ARMY/POLICE UNENDING INTERNAL WARS
Nigeria has experimented with constitutional democracy as our preferred system of government for two decades and still counting. Democracy, without doubts, remains the best form of government because it has inbuilt mechanisms for self-corrections. Democracy is built on the plank of checks and balances meaning that all citizens are equal before the law. Also, institutions are created and governed by the rule of law.
However, Nigeria has a peculiar history of incessant internal squabbles amongst officials and operatives of the institutions created by law to drive the wheel of constitutional democracy. Some of these inter-agency struggles for supremacy amount to grave threats to national security interest of Nigeria as a corporate entity.
Nigeria seems to be facing challenges with enforcement of service discipline and professionalism between and amongst the members of the different segments of the armed security services.
The most fundamental challenge that threatens professionalism in the armed security services is the seemingly superiority conflicts between the different security agencies which in most cases boils down to an all-out street battles resulting in casualties and the destruction of government and private property. To make matters worse, the regime of impunity that has been institutionalised makes it impossible to bring these culprits to book.
Take for instance, since last year there have been over two dozen conflicts between the military and the police on one hand, the police and the civil defence corps, and even amongst the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) versus the combined forces of the Director- ate of State Services (DSS) and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) on the other hand. These conflicts are clearly avoidable if the office of the national security adviser is raised to a cabinet level. Then again, there are institutions created by statues to guide against these acts of gross indiscipline by security operatives. Sadly, these bodies that should control these operatives are too weak to effectively discharge their mandates.
In one of such conflicts of the last mentioned security agencies, there were reported exchanges of gun-fire even as members of the public were reportedly caught unawares and were made to scamper for safety.
On a smaller scale, the military operatives and the police have been known to have engaged in several streets’ battles which in many of these instances, have led to the invasions of police facilities by the soldiers and the resultant destruction of public property.
The sad thing about this ugly scenario is that there is an absence of effective corrective mechanisms to bring the culprits to book and on the part of the hierarchies of the armed forces; there are no known effective remedial mechanisms or measures put in place to deter the occurrence of such disgraceful conducts by their operatives. But why is the court -marshal mechanisms not been put into use to sanction offenders? Why are the orderly room trials of the police and the Police Service Commission not being used to check the excesses of these misbehaving policemen?
I took time to do just a less stressful research, and came out with dozens of times that such disgraceful inter-agency street scuffles have happened in the last 12 months.
Last year April, there was one of the ugliest cases of conflicts between the police and soldiers over a girlfriend in Damaturu, Yobe State which led to the death of five persons.
Among the wounded mobile police officer is Buba Dauda, the Mobile Commander in Yobe State, whose abduction by the soldiers in the wee hours triggered the face-off between the two security agencies.
It was gathered that the clash resulted from a misunderstanding that erupted between a serving army captain and some mobile policemen over a girlfriend the military officer allegedly snatched from the policeman.
The situation did not go down well with the policeman, who mobilised his colleagues to beat the captain to comatose.
On hearing what happened to their colleague, some soldiers stormed the residence of the police team’s boss in the area in two patrol vans and took him to an unknown destination.
Last week, there was a report of soldiers and police men fighting somewhere in Lagos over which caused considerable panic amongst civilians.
The question to ask is why have all the relevant disciplinary measures and institutions put in place to check such acts of indiscipline chosen to watch as these armed operatives engage each other in public fisticuffs resulting in violent deaths?
The Nigeria constitution has clearly spelt out the functions of each of the segments of the security forces even as both the hierarchies of the armed forces and the police have been empowered to maintain service discipline and instil professional excellence amongst their officers and women.