Famed author and Director General of the Rivers State Neighborhood Safety Corps Agency, Dr. Uche Mike Chukwuma has said that he still enjoys an undying passion for the Nigeria Police Force despite receiving 34 queries in a single month during his police career which spanned 35 years.
The retired Assistant Commissioner of Police who made the disclosure at the presentation of his book, “Professionalism, Reform and the Nigeria Police Force” at the Ernest Ikoli Press Center, Moscow Road in Port Harcourt on Saturday, said he got the queries because he refused to conform to certain directives that are inimical to his faith and conscience.
Chukwuma, who has authored several books in the last couple of years, reminisced that during his service period, “Our bosses were telling us to do something else while a lot of things were being done the other way round. Sometime, if it did not conform to their directive, whether positive or negative, you will pay dearly for it.
“And for those who know me, I suffered so much especially when I got to the officer cadre because there were certain things I refused to do and I got the bashings of my life by way of postings, transfers and queries”.
He also recalled being threatened with sack but his answer, according to him, had always been that ‘This institution is owned by nobody. There is no Managing Director and there is no Chairman. We were all recruited or taken as cadet officers and so we are all here to contribute our quota’.
Chukwuma, an old boy of Government Comprehensive Secondary School, Port Harcourt said that for the 35 years he put into the force, he was ‘tossed here and there’, adding that why he was being ‘punished’, he was gaining experiences.
“Today, I have converted those to my advantage by piecing them down for the public to share. I love the job and I am still passionate about it. But along the line, I found that there were so many flaws which needed to be corrected but we didn’t correct them”, he said, a development which prompted his churning out books with the hope the authorities would read them and do the needful.
On the quest for effective policing in the country, the one-time Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in Rivers State said the time was ripe for the establishment of State Police to reflect the realities of the time, even as he advocated the change of the name ‘Nigeria Police Force’ to ‘Nigeria Police Service’.
Chukwuma lauded the guests who came from far and near to grace the book presentation, and gave the hint that more books are on the stable and would be presented in the coming year.
The book presentation which attracted people from all walks of life including the academia, captains of industry, royal fathers, religious leaders and a section of the business community, witnessed the unveiling of the book with the author’s effort handsomely rewarded with cash donations.
Earlier in his address, the Sole Administrator of the Rivers State Waste Management Agency (RIWAMA) and Chairman of the occasion, Bro. Felix Obuah commended the author for painstaking efforts at proffering ways to reform the operations of the Nigeria Police Force.
Bro. Obuah, who was represented by Mr. Ian Abraham Gobo, noted that the book was not just a resource material for the police alone but also for members of the general public whose knowledge of the activities of the law enforcement agents would be enriched if they avail themselves by reading the book.
Regretting that despite the tireless efforts put in by the author to address some teething flaws inherent in the operations of the Police in the country, Bro. Obuah declared: “How I wish that Dr. Uche Mike Chukwuma had the powers to implement some of the reforms he proposes, the Nigeria Police would be the better for it.
“Unfortunately, we belong to a society that cherishes reforms but when they are presented, the same society would bury the ideas”.
