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The Nigerian Police and Our Political Twilight Zone
by
Mobolaji E. Aluko, PhD
Introduction ------
On Thursday, November 4, 1999, seven policemen were reported murdered in cold-blood ostensibly by rampaging Egbesu-inspired youths from the Ijaw community town of Odi in Kolobuma/Opukoma Council of Bayelsa State. The names of the policemen were [Reference 1]:
1. CSP Thomas Jokotola from Osun State 2. DSP George Nwine from Rivers State 3. St. Emmanuel Bako from Bauchi State 4. CPL Ayuba Silas from Kaduna State 5. PC Shaibu Zamani from Kaduna State 6. CPL Elias Bitrus from Borno State 7. CPL Robinson Obazee from Edo State.
Four days later, this time in Kaiama, Bayelsa State, on Monday night, November 8, 1999 to be exact, three additional policemen were murdered again apparently by Odi youths:
1. Sgt. Alhaji Atabor from Kogi State 2. PC Stephen Abu from Cross-Rivers State 3. PC Umoh Ukbo from Cross-Rivers State
On November 10, 1999, an angry President Obasanjo, from far-away Abuja, fired off a letter to Bayelsa Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha giving him a two-week ultimatum to find the killers or else face a state of emergency declaration. However on November 19 or thereabout, five full days to the expiration of the ultimatum, Obasanjo lost patience and ordered soldiers into Odi. Led by one Lt.-Colonel Agbabiaka (a Yoruba), the apparently 300-strong contingent of soldiers obviously overshot (?) its brief and levelled the town to the ground except for a church and bank building, and killed at least 375 people and a larger number of goats and chickens in the process.
It is instructive to note that none of the policemen killed was from Odi
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or Bayelsa State, and one would not be surprised if not one of the soldiers sent was from anywhere near there.
The questions that we must then ask ourselves are as follows: Would those ten policemen have been murdered if they had come from Odi town or environs? Would the soldiers have levelled their own homes if they had been from Odi?
It is quite possible that they would have, but it is most unlikely.
It is with that premise that I write this Sunday Musings, providing some historical background as to how we got the way we are with respect to who controls the Police in a Federated Nigeria, briefly describing the present situation, and offering some suggestions as to solutions.
Some historical notes on the control of the Police in Nigeria ------
The incidence in Odi and the raging battles between the police and the Odua Peoples Congress (OPC) and Area Boys in Lagos have brought into greater discussion where the control of the Police in Nigeria should really be vested, with Lagos Governor Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu leading the demand for state control and local recruitment of the policemen.
But how did we get to where we are? Serious discussion about who controls the Police in the putative independent Nigeria began in earnest with the Willinks Minorities Commission which visited Nigeria from late 1957 to early 1958 and reported to the September 29 - October 27 1958 Constitutional Conference in London. It is instructive to look at the history books, beginning with some quotes [Reference 2]:
QUOTE
"In any event, the [WILLINK] Commission concluded that the minorities could be mad to feel secure without new regions. It recommended some formal constitutional safeguards to allay fears. Ultimate control of the police should rest in federal hands, though there should be consultation with regional officials concerning the use of the police. The theory was that the risk to minorities came from regional governments, whereas the Federal government was more likely to be multitribal and therefore neutral. The Commission also recommended that the Constitution guarantee certain fundamental human rights - freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from discrimination, and the right to a fair trial, for example. With some modifications, those recommendations were incorporated into the Constitution...... [THUS] The federal power over the police, for example, stems directly from the fear of ethnic minorities within the regions that a police responsible to a regional government dominated by a particular ethnic or religious group might prove to be an instrument of repression and political aggrandizement"
UNQUOTE
Is it therefore not ironical that forty-one years later, a minority group of Ijaws (at least minority relative to the Big Three Hausa/Fulani, Igbo
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and Yoruba) becomes the victim of a backlash of their victimization of a police force that was ostensibly constructed in a manner to protect them?
In fact, at the 106-person 1958 Constitutional Conference at which decisions which finally featured in the 1960 Constitution were virtually all settled, the issue of who controls the Police was one of the most important [Reference 3]:
QUOTE
"On the thorny question of the Police, the Conference decided that there should be a single police force under an Inspector-General responsible to the Federal Government. But realising that the bulk of the force would continue to be stationed in the Regions, the Conference agreed that each Regional contigent should be under a [POLICE] Commissioner, who though under the general supervision of the Inspector-General, would be responsible for recruiting members of his own contingent as far as practicalbe from within the Region, thus ensuring that constables posted to an area would be those who understood the local language...... The administration of the Force should be the responsibility of a Police Council."
UNQUOTE
Therefore, it is clear that in its wisdom, the 1960 Constitution struck a delicate balance between allaying the fears of minorities as well as ensuring that the police in the regions were not completely aliens in their regions of work, with LANGUAGE being one clear index of such familiarity or alienation.
Forty years later, what has changed?
First was the creation of more states - 3 regions in 1951 till 1960 (North, East and West at Independence) became 4 in 1963 (with creation of MidWest), and then 12 states in 1967 (under Gowon, just before the secession of Biafra), 19 in 1976 (under Murtala Muhammed/Obasanjo), to 21 (in 1987) and then 30 in 1991 (both under Babangida; who catapulted the number of local governments to 589) and finally to 36 in 1996 (under Abacha). Next was the creation of more local governments - from roughly 40 provinces in 1960 to 301 in 1979 to 774 in 2000.
With this proliferation of states and local governments came a concomittant greater ethnic homogeneity in each administrative unit. Is this "minorities" fear of repression therefore still relevant today if local governments or states now assumed or even shared control of the police with the Federal government?
The other thing that changed of course happened on January 15, 1966, when the military took over governance of the country and because of its inherently unitary command structure, destroyed the delicate federal constitution which had been negotiated prior to independence. No longer was the police force the dominant civil force, but rather the Army, Navy and Airforce, relegating the police force to playing catch-up ever since. While the Ironsi/Gowon regimes maintained a semblance of regionalism by deploying military state governors to their own regions of origin, the
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Murtala Mohammed/Obasanjo regime, in its missionary zeal to "homogenize" the country, in general deployed state governors far away from their states of origin, resulting, in some quarters, in feelings of internal colonization. This same over-centralized, homogenizing, internal colonization was extended to the Police Force, and concretized in the 1979 Constitution handed over by Obasanjo to the country, wherein in Sections 194 - 196, we have the following:
QUOTE
Chapter VI, Part III
B. The Nigeria Police Force
Establishment of Nigeria Police Force
194 (1) There shall be a police force for Nigeria, which shall be styled the Nigeria Police Force, and subject to the provision of this section no other police force shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof. (2) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution - (a) the Nigeria Police Force shall be organised and administered in accordance with such provisions as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly; (b) the members of the Nigeria Police Force shall have such powers as may be conferred upon them by law; (c) the National Assembly may make provisions for branches of the Nigeria Police Force forming part of the armed forces of the Federation or for the protection of harbours, waterways, railways and airfields.
195 (1) There shall be an Inspector-General of Police who, subjected to section 196(2) of this Constitution, shall be appointed by the President, and a Commissioner of Police for each State, who shall be appointed by the Police Service Commission.
(2) The Nigeria Police Force shall be under the command of the Inspector-General of Police, and any contingents of the Nigeria Police Force stationed in a State shall, subject to the authority of the Inspector-General of Police, be under the command of the Commissioner of Police of that State.
(3) The President or such other Minister of the Government of the Federation as he may authorise in that behalf may give to the Inspector-General of Police such lawful directions with respect to the maintenance and securing of public safety and public order as he may consider necessary, and the Inspector-General of Police shall comply with those directions or cause them to be complied with.
(4) Subject to the provisions of this section, the Governor of a State or such Commissioner of the Government of the State as he may authorise in that behalf, may give to the Commissioner of Police of that State such lawful directions with respect to the maintenance and securing of public safety and public
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order within the State as he may consider necessary, and the Commissioner of Police shall comply with those directions or cause them to be complied with: Provided that before carrying out any such directions under foregoing provisions of this subsection the Commissioner of Police may request that the matter be referred to the President or such Minister of the Government of the Federation as may be authorised in that behalf by the President for his directions.
(5) The question whether any, and if so what, directions have been given under this section shall not be enquired into in any court.
196 (1) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, the Police Service Commission may, with the approval of the President and subject to such conditions as it may think fit, delegate any of the powers conferred upon it by this Constitution to any of its members or to the Inspector-General of Police or any other member of the Nigeria Police Force.
(2) Before making any appointment to the office of the Inspector-General of Police or removing him from office, the President shall consult the Police Service Commission.
UNQUOTE
Inspection of these sections of the 1979 Constitution with the similar sections 214-216 of the 1999 Constitution inherited from the Abacha/Abubakar military regimes will show that they are identical in all respects except for the establishment of a Nigeria Police Council to vet the approval and removal of the IG (rather than a Police Commission which is still retained with respect of State Police Commissioners.)
Not only is complete bypassing of oversight in the approval and removal of the I-G and Police Commissioners by National and state assemblies in preference for presidential power odious, nor the ouster clause section 195(5) (which carries over to Section 215(5) of the 1999 Constitution), in practice, the proviso of section 195(4) completely negates the implied oversight by the state Governor of the earlier paragraph, and must have been put there to emasculate (or castrate) him or her. It should also be noted that the 1979 and 1999 Constitutions, unlike the 1960 one, were silent on the recruitment and placement of members of the Police force vis-a-vis their ethnic origins (however, it does not outlaw such a consideration), resulting in outrageous political usage of the Police by president Shagari during his tenure (eg with respect to the deportation of Shugaba in 1990 and the elections in 1983), as well as by General Abacha later on.
In fact, in 1996 under Abacha, the following distribution of the hierarchy of the Police Force was extant [ Reference 4 ]:
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Police Departments
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Department AIG (in charge) State of Origin A (Administration) Sani Daura Katsina B (Operations) Bappa Jama'are Bauchi C (Works) Usman Daura Katsina D (Investigations) Mohammed Abubakar Bauchi E (Special Branch) Zakari Malherbe North F (Research and Mangt) Rachael Iyamabo Edo
Zone HQUarters Commander State of Origin 1 Kano Musiliu A.K. Smith Lagos 2 Lagos A.H. Ali-Jos Kano 3. Yola Y. Ojibara Kogi 4. Makurdi Inusa Isa Borno 5. Benin Bukar Alli Borno 6. Calabar Liman Shettima Borno 7. Abuja Dabo Aliu Katsina 8. Lokoja A. Kaltungo Bauchi
State Police Commissioner Region of Origin Abia Osanetin Bakara North Adamawa Shehu Damali North Akwa Ibom Benson Otu South Anambra Sakare Aliu North Bauchi H. Amadu North Benue A.U. Mairamri North Borno Olusegun Kasim South Cross-River Olatunbosun Amusan South(West) Delta M. Everson South Edo Amusa Isa North Enugu Albert Imaguezegie South Imo I.D. Lokadaing North Jigawa Seidu Alihu North Kaduna Yakubu Shuaibu North Kano L. Mashichi North Katsina Bello Labaran North Kebbi Rilwanu Akinola South(West) Kogi Ayodele Adeyemi South(West) Kwara Danda Gololo North Lagos Abubakar Tsav North Niger A.J. Peter North Ogun D. Auta North Ondo B. Tawani North Osun Sunday Aghedo South Oyo James Danbaba North Plateau Linus Nwaozomudoli South(East) Rivers M. Alkali North Sokoto Gimba Umar North Taraba Haman Misau North Yobe Ahmed Muhammed North F.C. Territory Mustapha Ismaila North 22 North, 9 South ------
The Present-Day Situation ------
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The above information speaks for itself. One wonders how much the internal colonization has changed under the new civilian regime of General Olusegun Obasanjo.
The other day, a fellow indicated that in Nigeria right now, we are in a "democracy". My hiss quickly turned to spit, as I reminded him that within three months, we have had the razing of Odi, a shoot-at-sight order at OPC, rude letters to two state governors as if they were the president's "boy-boys", the arrest of journalists and the burning down of a house by the police in search of OPC's Ganiu Adams.
Is that a democracy or what? No. What we have is a post-military, pre-democracy transition period that we are in, a sort of political twilight zone. Nothing indicates that zone more than the inadequacies of our police force.
Let me confess that I am not a fan of Ganiu Adams. However, if I were he, I would NEVER turn myself in to ANY NIGERIAN POLICE on account of suspicion of hurting police officers. He can be assured that in custody, the Police will tear him one ear, one finger at a time, and there will SEVERAL Nigerians who will maliciously applaud that grievous outcome, and would ask whether Adam's was expecting Nicon-Hilton treatment. Many of us still operate in an unprincipled undemocratic twilight of guilty until proven innocent, I am afraid.
Why do I not trust the Police? For one, Musiliu Smith of Olowogbowo, the current Inspector-General of Police, was Police Commissioner of Kano State under the Abacha regime. That is not very comforting, although one would admit not disqualifying. Secondly, we have all read the chilling accounts of Sergeant Rogers and how the military AND the police in Nigeria were used to hunt down the enemies of Abacha. On one occasion, the Lagos Commissioner of Police James Danbaba under Lagos governor Marwa - Danbaba was commissioner in Oyo State in 1996, as the above list shows - himself was instructed to distract away the police under him so that Rogers and co. could BOMB The Guardian Newspaper's Rutam House. The Police in Lagos were checking rifles and pistols and bombs in and checking out of police stations to do all kinds of dastardly acts all around the country. How can we be sure that there are not many more policemen left like Danbaba stirring things up in Ketu and Badagry and Odi? Can anyone convince us that all the police suddenly saw religion when Abacha died?
Not at all!
Yet, out of the collective malice that people seem to bear against the OPC, we forget such fears, and also choose to COMPLETELY forget the voices of the communities in which OPC live. None of them has EVER blamed OPC for any crimes against them. Rather, it has been that OPC members, in the absence of Nigerian Police, helped them solve their criminal problems by engaging the robbers and miscellaneous area boys.
Nigerians have never trusted either the efficiency or the honesty of the Police, but UNDER THE ABACHA REGIME, that lack of trust became HEIGHTENED to an extent that at least in the SouthWest - where the Police was used with a vengeance, community VIGILANTES like OPC became a must that had to be turned to. During the Abacha regime, one did not hear much about OPC because the Police was too busy chasing Abacha's enemies, while the OPC
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was too busy consolidating its own political agenda, little by little endearing itself to its local communities, all the while preparing for Abacha's self-succession, which would have been hell-on-Earth for Abacha courtesy OPC at least in Yorubaland.
Don't we ask yourselves: where was the Police when the OPC became numbered in hundreds and thousands and millions of peoples? Where they sleeping? But suddenly, Abacha dies, and the Police are ALIVE to their original responsibilities
But there is not enough of them to go around. Let us look at some numbers:
------
Population of Nigeria 100 x 10^6 people Population of Lagos State 10 x 10^6 people
UN recommendation for police 400 persons / policeman
UN recommendation for Nigeria 250,000 UN recommendation for Lagos 25,000
Total number of Armed Forces 75,000 Total number of police Less than 75,000 (official tally is unknown to me)
Number of states + Abuja 37
Avg. number of police/state Less than about 2,000,
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What that means is that on average, based on UN recommendations, Lagos State might be undermanned by an order of magnitude, and that even if ALL the soldiers became policemen tomorrow, the state will still need six times more policemen to meet UN recommendations.
So it was clear why OPC would not just fade away after Abacha's demise, because there is still crime in the communities, and they are still helping to rid of crime! The Police now say "We are in charge!" and OPC says, "For where? Are there enough of you to secure our communities?" Tory jam tory, and there is collateral damage in the community as Police jam OPC. Instead of arresting the actual criminals, it is easier to arrest the arresters - the OPC - because there is a pre-disposition with the powers-that-be to demonize OPC! Of course, people in the communities do not like the collateral damage - I don't - and would prefer the Police to be left to do their work and do it well, while OPC carry on its political agenda. But until then nko?
Listen to Danbaba/Aghedo replacement Lagos Police Commissioner Okiro: "We have drafted more police to Lagos to deal with OPC!" Should it be to deal with OPC or to deal with criminals in general? Has Okiro not met with OPC THOUSANDS of times before now? Now suddenly he is talking tough about
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OPC, because that is what the powers-that-be want to hear.
The Suggested Solution ------
So if I were President Obasanjo, what would I do?
A) Converse with some stakeholders
I would get ALL the state governors and their deputies, the Inspector General of Police, the State Police Commissioners, the Minister for Internal Affairs, the Police Affairs Minister, the Minister of Defence - every last one of them into a room, and work out a "Modus Vivendi" in terms of line of authority as far as security is concerned.
Despite what the Constitution says about the line of authority for police affairs, it does not STOP the President from completely DELEGATING quite a lot of his Police authority to the governors in a manner consistent with security efficiency. If the Governor is the Chief Security Officer of his State, and Obasanjo is Chief Security Officer of the Nation, then Obasanjo himself should since 1979 be wise enough to know that the present system is anachronistic. Obasanjo should simply say, "Listen, IG and Police Commissioners, I know what this Constitution says. But I delegate my authority in this area to the Governor of the State, who should meet with his Police Commissioner regularly. The Commissioners should meet with the IG regularly. Every quarter (or six months), I want to meet with you all to see how it is working out. Don't call me UNTIL it is ABSOLUTELY necessary, and only after you can convince me that the Governor and yourselves cannot work it out."
Can President Obasanjo depose his military instincts and be this humble? That is what inquiring minds will like to know.
B) Address WITH SPEED AND ALACRITY the under-manning and poor resource funding of the Police AS A MATTER OF PRIORITY.
(i) First start with the numbers of Policemen that you have. Weed out ANY that has been implicated with violent acts or egregious corruption. Spruce up the police uniform so that the police look like decent human beings. Let them be well-fed them so that they don't look so hungry all the time. Increase their salaries and make any hints of corruption a severely punishable offence.
(ii) Next, divide the police control between local government, state government and Federal police, all with Federal oversight if desired, and yield control substantially. Rather than have 100% Federal, if you don't want 100% state, then let's have 20%-30%-50% local-state-Federal, or even 40-30-30 to assure people. Let as many of these policemen come from their states of origin as much as possible, as in the 1960 Constitution, even those under Federal control. Have community policing liaise with accredited neighborhood watches; some of the OPC might even volunteer!
(iii) Next give them cruiser cars and walkie-talkies so that the range of territory of protection can be wider. Next concentrate them a little bit more where there is strongest crime.
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(iv) Finally, begin to recruit more police with higher educational entry standards, constantly aiming towards the UN number times divided by five, then by four or three, etc, but certainly higher than the present number.
Epilogue ------
If President Obasanjo continues with a CENTRALIST, AUTHORITARIAN attitude, then after he is gone as President in four or eight years, he will again see the country UNRAVEL before his own eyes. It will be another terrible legacy he would have left behind for a second time.
In conclusion, we are not OPERATING a democracy yet. The country is sick, not in body, but in soul. We have got to TALK about the FUNDAMENTAL re-structuring of the country, since the Police, OPC, Egbesu, etc. are simply symptoms of a larger problem. That is why we need a Sovereign National Conference. This sickness is not going away in a hurry. It cannot be wished or decreed away. This is a pre-democratic, post-military transition. We are in a political twilight zone. We will begin to operate a Federal democracy if we have devolution of power, independent judiciary, free press, a respectable Police force with clear lines of authority and power and so on. Then we will be quicker able to better the lives of people. It is not as if even now we cannot better peoples' lives, it is just that in the present way we are going, that will be excruciatingly slow.
And the people can get quite angry.
January 23, 2000
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References:
[1] TELL Magazine, November 22, 1999, pages 18 and 19, Text of Press Conference by Vice-President Abubakar Atiku at Abuja on November 9, 1999
[2] "Nigeria: The Tribes, the Nation, or The Race", F.A.O. Schwarz, Jr, 1965, The MIT Press.
[3] "Nigeria: Yesterday, Today and ?", James O. Ojiako, 1981, African Educational Publishers (Nig.) Ltd, Onitsha, Nigeria
[4] "Nigerians As Outsiders: Military Dictatorship and Nigeria's Destiny", Arthur Nwankwo, 1996, Fourth Dimension Publishing Co, Enugu
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