Senior police officers and allied security chiefs are gathering in Owerri, Imo State from Monday, 30th October till 1st November to bounce ideas on enhanced security mechanism, also predictably to sharpen skills. But it is more. It is not just a retreat for strategic and senior police officers from the ranks of Commissioners and Assistant Inspectors-General to Deputy Inspectors-General, it will encompass a conference that is enlisting the participation of Governors, Service Chiefs, Heads of Security Agencies, the President of INTERPOL, Traditional Rulers and Community Leaders, according to Force Public Relations Officer, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Muyiwa Adejobi.
I want to believe that the gathering, underpinned by the enthusiasm and hospitality of Hope Uzodimma, must elicit hope for the long-sought progress over the intractable insecurity that has ravaged the land for quite a while. President Bola Tinubu will be flying in to declare the conference open. Governor Hope Uzodimma has been on air bubbling over the conference.
Seeing the conference setting, and since this is a new beginning, I have decided to dust up my file and retable this column’s standpoint that if we are talking about solving the problem of insecurity in the land, State Police is the answer. This was four years ago at the time the Senate was considering passing a bill for the establishment of state police. It gave its committee looking into it a two-week timeline to report back. That position has not changed. The country has groped in the dark for far too long! I see the gathering as just appropriate to re-opening the debate on state police.
My position as of 2018 was and still is as follows: Practically every day, someone, somewhere, is being shot. Gunmen, marauders, bandits, kidnappers, cultists and sundry criminals have for some years been on the loose; laying siege on the country with alarming impunity. In towns and villages, most Nigerians go to bed with their eyes half closed. People travel with bated breath, feeling relieved only when they reach their destination. In nearly all motor parks, passengers say prayers supplicating for protection from kidnappers or gunmen before their vehicles take off. Many luxury buses on a long haul have their own covert armed security outfit.The worst-hit zones in terms of insecurity have been the North East and the North Central, in the former where insurgents have held the country by the jugular, and in the latter where herdsmen have swept through farmlands and rural communities in an orgy of bloodletting, killing and maiming as well as engaging in mindless destruction of property, setting homes ablaze in the wee hours of the night when the occupants are fast asleep.
It has been so clear even for 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. They attack them at check points. The situation has been so bad that the Governor of Zamfara State who doubles as the chairman of Governors’ Forum, Senator Abdullaziz Yari, has had to throw up his hands in resignation! He washed his hands off as being decorated as the chief security of his state. He sees his position and such decoration as a joke. His argument is that he has no operational control over the police. The instruction of a governor may have to be forwarded by the police commissioner in the state to his boss, the Inspector-General, who may wish in turn to seek clearance from the President before it is carried out–or turned down!
Troops are sometimes called in to put down a security challenge because the police are overwhelmed and have spread thin because their hands are full, facing challenges in several fronts at the same time. Soldiers who ought to be the last resort, the last line of defence, are themselves routinely engaged in community combats and have not fared better. They have spread thin, too. I recall grieving the then Governor Sam Ortom of Benue State reporting the killing of 60 more people in the last week of February. He said the people were killed by rampaging herdsmen despite what he called “the launching of Ayem A. Kpatuma military exercise to check the excesses of invaders.” In January, on the New Year eve, about 70 people were killed by herdsmen.
Last year, former House of Representatives’ Speaker Yakubu Dogara drew attention to the ubiquitous presence of the military everywhere, even, according to him, in civil matters police ought to be able to sort out. It is astonishing, to say the least, that we are through the Senate just taking the first concrete step at addressing the grim security challenge in the land.
In my response to then President Muhammadu Buhari’s cold attitude and incomprehensible obstinacy in opposition to the issue of state police on this page last week in the wake of killings in Plateau State, I did ask: “How many more people are we waiting to see killed before we become wise to apply the most simple, the most commonsensical panacea: 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. The Governors’ Forum comprising all the 36 state governors called for it. They know where the shoe pinches them. About the time the Forum met, Mr. Yari’s backyard was on fire; 31 persons had just been mowed down. The worst had since then happened in Zamfara State
Long before their clamour, the 2014 National Conference Report had strongly recommended state and community policing. The report of then Governor Nasir El-Rufai Committee set up by the All Progressives Congress and submitted in January leaves no one in doubt about the imperative of the establishment of state police. At the Security Summit the Senate organised earlier in the year, then Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, reinforcing the argument for it, said that 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.
At the said Security Summit, Osinbajo said as follows: “The nature of our security challenges is complex. Securing Nigeria’s over 923, 768 square kilometres and its 180 million people requires a continual re-engineering of our security architecture and strategies. We cannot realistically police a country the size of Nigeria centrally from Abuja. State police and other community policing methods are the way to go”.
Former Governor Henry Dickson, corroborating what the Vice President said, went on to argue that the prevailing security situation was grave and the need for an effective respond to the challenge had made the establishment of state police mandatory. His conviction is anchored on the fact that the personnel would be drawn from the locality that make up the state. Such personnel would be able to access valuable information to track down criminals. Agreeing with the Vice-President, he had said the current federally controlled police had become overstretched owing to the wide ratio of the police to the rapid increase in population.
Former Governor Jonah Jang went into the basic principles: “We cannot be calling ourselves a federation and be running a unitary system. The two don’t work together”. He said to The Sun newspaper: “If we want to run a federal system of government we should run it properly. It is unfortunate that during the military era of which I was a part, we believed in 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. That is why nothing is working. So if we really want to progress as a country, we must restructure the country”.
A former President of the Nigerian Bar association, Mr. Joseph Daodu, in the heat of the debate, said it in all striking simplicity that state police is for law and order.
And listen to the clincher from General Ibrahim Babangida, a former President. Speaking last year on the subject of restructuring behind which he threw his full weight, Babangida had said: “Added to this desire 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 citizens’ participation in and confidence to interrogate power. We cannot be detained by those fears and allow civilization 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 fears of misuse of state police by governors are unfounded, indeed exaggerated”.
I have gone this length to demonstrate the fact that we have never been short of helpful and necessary literature on the imperative of state police and community policing. What is more, the police authority themselves have long recognized the necessity for some form of augmentation by way of community policing. In 2003, the Nigeria Police sent some of its men to Britain to train in community policing.
There are self-evident predicaments in which the country has been plunged by those who can be said to be ignorant, deliberately unfeeling or enlightened but are of impure motives. In March, I did draw attention to the figures of victims of insecurity. At the time, Taraba and Plateau States were not in the reckoning.
As of 13th February, the total number of Internally Displaced Persons (more widely called IDPs), in the North East and North Central was estimated to be over two million. With the displaced people in Plateau, things have obviously gone worse. The front page photograph of this newspaper of women and children on the queue clutching bowls at an IDP camp in the issue of Monday says it all. They are IDPs from the Plateau mayhem. With the figures as of February, Nigeria was host to the sixth largest IDP population in the world. Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe States had the largest number of IDPs. Together with its outskirts, Maiduguri was reported to have seen its population doubled from one million to two million with people fleeing violent attacks in their communities. In Benue as of February 2018, there were 160, 000 displaced persons.
Several governors have resorted to some clever security engineering to protect their states and people. Lagos is a classical example. Before Lagos, let’s consider Anambra State. Through its Vigilance service Act No.9 of 2000, signed into law on 06 December, 2006, Anambra State Government became the first to arm a vigilante group officially, who are publicly funded and paid salaries. Abia followed with its own, called Abia Vigilance Service. Ebonyi House of Assembly passed its own bill as well as establishing Ebonyi Vigilance Service. This was not without justification because cases of missing persons in the country at the time had become alarming. As of August 2017 the head of delegation, International Committee of the Red Cross, said by that month more than 10,000 Nigerians were missing.
Under the security engineering, then Governor Akinwumi Ambode of Lagos State recruited 5, 700 youths under his government’s Neighbourhood Safety Initiative last year. The move, he said, was another step at enhancing security at grassroots level in the state. They are to provide intelligence for crime prevention and to facilitate the arrest of perpetrators of crime. In August 2015, barely two months into his Administration, the state Security Trust Fund gathered N1 billion in donations at a dinner organized by the Fund and corporate organizations.
In Kano, the then Commissioner of Police Ibrahim Idris received 25 patrol vehicles from the state government. Kano facilitated the recruitment of 2,000 youths into a Peace Corps programme. The plan was to have 6,000 of them and it paid N83million for their application forms and training of the batch of 2000 — N3million for forms and N80million for their training. The government provided office space and accommodation. Although the police authority in Abuja ordered their immediate closure, it did not vitiate the government’s felt need for a state police formation.
In Kaduna, the said Peace Corps numbered 4,363 youths, 1,060 of them females. The Senate Bill to legalize them was turned down by President Buhari. Governor El-Rufai then went to establish Kaduna State Vigilance Service Committee to replace several self-help groups in existence in the state.
The Lagos Security Trust Fund gave the Lagos police command two helicopters, 300 patrol vehicles among which were mobile workshop vehicles, and 60 patrol motorcycles. Also provided by the Lagos State Government were two million rounds of ammunition, five fibre boats fitted with double 75 HP Outboard engines, 30 armoured personnel carriers and 1,000 AK-47. The Lagos model started by Babatunde Fashola was endorsed by the United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.
Some of the states in the country asked for guidance on how they could simulate the Lagos model. The Kano State command with Ibrahim Idris as police commissioner was one of such states. Idris who was later to become Inspector-General of Police said: “We had to travel to Lagos to understudy the Security Trust Fund. It has served as a model for the states in the Federation.” Ambode went all out to arrange what he called ‘proper care of welfare of police officers who are assigned to Lagos.’
Who cannot see that the states have been roaring to go? The governors are irrepressibly gearing to have their own police—state and community. I have said it before that were there to be state police in place in Borno when Boko Haram matters were brewing, through intelligence gathering helped by familiarity with land and culture, they would have nipped the plans in the bud. And if it showed signs of getting out of hand, they would have moved swiftly to put down the rebellion. They would have given it their all rather than watching their own society, their state, their towns, disintegrate socially, and economically. Who would be happy seeing his own people wandering with few belongings on their heads and clutching their children, looking for an emergency place of abode, and then makeshift camps — people who have been sacked from their homes by insurgents or herdsmen who also set their houses on fire?
How much misuse of the police by a governor would have landed us with the enormity of the horrendous devastation we are witnessing in the country today? Would Ortom have needed to wait on Abuja for the rescue of his people before restoring normalcy in the beleaguered land? A governor who inflicts such destruction on his people using state police would undoubtedly know he cannot get away with it.
The Yobe State Governor, Ibrahim Gaidam cannot say he does not need police. He has just been caught in a ding-dong blame game between the military and the police over the abduction in Dapchi. The Army said they deployed their men, Nigerian Army 59 Task Force Battalion, from Dapchi to Kanama on reinforcement after Nigerian soldiers came under heavy firepower there. Said Brig.-General Nwachukwu, the new Army spokesman, ’…the threat was on Kanama where insurgents were carrying out attacks along the Nigerian-Nigerien border.’
It is important to stress that the establishment of state police will not be tantamount to abolition of the federal police. They will work collaboratively under guidelines that will spell out distribution of responsibilities and duties and boundary lines. The guidelines will undoubtedly prevent any possibility of abuse such as taking away the appointment of the state police commission away from the governor. It can be worked out such that members of the commission are drawn largely from civil societies, religious organisations Christian Association of Nigeria, the Bar, and retired Justices even appoint their own successors every 10 years and in rotation. There will certainly be ideas, for where there is a will there will be a way. It is certainly strange that states make laws they do not have the police to enforce; they are at the mercy of the Federal Authorities. That is not acceptable. It is absurd.
Our legislators must have seen how the police is arranged in other lands. We have two scholars who have done extensive studies on policing, Prof. Kemi Rotimi of Obafemi Awolowo University and Dr. V. O. S. Okeke of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Anambra State University, Igbariam. In the United States, any university with a student population of 5,000 is expected to have its police. This column has argued that in most Western World, not only are there local police, but also city police, metropolitan police, ports police, and transport police.
In the First Republic Western Region had a three-tier policing system, the Native Authority police (Akoda), the Regional and the federal police called Olopa Eko –neat, smartly attired and efficient, professional, respectable and respected. You hardly saw soldiers. The equivalent of the Native Authority in the North was known as Dogarai. Egba United Government had its independent police as far back as 1905, Ibadan in 1906, followed by Oyo and then Ondo Province. Egbado and Ijebu Provinces had Akoda about the same time—in 1920.
The Owerri gathering presents the nation the golden opportunity to rethink the issue of police architecture, to have a dedecentralised police. Inspectors-General Kayode Egbetokun is asking for active engagement of senior police officers at the conference. He would like them to share valuable perspectives “to bolster collaborative efforts in fortifying internal security.” Who knows? It may pave the way to the liberating new. The older generation who have seen the past and are witnessing the present will tell you the difference is clear!
