By Paul Onomuakpokpo
After years of a
tempestuous relationship with the police, the citizens have become very
familiar with a plethora of cases that reify the ignoble identity of that
security institution of government as a site of unbridled corruption. Thus,
they were by no means suddenly hoisted onto an uncharted territory when the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the National Bureau of
Statistics (NBS) last month alerted them to the egregious indices of the
corruption under which the police chafe. Nor did the recent allegation by
Senator Isah Misau that the police reek of corruption expressed in cronyism,
patronage and financial misdeeds come to them as a surprise.
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| *President Buhari and IGP Idris |
Indeed, Nigerians live daily with a catalogue
of woes the police inflict on them. We are quite familiar with these: the
police shoot to maim or kill commercial bus drivers or motorcyclists popularly
referred to as okada riders because
of their refusal to part with N50. They do not respond to emergency calls when
the citizens are under the siege of armed robbers. It is only when the armed
robbers have finished their operations and gone that their victims would be
harassed with the sounds of police sirens. And that is if the police come at
all. In most cases, they place obstacles in your way: they tell you that they
cannot respond to your call because they have no vehicles; if they have, they
are faulty; and if they are not faulty, there is no fuel in them. If you go to
make a report at their station, the police would ask you to pay for the pen and
piece of paper with which to make your complaint. After the complaint, you need
to give them money to investigate your case. On the walls and doors of a
typical police station would be emblazoned the warning: bail is free. But you must pay for detainees to secure their
freedom.
Yet, the citizens tend to empathise with members of the police. It is commonly
believed that the police are not motivated to discharge their responsibilities
because the society has failed to place a premium on their welfare. They are
doomed to being paid poor and delayed salaries, they have to buy their own
uniforms and boots, they live in dilapidated barracks, and the list continues.
As though to validate the notion that it is the Nigerian environment of poor
welfare that makes the police to perform badly at home, they usually win
laurels during international assignments.
But clearly, the police cannot be divorced
from the plague of corruption as long as their personnel are weaned on the diet
of moral turpitude. Recruitment into the police is secured either through the
ability to pay for it or by the fact of a candidate being connected to some big
people. It is not the most eligible that get recruited. This was why the recent
recruitment of 10,000 police personnel was discredited by rancour and nepotism.
There were long lists of preferred candidates from All Progressives Congress
(APC) bigwigs, lawmakers and diverse functionaries of the government.
After their recruitment, they are further
taken through the process of corruption in the course of their training. Here,
their trainers who are supposed to inculcate in them the noble values of
discipline and moral rectitude are the ones that would demand bribes from the
trainees in order for them to pass their courses. You need to encounter police
personnel to appreciate the remote possibility of their being purged of their
proclivity for corruption unless the wilder society is freed of the malaise.
Accuse them of corruption and they confront you with the riposte that they
should not be harassed with the charge of corruption when all they demand is
N50 while politicians are busy stealing billions. It is thus not surprising
that while every new IGP would undertake the ritual of ordering the dismantling
of checkpoints which serve as places of extortion, they remain ineluctable
ordeals that the citizens must suffer at the hands of the police.
Worse still, the police leadership is by no means a moral beacon that signposts
before the junior cadre the codes of morality that undergird the police. If these
senior officers do not take bribes themselves, they brazenly steal the funds
that are meant to cater for the welfare of the police. Of course, we cannot
forget so soon a former police inspector-general, Tafa Balogun, who
demonstrated this willful sabotage of the police through his embezzlement of
their funds. Although Balogun got his deserved comeuppance in jail, it has
remained an unbroken pattern in the police for their leaders to be willing
bearers of the virus of corruption that infects the entire security
organisation.
Thus, no matter how much defence the police
would make, the odds are against them. In the face of their pedigree of
corruption, why would the police expect Nigerians not to believe that Misau is
right when he alleged that the inspector-general of police collects N10 billion
monthly from corporations and this money is unaccounted for? Neither the IGP,
Ibrahim Idris, who has been directly accused of corruption nor the entire
police have been able to defend themselves against this charge. Rather than
appropriately responding to the issue raised by Misau, the police are telling
the public how he deserted them after many unprofessional acts that would have
earned him sanctions. If Misau deserted the police since over six years now,
why have they failed to take action on this? Why is it now that the issue
should come up? As Misau tells us, the same police that claim that he is a
deserter should reconcile themselves to the moral contradiction of IGP Idris
sponsoring his official trip abroad. Clearly, since the police failed to take
action on the matter before now, whatever action they are engaged in could only
amount to a ludicrous campaign of vendetta against Misau for squealing on them.
While it is necessary that the alleged
desertion should be treated with all the seriousness it deserves, a more
important issue is the allegations by Misau. It is the resolution of these
allegations that could pave the way for a more responsible and professional
police. For, as long as police personnel are posted to juicy areas and promoted
above their superiors because they can afford to pay or because they are close
to those who are in charge, we should not expect a professional and effective
police. Rather, we would be saddled with the police that are riven by disaffection
and willful sabotage.
Probing the allegations of both the police and Misau is not only an opportunity
to inject sanity, discipline and professionalism into the police. It is also
another test of the anti-corruption campaign of the President Muhammadu Buhari
administration. The Buhari government only has the capacity to gloatingly probe
officials of the past government. When it is confronted with the necessity of
probing the allegations of corruption against its officials, the government
looks for excuses not to live up to the citizens’ expectations. Then it either
resorts to the bromide that its close allies are unjustly hunted by the corrupt
or it quickly clears them of their alleged misdeeds.
Now, the government that
is unwilling to check corruption among its top officials is expected to take a
position on this matter. The government should not wait to be nudged by the
public before doing this. It must not repeat its dithering over the case of the
suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal,
and the Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ayo Oke,
that it found difficulty to probe despite the charges of corruption against
them. Even months after the probe, the government is still hiding its findings
from the public. If the government is serious at ramping up its already wobbly
anti-corruption fight, it now has another good opportunity to signal this –
just suspend IGP Ibrahim Idris for his probe to take place.
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the
Editorial Board of The Guardian
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