Security: The only right step forward
IT has been reported that top on the legislative thinking of the House of Representatives when it reconvenes on 30 January is the issue of security and the concomitant imperative of the establishment of state police. We should all applaud and support them. In the face of seeming intractable insecurity bedeviling the country, that certainly is the right step and it raises a great deal of hope. It would have been a height of insensitivity to watch on, believing that the present security architecture is all there to protect Nigerians from bandits, kidnappers and what have you. It is said that you cannot continue to do the same thing, using the same method and expect a different result.
It has been the same shibboleth, the same beaten track, the same old hat since Yusuf Gobir Committee report which recommended one central policing system for the whole country and tinker with it. We have heard it repeatedly said and as much as practicable, done — that all that is needed is increased funding, training and raising the numerical strength of the police under the current arrangement. But all that has not given us the desired protection.
The Gobir committee was set up by General AquiIronsi but he did not live to see the report and implement it. The recommendations were passed to Gen. Gowon, his successor who gave them effect in August 1967. Regional police formations were abolished and swallowed by the federally- run Nigeria Police. Understandably, generals are raised under one command system. But why should the system subsist and tie the hands of states under a democratic order waving the federalism emblem going to 25 years come May.
Good enough, former President Babangida has had a rethink over the issue since he left office and this was brought to the open in 2010. He said we cannot be detained in the past and watch civilisation leave us behind. It is so obvious that the present centralised policing system has failed woefully; it is incapable of meeting our national security needs. Former Vice- President Yemi Osinbajo read the situation correctly as far back as 2018. In his words: “We cannot realistically police a country the size of Nigeria centrally from Abuja. State police and other community policing are the way to go.” And come to think of it, Professor Osinbajo was addressing the right audience, Security Summit organised by the Senate! Disappointingly, in his accustomed obstinacy, President Buhari in pronouncement and body language was unimpressed by all the clamour for state police.
Today, several parts of the country are over- run by criminality and the governors have had to be grappling with security challenges. On Christmas Eve, last month when Nigerians like others across the globe were naturally in a festive mood, terrorists went on orgy of killing and destruction of property under the cover of darkness in some communities in Plateau State. At the end of the day, more than 200 were killed and more than 100 injured, some critically, in the attacks that lasted several hours.
In the Federal Capital Territory, gunmen kidnapped six girls and their father on Tuesday, 09 January. The father was later released to go and find N60 million to pay as ransom for the freedom of his daughters with a timeline of last Friday, 12 January. Frantic appeals were made to Nigerians to donate whatever anyone could into a bank account. By Friday when the deadline elapsed and not enough money had been gathered, one of the girls, the eldest and a 400- level student at Ahmadu Bello University, was killed by the abductors. But they did not stop there, they jerked up the sum to N100 million to save the remaining girls.
Senator Shehu Sani, the civil rights activist, commenting, said: “The gruesome murder of Nabeeha Al- Kaddriya is a condemnable act of evil before our very eyes. Her death was an avoidable tragedy. The perpetrators must be brought to justice. The deterioration of security within the Federal Capital should be a matter of urgent concern to our security services.”
Just last Sunday, according to reports, residents of Tse Jikina in Mbavuur, Logo Local Government Area of Benue State, had almost all their houses burnt by unknown gunmen, leaving about 3,000 of them displaced. Their farm produce was set ablaze as well. In the same state, gunmen abducted the council chairman of Ukum Local Government Area, Haanongon Gideon, his personal aide, security detail and driver. They were on their way to the burial of the traditional ruler of Katsina- Ala, Chief Fezaanga Wombo.
Recently a vehicle carrying about 45 persons was forced to stop and it was feared that the passengers were kidnapped. This has been the trend largely and it is getting worse— what the ordinary citizens have been going through. Practically every day, someone, somewhere is being shot or kidnapped. Gunmen, marauders, bandits, kidnappers, cultists and sundry criminals have for years been let loose, laying siege on the country with alarming impunity. In towns, villages most Nigerians go to bed with their eyes half- closed. People travel with baited breath, feeling relieved only when they reach their destination. Prayers are said at motor parks before drivers turn the ignition key to put their vehicles on the road. Schools have been invaded and their students carted away.
The worst- hit zones in terms of insecurity have been the North East, North West and NorthCentral with North- West and North- Central taking over from the North- East where insurgents had held the country by the jugular. In the latter two, herdsmen, bandits and kidnappers have swept through farmlands and rural communities in an orgy of bloodletting and maiming as well as the just cited mindless destruction of property. It has been so clear, even to the blind to see and the deaf to hear, that the police have been overwhelmed. Dare devil gunmen have been known to take the battle to the police themselves. One night in 2018, seven policemen were shot dead while on duty at a check- point.
The security situation was so bad at a stage that
the then Governor of Zamfara State who doubled at the time as the Chairman of the Governors’ Forum of that era, Mr. Abdullaziz Yari, that he threw up his hands in resignation! He washed his hands off being decorated as the chief security officer of his state. He saw his position as a joke. His argument was that he had no operational control over the police. The instruction of a governor may have to be forwarded by the state commissioner of police to his boss, the Inspector- General of Police, who may also wish to seek clearance from the President before it is carried out. Troops had had to be called in in certain cases because the police were overwhelmed and had spread thin because their hands were full, facing challenges on several fronts at the same time.
The silver lining seems to be coming from the National Assembly when they reconvene at the end of this month. Their thinking is been reinforced by the reopening and dusting up of Nasir el- Rufai Committee Report being mulled by the National Working Committee ( NWC) of the ruling APC. The Deputy National Organising Secretary, Nze Chidi Duru, and a member of the NWC, said Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje- led foremost organ of the party was making internal moves to ensure the implementation of el- Rufai Committee report.
This is coming at the same time the pioneer chairman of the party, Chief Bisi Akande, was pressing, with his weighty voice, for a new constitution to be patterned after the Independence Constitution used in the nation’s First Republic. According to him, that constitution was the best. “For example, in the 1960 Constitution, if you are a member of the National or State Assembly, you are a part time. You go to your work; politics wasn’t work then. Farmers went to the farm, lawyers to their chambers; doctors to their hospitals… and when it was time for meeting they went to the meeting and they paid them sitting allowance. Everybody knows that they are doing it in the interest of the public.” Chief Akande is not new to the subject of restructuring; he had written a well received book on Restructuring.
A major plank on which the El- Rufai Committee report rests is devolution of power and restructuring of the country. The report left no one in doubt on the establishment of the state police which is an element in the restructuring for which the nation has been clamouring. Media reports quote Nze Chidi Duru as saying: “It has become an article of faith in the APC and for APC; in the ideology and philosophy of the party on the basis of which the current Administration campaigned. The issue of devolution of power and restructuring is clearly embedded in that report. As much as we are making the efforts internally to throw up the report to hold the government to account and to implement five points on the basis of which we campaigned to Nigerians; I will charge the Fourth Estate of the Realm to throw it as an article of faith in the face of our leaders to ensure that that part of the report is implemented.
“It is good for Nigeria, it will work for Nigerians and it will be best for Nigerians and it is the best for Nigeria because what that would have achieved is that the overhead cost of governance will be substantially removed; a level- playing field both in business and politics will be enhanced and Nigerians in their area of influence will have a sense of belonging.”
I do hope the National Assembly will not dash our hope this time as it did in 2018. As I did state when I first dabbled into this discourse in 2018, it is so astonishing, to say the least, that we are just about to take this concrete step at addressing the grim security challenge in the land. In my criticism of President Buhari’s embarrassing cold attitude and incomprehensible obstinacy to the issue of state police when he was in the saddle, especially in the wake of killings in Plateau State and before then the massacre in Benue, I did ask: How many more people are we waiting to see killed before we become wise to apply the simplest and most commonsensical panacea: the establishment of state police? I said policing is local and that is how it is in all stable and secure free world. Newspapers have shouted themselves hoarse on the urgent need to set up state police. I will ask President Bola Tinubu the same question at the end of May. I want to believe that he knows that how he handles matters concerning the engine of public spending that has broken loose will be of tremendous interest to a great many when his honeymoon is over by June. The new normal today is to talk in billions and trillions of Naira and in few cases in Dollars, too. No one talks in thousands of Naira any longer!
It is shocking that any group or individuals because they are in comfort zone would still oppose the establishment of state police in this country in this day and age, especially given the grave situation of criminality and insecurity in the land. The situation is made much more frightening when the opposition is coming from public opinion leaders who are expected to be exposed, enlightened and deep. These are leaders expected to consider where we are coming from, survey where we are and, like prophets, look into the future and help chart a new course.
The face of government you encounter in any community is the police. You see the police and there is the feeling of an assurance that all is well, that you are secure. It is not for nothing that the police authorities launch their sing- song: “The police is your friend”. The constitution says the governor is the chief security of his state. What this says to us is that there is a nexus between the police and the governor whose face the policeman symbolises and by whose name he swears.
When former Osinbajo spoke at the Security Summit organised by the Senate in 2018, he had said: “The nature of our security challenge is complex. Securing Nigeria’s over 923, 768 square kilometres and its 180 million people requires continual re- engineering of our security architecture and strategies…” He said it had become difficult for the Federal Government to provide security for the country from Abuja in view of the fact that Nigeria had failed the United Nations requirement of a policeman to 400 people.”
There is hardly any federal state with diverse people that operates a centralised police system. Our experience is that there is no way it will not lead to acrimony and hostilities. If we have elected a federal republic, it means we have chosen what we think is good for us as a country of more than 500 nationalities as discovered by the 2014 National Conference— people with different culture, aspirations and worldview. Policing is a veritable instrument of federalism for the federating units to run their affairs.
As former Jonah Jang was wont to remind us: “We cannot be calling ourselves a federation and be running a unitary system of government. If we want to run a federal system of government we should run it properly. It is unfortunate that during the military of which I was a part we believed in a unitary system and any time we were in power we ran a unitary system and when we were trying to give the nation a constitution we ended up giving the nation a unitary constitution to be operated in a federal system of government. This is why nothing is working. So if we want to progress as a country we must restructure the country.”
Former Bayelsa State Governor, Henry Dickson, who is now fortunately in the Senate, corroborating Osinbajo’s position, argued that the prevailing security situation and the need for an effective response to the challenge had made the establishment of state police mandatory. His conviction was anchored on the fact that the personnel would be drawn from the locality that makes up the state. Such personnel would be able to access valuable information required to track down criminals. He also agreed with Osinbajo that the current federally controlled police had become overstretched owing to the wide ratio of the police to the rapid increase in population. And former President of the Nigerian Bar association, Mr. Joseph Daodu in the heat of the debate, had said in all striking simplicity that state police is for law and order. Can anything be greater than simplicity? That statement says it all. In the living higher knowledge available to mankind on earth today, it is said that in simplicity lies greatness.
I had once reported former President Babangida as throwing his full weight behind the restructuring of the country, and listen to his clincher when he said: “Added to this desire, that is of restructuring, is the need to commence the process of having state police across the states of the Federation… the initial fears of state governors misusing the officers and men of the state police have become increasingly eliminated with renewed vigour in citizen’s participation in and confidence to interrogate power. We cannot be detained by those fears and allow civilisation to leave us behind. We must as a people with one destiny and common agenda take decisions for the sake of posterity in our shared commitment to launch our country on the path of development and growth. Policing has become sophisticated that we cannot continue to operate our old methods and expect different results.”
On another occasion, he had said the claim of misuse of state police by the governors was unfounded and exaggerated. I have gone this length to demonstrate the fact that we have never been short of literature on the imperative of state police and community policing. What is more, the police authority themselves have long recognised the necessity for some form of augmentation by way of community policing. In 2003, the Nigeria Police High Command sent some of its men to Britain to train in community policing.
The establishment of state police is not tantamount to the abolition of federal police. They will work collaboratively under guidelines on the distribution of responsibilities and duties. That should go without saying. The guidelines will safeguard any possibility of abuse such as taking away the appointment of members of state police commission away from the governor. It can be done in such a way that members of the commission drawn largely from civil societies, religious organisations such as CAN, the Bar, ASUU and retired Justices will appoint their own successors endorsed by their respective organisations every 10 years, and also staggered in a way the appointment of any member will not begin or end with the tenure of any sitting governor. As I did state when I first dabbled into the debate some years back, there will always be ideas. We can always think outside the box, for where there is a will, as it is said, there must be a way.
What the Senate needs to do is just to exhume and dust up its decision of 2018 to pass a Bill for the establishment of state police. It will make easy a joint sitting of the two Houses with the House of Representatives now also ready to take the much awaited decision on the matter. It will be a delusion to think that the country can make the desired progress without a rethinking of our policing architecture. I do not want to go into the clever security engineering by many of the governors as an indication and signal that they are roaring to go! A lot has been done in that area such as donating helicopters to the police by Lagos and giving them special incentives to work.
It will be a delusion to think that the country can make the desired progress without a rethinking of our policing architecture.