Training and provision of modern equipment for personnel of the Nigeria Police Force is critical to modern policing.

According to Former Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro, policemen needed training and retraining to perform optimally, saying adequate funding and equipment were key to successful policing of Nigeria.

Okiro said the police in a military regime was different from that in a democratic setting, saying if the police was provided with adequate funding and modern equipment, the current security challenges in the country would be controlled.

He said allocation to the police should be boosted and increased to enable them live up to the challenges, saying they require to be trained to meet up with the current trend in a democratic setting.

On recruitment into the police force, Okiro said the Police Service Commission, which had the mandate to recruit, always ensured criminals were not recruited into the force.

He said it was difficult for the commission to check criminal records of applicants because of the absence of a database.

Okiro, who is a former Chairman of the Commission, said the commission also engaged traditional rulers and top civil servants to attest to the characters of applicants from their communities.

He, however, said during recruitment, some of the applicants who may have criminal records may scale through because of human error, attributing the lack of trust by Nigerians in the police to the fragrant disregard for laws, adding that Nigerians still see the police as that in the colonial era.

“Nigerians should see the police as their own and not the colonial police that was brutal towards them,” he said.