Steady decay of structures makes Police Training School, Nowan, Rivers State dirtier than a pigsty and exposes the shame of a nation.
Any time soon, the Nigerian Police Training School (PTS), Nonwa, Tai Local Government Area of Rivers State will welcome fresh recruits to undergo General Duties (GD) Officer grooming for periodic recruitment as constables into the police.
When that time comes, the recruits will, after proceeding to the school for usual six, seven months of training, endure inhuman conditions, risk health and environmental dangers through their stay in the facility steadily collapsing due to overwhelming neglect.
This undeniable shame of a nation may have been lingering for who knows how long.
By close of the year 2022, the latest (2021) set of constables (238 males and 72 females) who passed out of the facility serving in Zone 16, compromising Rivers and Bayelsa states, experienced the piteous conditions, same for sets before them.
Except the authorities take a departure from the years of gross neglect, given the worsening deterioration, the next set of trainees will suffer worse fate.
Steady Rot
Suspicion that a lot is wrong inside the massive facility overwhelms a first time visitor right from the entrance. The quarter guard is in shambles, yawning with collapsed roofs, missing windows, all overgrown with grasses which shadow the landscape.
With the rains at the peak pouring in through the shattered roofs, everything inside the quarter guard, including toilet, cell, furniture, has also fallen apart.
A Nonwa resident who visits the facility regularly said, “The quarter guard has been in disuse for years. For the overgrown grass surrounding, this has become a norm when there no training in session.
“With no deliberate maintenance and sanitation measures in place, they will leave the place overgrown till next set of recruits come in for training, so they do the clearing”, the resident said. “This is no longer the establishment we used to cherish as host community.”
Through the bushy entrance road, another evident oddity with the school is the poor sense of security. With no perimeter fence, quarter guard unmanned, the reporter moved in unhindered. And there was ample time to capture some graphical details as the landscape opens into an imposing critical infrastructure said to have been established in the 80s now fallen apart due to prolonged neglect.
If the absence of trainees currently suggests the poor conditions of main training blocks, the reality belies such notion. Among the administrative, training and resident staff blocks, it is hard to tell which is more deplorable.
Virtually all the storey buildings have substantial portion of roof fallen apart, some the entire roof missing thus rendering the top floors uninhabitable.
Not a soul was on duty in the administrative block when our reporter visited. A senior police officer in Rivers State Police Command noted, “It should not be so, but that has been the reality. Aside the training for recruitment of constables, the facility is also built for refresher courses for the rank and file, and even for security personnel outside the police.
“So there is supposed to be routine administrative presence. But for some years, it has not been committed to these secondary roles, obviously because of the deplorable state of the facility. Once regular trainees are graduated, the offices remain empty.”
However, a member of one of the families of the police personnel living in the premises said, “The Commandant and some staff members show up occasionally to look around, especially when there are external stakeholders coming.”
Inside the administrative block, part of which accommodates classes and hostels for recruits in training, same collapse of amenities resonate through the apartments, offices, living halls, many opened to easy entry without lock and keys.
None of the toilets and bathrooms checked had functional taps and toilet seats, many broken, fallen apart, looking vandalised.
“Very little is done to make it habitable even when training is in session. Most trainees engage in open defecation for fear of contacting infections over the unbearable sanitary lapses”, a senior police officer told Sunday Vanguard.
2004 invasion
Overlooking the administrative block, an entire storey building meant as training block has, it was learnt, been in disuse for nearly two decades.
The senior police source narrated, “This used to be the main training block. Around 2004/2005, an entire set of recruits were all forced out of the premises and dismissed after undergoing all necessary constabulary grooming, awaiting passing out ceremony.
“Till date, those affected still find it hard to accept if there were no ulterior motives, but they were variously accused of under-height, age falsification and fake qualifying academic credentials among other allegations.
“But it was the authorities that screened and cleared them for the training. Hardly anyone was exempted.
“Devastated by the development, some among them, mostly connected to the host community, went into town, mobilised sympathetic youths and invaded the school in the dead of the night. Their mission: to wreak havoc as payback to management for the painful dismissal.
“They couldn’t imagine passing screening, allowed to complete the rigorous school training only to be dismissed unceremoniously. “By the time the dust settled on the mission to destroy, the dedicated training block had been razed. That is how it got abandoned till date.”
Looming disaster
National Coordinator, Niger Delta Peace Coalition, Zik Gbemre, called the two blocks occupied by the families of the police personnel “disasters waiting to happen.”
Only the ground floors of the two-storey buildings, weather beaten and exhausted from prolonged neglect, were seen occupied, the top and middle floors deserted, presumably for safety concerns.
“These structures are standing on last legs. Lagos State government as of today would not allow humans occupy such disasters waiting to happen. They would have moved in to demolish or revitalise. I hope it doesn’t cave in before intervention comes”, Gbemre said.
Alarms fall on deaf ears
The gradual rot at the facility has not festered without relevant stakeholders raising repeated alarms to the authorities. All concerns raised have fallen on deaf ears.
The only deliberate revitalisation intervention Sunday Vanguard could find on the PTS Nonwa as captured by the Nigeria Police Force Department of Logistics and Supply (Works) was a 2005 rehabilitation contract valued at N9, 951, 043.75.
The scanty details posted on the Department’s site showed the contract was awarded by the Force Headquarters.The contractor handed the job, Abuja based Messrs Paradigm Shift Integrated Services Ltd, was registered just in January of that year.
The contract’s scope was not specified in the posted details with project Coordinator simply identified as Emoh.“If there was a contract in 2005, I can’t say to what extent any tangible work was carried out”, a source said.
“I am aware fact finding teams do come from Abuja. They inspect, takes notes and assure on making recommendations for intervention, but no meaningful result has been gained for years”.
NASS concerns drowned
In 2019, Barry Mpigi, senator representing Rivers South-East, raised a motion lamenting how much he was “disturbed that the PTS Nonwa which serves for training police officers from across the country has become hotbed of cult violence.”
In his prayers, Mpigi, who got reelected into the current assembly, called on then-Inspector General of Police to restore the school in the interest of the country as insecurity in Nigeria requires training and retraining of security agents.
Adopting his prayers after contributions from others, then-Senate President Ahmed Lawan said, “Nigeria Police Service Commission should take adequate inventory of police training facilities in the country with a view to upgrading them to global standards.”
He also asked the Senate Committee on Police Affairs to invite then-Minister of Police Affairs to appear before the Committee for further briefing.
Years before, precisely in 2017, then-Commandant of the PTS, Nonwa, ACP Elisha S. Yila, had drawn Federal Government’s attention to the urgency of renovation of the school.
At that year’s passing out parade of General Duty Recruit Constables trained in the school, Yila, decrying the dilapidated infrastructures, also called on both governments of Bayelsa and Rivers states as well as the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to come to the rescue of the school.
According to him (2017), the school had been without electricity for over two years due to vandalisation of the college transformers by hoodlums, inducing financial burden on the institution in depending on fueling their power generator to provide electricity.
Authorities evasive
Current Commandant of the PTS Nonwa, Tai, ACP Oseni Raseq, told Sunday Vanguard he was not in the position to speak to the media on state of the school which is under supervision of the Deputy Inspector General in charge of Training at the Force Headquarters.
Sunday Vanguard can confirm that enquiries were escalated to the Force Headquarters but no response had been received at the time of filing this report.
Going forward however, activist Gbemre said, “This is shame of nation. You can imagine the manner of policing those trained under such inhuman conditions would give to society.
“The greater fear is for those police families living under those sagged structures. There is urgent need to revive the place before disaster strikes.
“Under current IGP Kayode Egbetokun, there is reason to be hopeful on some sincere interventions. Remember, in 2015, Egbetokun became Commandant, Police Training School, Ikeja, Lagos.
“He had a fair share of allegations bordering on impropriety in that office at the time, but the fact that he is now at the helms of police administration should make him appreciate the decay in the Rivers PTS and intervene appropriately, and urgently so.”
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