof, interrogation after a custodial arrest, property search without a warrant, use of force, and cruel method of interrogation, in response to issues and problems relating to law enforcement.

Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM)

Human resource management can simply be explained as the management of humans as an organizational resource. Humans are resources capable of using initiative, intelligence, discretion, knowledge, and creativity to solve complex organizational problems.

Human resources refer to the know-how, capabilities, skills, and expertise of the workforce of an organization or establishment. In retrospect, human resource capabilities have been in high demand due to the significant contribution to innovation and competitiveness of organizations. For an organization to survive in this ever-changing dynamic environment, it’s crucial to invest in its human resources by developing the human capacity to match up with the skill level required in operating the current modern technology, innovation, and operational arrangement. Consequently, managing, developing, and building these resources is of utmost significance to the growth and sustainability of an organization.

Today, the need for organizations to adopt strategic human resource management has become essential with the advent of globalization, swift competition increasing technological innovations. Strategic human resource management involves linking and integrating the human resource function with the organization's strategic objectives to improve performance [19]. Accordingly, Beer et al., as cited by Bratton, stated that SHRM is a concept that integrates organization strategy in three different aspects which are:

• Linking human resources policies and practices with the organization's strategic management process.

• Supporting internalization of the importance of human resources on line managers.

• Integrate the workforce to foster commitment or an “identity of interest” with the strategic goals.

Moreover, Nchimbi research on the role of strategic human resource management in the public sector showed that public institutions should be managed through modernized and improved human resource management by building up the efficiencies of civil servants and public institutions personnel. Thus, enhancing public sector performance and allowing bureaucrats to manage public institutions within the competitive environment.

Zehir, Gurol, Karaboga and Kole asserted that any organization's human resource management becomes strategic when integrating Human Resource (HR) practices, processes, and strategies with its goals, objectives, and strategy. Strategic human resource management ensures that employees’ rules of engagement are not at variance with the organization's game plan and end. It ensures that employees approaches to attaining organizational strategies are not robotic but integrative in function and approach.

Pongpearchan and Ramlall opined that strategic human resource management is beyond familiar procurement, utilization, and employee compensation. It is the formulation of the HR strategy to support and administer the organization's strategic plan for creating competitive advantage opportunity, maximization of human capital, reduction of inefficient labor, and overall financial profitability. Ref opined that strategic human resource management is a performance enhancement tool. The concept increases organizational productivity and human resource creativity and gives an organization a competitive advantage. The Strategic Human Resource plays an essential role in creating human capital for individual and organizational effectiveness, enhancing employees' behavioral outcomes [20].

Application of strategic human resource management to restructuring of nigeria police force

Strategic police reforms in Nigeria's pre-military rule and postcolonial administration never existed because the policing in the country was not directed to protecting lives and properties but to defending a regime, fighting opposition, and oppressing others who refuse to bow to the federal power. The gross misuse of power and political misconduct from the early post-colonial gave rise to the military taking over a government that letter resulted in the neglect of the Nigeria police force. The NPF came to light at the end of the military rule in 1999 after years of negligence by the military regime and because of the constitution.

It was clear that NPF needed more to satisfy Nigeria's safety needs, which led to reforms channeled to reorganize and restructure the NPF. The NPF reforms were majorly directed towards core safety and human rights issues such as the extrajudicial killings, torturing of suspects, absence of victims protection, etc. Other physical reforms were directed at the technicality needed for successful operations. This justifies the prevalence of challenges faced in the Nigeria security forces, which include inappropriate equipment, insufficient quality control (and transparency) of recruitment processes and promotions, delays in paying salaries, and lack of functionality of internal and external oversight institutions. Also, general underfunding and the deficient financial and infrastructural organization of the police force are generally perceived as some of the main reasons for the security agents’ lack of professionalism or involvement in corruption. Müller opined that the effort to reform the force was like a waltz, with no decisive steps forward and a superficial veneer. Historically, this inefficiency NPF is rooted in the ideology of the policing system, which shows that systems have not entirely departed from their original colonial philosophical template. Circumventing replacement for a not-working mode of operation or patching a spoilt system is the clear case of NPF reforms. It is believed that reforming and an adopted oppress to rule policing for democratic policing is like hitting a head against a brick wall to cure a headache. You can hit as many times as possible with so many reformed styles as possible, but the outcome would still not fix the ache. For any reform to be effective, there is a need for a solid and radical ideological detachment from the old ways (colonial philosophical template) rebuilt of a new system.

Methodology

This paper utilized a qualitative research methodology, which involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data to understand the experiences, concepts, and opinions for proper in-depth insights into a problem to generate new ideas. This was done by detailed and critical content analysis of various journals. The journals brought out the necessary secondary data for this research, which also was gotten from conferences, books, and online publications. The qualitative method was chosen because of the research's nature, which is investigative. The study also sourced information from reports of national and international civil society organizations such as policy and legal advocacy center, social intervention advocacy foundation, center for law enforcement education, CLEEN, Network on police reforms in Nigeria, Civil Liberties Organization (CLO), and Presidential committees on Police reforms. Also, as Amusan and Saka utilized on police reforms, the research adopted the thematic and content analysis of the secondary data.

Discussion

Examine the challenges hindering the effectiveness of NPF

Police's effectiveness, development, and behavior are rooted in the police system's democratization, which is influenced by four component of service delivery, philosophy, the politicization of the police, professional police culture and police-public relationship. However, the police system, irrespective of its nature, is determined by the workforce skills, abilities, and how they represent society. Abiodun et al opined that the ineffectiveness of the Nigeria police force has resulted in several uncultured behaviors such as police brutality, police deviance, extra–judicial killings, unprofessionalism, usage of illicit drugs, drinking of alcohol while on duty, corruption, and the SARS Notoriety. These results from several challenges that have hindered the police force's effectiveness and performance in Nigeria. These challenges are summarized and grouped into five (5) challenges, which are briefly explained below:

Poor working conditions and inadequate resources: According to their duties, Nigeria's police system lacks the operational tools, resources, and machinery to provide adequate security to society. The police system has a poor forensic capacity (in terms of staff and laboratories), poorly equipped police stations, messy police stations, and insufficient security equipment such as bulletproof vests, sophisticated arms, and handcuffs. Furthermore, Nigeria police officers are victims of inhumane treatment evidenced in their poor accommodation facilities, dilapidated police barracks, and poor wages and salaries in comparison to their counterparts in other parts of the world.

Moreover, according poor welfare condition in Nigeria police force impedes effective performance. The police institution is seen as a dumping ground for miscreants, bullies, hardened criminals, and societal misfits for other careers. These inadequacies in equipment make state governments in Nigeria donate operational vehicles, motorcycles, and helicopters to the police force.

Unprofessionalism acts of the Nigeria police: Professionalism encompasses professional competence, knowledge, attitude, ethical behavior, altruism, belief, application of profession’s codes, integrity, honesty, respect to others, personal reference, and self-regulation and discipline. Hence, police professionalism is the conduct, candor, and competence of a police officer to discharge their duty following the stipulated acts, laws, and regulations guiding his actions and reactions. However, over the years, the Nigeria police force has acted outside the purview of police professionalism. According to the author, what is prevalent is that we have large number of unprofessional police officers who engage in the victimization of members of the public and extort citizens at a police checkpoint, with cases of unlawful and prolonged detention, sexual assault, sales of justice, publicly drinking alcohol and harassing members of the public in the name of stop and search. These police's unprofessional conduct also leads to people being cynical about the law, undermining public support for the police, and lacking cooperation with the police. All these are acts of unprofessionalism; contribute to having the ineffectiveness of NPF.

Partisan politics: The functionality and performance of the Nigerian police system are dependent on their autonomy and loyalty to the constitution, where they derive their power. However, the Nigerian police is considered a political tool in the hands of the Nigerian government, which use them as a victimization tool to perpetuate selfish interests, such as rigging elections, clamping down on opposition party members, and siding with political interest during criminal investigations of thugs and politicians' associates. Abiodun, et al., opined that with the high level of partisanship in the police institutions, overhauling is needed in three significant areas; leadership, methodology, and culture and attitude. Iheriohanma, et al. decried the partisan approach of the Nigeria police in Gubernatorial elections of Rivers state, Ekiti state, Osun state, Edo state, and Ondo states. This approach has led to distrust, apathy, and suspicion between the public and the police, thus casting aspersions and setting encumbrances to the police force's performance.

Lack of emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence is a quality required by police officers to discharge their duties. It can be described as a person’s self-awareness in recognizing emotions, self–regulating feelings, and managing emotions to achieve the best possible outcomes. Police duties go beyond policy and mastering emotions but require applying psychological principles in the form of emotional intelligence in coping with anger, resentment, and stress from the job.

Bond asserted that a police officer with low emotional intelligence would reflect traits or attitudes such as aggression, demanding, confrontational, impulsive, moody, and resistant to change. On the other hand, an officer with a high emotional intelligence displays attitudes such as assertive, ambitious, decisive, sociable, persuasive, patient, predictable, good listener, careful, neat, and systematic. Regrettably, the Nigeria police force lacks emotional intelligence in dealing with Nigerians resulting in emotional hazards melted on citizens. Nigeria police officers lack the Goleman five domains of emotional intelligence, which are; knowing your emotions, managing your own emotions, motivating yourself, recognizing and understanding other people’s emotions, and managing relationships. Emotional intelligence is highly needed among police officers to make accurate decisions and guide their actions since the nature of the police system rests on observation, processing information, and taking cues. The unprofessional behaviors and conducts of SARS officers often show a police force without emotional intelligence, and if left without check, reforms will be empty.

Structural and operational defects

The Nigeria police system is still fashioned out on the established mechanism of her colonial master, which is mainly to protect and advance colonial interest and is now used by the current crop of leaders. This has created a structural and operational defect in the police force, hindering police officers effective performance. These defects have been consistently shown in the cry for establishing state police and community police due to the over-centralization of police power with the federal government. The police's ineffectiveness led to establishing a regional outfit in western Nigeria code named “Amotekun” on the 9th of January 2020. Omole further asserted that the police's overcentralized structure makes it challenging to connect well with the people they are supposed to safeguard. The command structure is a military government product, which is opposed to Nigeria’s current democratic dispensation. The author further stated that the system's operational defects make it difficult for the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to seek a judicial review of unlawful orders by the President. This current structure undermines performance, collaboration, intelligence gathering, peace initiatives, autonomy, and a decent policing approach and makes state governors toothless as state chief security officers.

Human resource management practices and deficiencies in the police force in nigeria

Human resource management is a significant function of management in any organization. It is a strategic approach to managing the most vital asset of an organization, referred to as human resources. Human resource management has the responsibility to formulate policies and strategies to increase the workforce's effectiveness towards improving organizations productivity, performance, and service delivery. There are several functions of human resource management. However, the key roles include recruitment and selection, learning, training and development, compensation and welfare, and employee relations. Resolving the problems and challenges of the nigeria police force, it becomes essential to examine the human resource practices and the deficiencies in human resource management.

Recruitment and selection in the nigeria police force: Recruitment and selection of human resources in any organization, either in the public or private sector, is of paramount importance to the organization's success. This is significant as the attainment of the organization's vision and mission depend to a large extent on human resources. Accordingly, organisation's objectives can be realized through effective management of the workforce of the organization.

The recruitment and selection process is conducted together as a recruitment exercise takes place before selection. Recruitment can be explained as the process of generating a pool of capable people to apply for employment to an organization. This process is an exercise that comprises activities directed towards getting the right person (s) at the right place at the right time. It also allows a job seeker to choose a suitable job in terms of compensation, opportunity for development, work environment, and other essential factors. On the other hand, selection is the method of choosing the most appropriate personnel for a current vacant position or a future position from within the organization outside. Recruitment in the Nigeria police force is generally carried out through an online application that requires a prospective candidate to fill a form and after which, successful applicants would be invited for physical screening. This exercise takes place at designated locations (usually announced by the state Police Public Relations Officer) within the 36 states of the federation. The recruitment exercise in the NPF is carried out by the training and development department. According to Nigeria police force the training and development department coordinates all undertakings and activity requirements related to the police force's recruitment and training. The department takes charge of recruitment, staffing, workforce development, training, and retraining force officers. The most recent recruitment exercise was launched in July 2020. The recruitment is directed towards young mind within the age of 17-25 years of age; the applicant must not be pregnant (female), must be physically, medically, and psychologically fit, with an average height of 1.67 m tall (male), 1.64 tall (female). The Nigeria police force has boasted of the process of recruitment with its recent recruitment exercise in 2020.

Nevertheless, the Nigeria police force still doesn’t have enough manpower to cater of a country as large as Nigeria (statistics on how many people were recruited and the standard practice). The recruitment process seems to be open, but the selection process is defective. Adebayo noted that common unethical practices such as favoritism, ethnicity, and godfatherism in appointment, posting, and promotion of the workforce in the NPF are a major cause for failure. Thus, right people without a political backbone (god fatherism) might not get a fair chance of being selected as opposed to their counterparts with connections in high places.

Training and development of Nigeria police force: Development of human resources which encompasses training, development and now recently learning is key to successful human capital optimal functionality. Training is an organized, planned, and systematic activity aimed at developing, improving, and refining skills, knowledge, and competency of workers. Development is a state of qualitative and quantities change in the ability of an individual, organization, or society to use resources more efficiently. In the work of Abuiyada, development was described as a qualitative and quantitative improvement in the use of resources available at disposal. Training workers is very important to improve the performance and increase productivity and sustainability of an organization. Any organization that aspires to grow must commit to training and retraining its workforce. Training involves acquiring new skills and improving current skills by the newly recruited and aging workforce to implement the change needed by an organisation [18]. Cadets are trained in their thousands yearly by the NPF. Training the force does not seem to have any high impact or increase the officers' efficiency. It is believed that training and its process is one of the major setbacks faced by the Nigeria police force because the training exercise does not consider skill deployment, career advancement, and interest of the trainee. Training programs in NPF have remained narrow, with emphasis on para-military work and riot drills. The training programs only prepares recruits to carry out policing in a military fashion and doesn’t emphatically prepare such for routine community policing capabilities in terms of their daily human community relations, crime prevention strategies, non-violent personnel interrogations, and the ability to exercise discretion and sound judgment in the course of daily functionaries. It has been noted in Oladapo that the majority of criminal investigations carried out by the Nigeria police are conducted by the officers below the rank of sergeant, of which most of these constable investigators have only undergone three-month basic entry training at the police college, where the most significant part of their training is centered on physical drills with lesser attention on the art of policing. Practical criminal investigation skills and knowledge are left to be learned by offices on the job, and while still a neophyte, they are detailed to handle complex investigations. Chukwuma stated the shortcomings of the training conducted by the Nigeria police force is caused by the inability of training programs to take into account the need for expertise, skills, and interest of officers, match of skills acquired with deployment and requisite infrastructure, facilities, efficiency in the personnel's force and career advancement. According to the author, the Nigeria police force is faced with an insufficient number of experienced and competent training officers coupled with misapplication and misuse of training funds and wrong training procedures. Despite going through a training process, police officers still lack the necessary intellectual capacity to investigate criminal activities, gain trust and maintain a cordial relationship with the people, track crimes, which are the key functions of any functioning policing system. Williams and Ckikaodili stated that inadequate training personnel is one of the limiting factors affecting human capacity development in general. Consequently, the NPF is required to address the training process for reformation of the force.

Compensation and welfare in the NPF: The welfare condition of the police is an important criterion that can ensure effective performance with regards to crime prevention, detection, control, and law enforcement. An under-resourced police agency is incapable of effectively policing a country as big and populous as Nigeria, how much less carrying out such duties in a humane fashion. It is no longer a secrete within the NPF of this current democratic dispensation that the welfare situation of officers has cast a stumbling block to its effective performance with regards to law enforcement. Update from officers protesting poor welfare condition of service features on radio and in the pages of newspapers. More so, complaints of being abandoned by force on special duties have also surfaced. Madubuike-Ekwe and Obayemi pointed out that it is widely believed that police have suffered the worst neglect by successive governments of this country. As sad as it may sound, the implications, in reality, are even worse. The policeman, particularly the lower cadre, constantly exhibit signs of frustration. This is illustrated by their poor physical appearance and worn uniforms. Madubuike-Ekwe and Obayemi further noted that aside from poor remuneration, police officers are accommodated in barracks that are very overcrowded and poorly maintained. These said barracks have remained the same since before independence and have been left the way the British colonialists designed them without any efforts at modernization. As of current times, some of these barracks are almost filled with dilapidated and collapsed buildings that are inhabitable. The welfare of the police in Nigeria has not received the required attention from the government and the public. To summarize it all, the police force is working under conditions even far worse than the scientific management era. The welfare of the NPF in terms of poor or no accommodation facilities, inadequate state of health facilities, the deteriorated office buildings, delay in salary payment, promotion and no functional working equipment among others welfare reasons associated with the low performance of security personnel in the NPF. Consequently, poor welfare of service in the Nigeria police force keeps those who might be genuinely interested in making a career out of the police while creating opportunities for the semi-literate and undedicated persons to get into the police.

Development of a Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) framework for structural police reform in Nigeria: The ineffectiveness, dishonest implementation, and lip service to various police reforms in Nigeria since the inception of the fourth Republic show a need for a strategic approach to reform Nigeria's police force. Hence, the adoption and utilization of a strategic human resource management approach are vital in reforming the Nigeria police, especially in situations where the primary focus of the reformation is on: exploiting the knowledge base of human resource management, enhancing the potentials of police officers (as human resource asset), and encouraging the police institution to fulfill its constitutional, moral and societal duties. There is a need to design and develop a strategic human resource management framework for effective policing and security management. Moreover, according to Codreanu the police institution as a public institution and open systems needs human resource strategies to function optimally. It encapsulates economic perspectives, technological perspectives, and socio-cultural perspectives for performance. Therefore, this will boost public confidence, enhance cooperation, increase collaboration, and stimulate integrity in the Nigeria police force.

Therefore, in line with the HR strategies proposed by Mathis and Jackson in Codreanu as seen in Figure 1, this research developed a 10 X 5 Strategic Human resource management framework for structural reform and performance optimization of the Nigeria police force. The 10 X 5 SHRM Frameworks is shown in Table 1, with ten (10) strategic focuses on strategic human resource management, each with five (5) strategies.

Conclusion

Generally, policing is the act of protecting lives and property within a particular jurisdiction. Globally police play a significant role in any nation as the crime rate keeps increasing and restoring social discrepancy becomes necessary. Over the years, several reforms have been recommended, but the NPF is still faced with several challenges and is still considered ineffective in discharging its duties and responsibilities. These challenges range from poor working conditions and inadequate resources, unprofessionalism, partisan politics, lack of emotional intelligence among NPF, and structural and operational defects to more pressing problems that have added to the problem of marginalization.

The human resources management practices in the NPF is designed to cater to personnel and officers, but evidently, nothing has changed. Unfortunately, the HRM process in the NPF has been hijacked by common unethical practices such as favoritism, ethnicity, and godfatherism in appointment, posting, and promotion of the workforce in the NPF is a major cause for failure. To be rescued from the current state of the NPF conscious and strategic efforts has to be holistically carried out starting from the standpoint of strategic human resource management practices. These practices have to be implemented without corruption bias-politically or ethnically.

The police's efficiency and effectiveness as an institution are directly proportional to the citizens wellbeing as the certainty of prosperity depend on the assurance of peace and tranquillity. Hence, the study has highlighted various challenges hindering Nigeria police performance, examined police reforms in the last 20 years, and developed a framework for optimizing police officers for effectiveness using strategic human resource management. In conclusion, there is an urgent need for a strategic human resource management approach in policies, which the 10 X 5 SHRM frameworks entail. The framework majorly focuses on police officers as an institutional asset for effective policing, crime prevention, crime detection, building personal integrity, the rule of law compliance, and robust community/grassroots policing. The framework is suitable for policing in sub-Saharan Africa.

Recommendation

In the utilization of the 10 X 5 Strategic Human Resource Management frameworks, the study recommends the 1829 Sir Robert Peel (known as the father of modern policy) nine (9) policing principles and three (3) core ideas (Law enforcement action partnership, 2021). The nine (9) policing principles and three (3) cores ideas are;

Nine (9) policing principles

• To recognize always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

• To always recognize the need for strict adherence to police– executive functions and refrain from even seeming to usurp the judiciary's powers of avenging the state or individuals.

• To maintain a relationship with the public at all times.

• To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is insufficient to obtain public cooperation to secure observance of the law or restore order.

• To seek and preserve public favor, not by pandering to public opinion, but by always demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.

• To recognize that the extent to which the public's cooperation can be secured diminishes the necessity of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives proportionately.

• To always recognize that securing and maintaining the public's respect and approval means securing the people's willing cooperation to guarantee observance of laws.

• To recognize always that the police's power to fulfill their functions and duties depends on public approval of their existence, actions and behavior, and their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

• To prevent crime and disorder, it is an alternative to their repression by military force and the severity of legal punishment.

Three (3) core ideas

• The goal is preventing crime, not catching criminals. If the police stop crime before it happens, we don’t have to punish citizens or suppress their rights. An effective police department doesn’t have high arrest stats; its community has low crime rates.

• The key to preventing crime is by earning public support. Every community member must share the responsibility of preventing crime as if they were all volunteer members of the force. They will only accept this responsibility if the community supports and trust the police.

• The police earn public support by respecting community principles. Winning public approval requires hard work to build a reputation: enforcing the laws impartially, hiring officers who represent and understand the community, and using force only as a last resort.

Authors Contribution

Conceptualization: Omoseni Adepoju, Methodology: Love David, Resources: Omoseni Adepoju and Love David, Original Draft Preparation: Love David and Joshua Akinkuota, Review and Editing: Omoseni Adepoju. Final Manuscript Editing and Vetting: Omoseni Adepoju, Love David, and Joshua Akinkuota.

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