By Dan Amor
In September 2011, yours sincerely was amongst media executives invited to grace the World Press Conference organized to mark the 23rd anniversary of the creation of Akwa Ibom State. In attendance at the conference were the Voice of America (VOA), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Le Monde of France, major radio and television stations, major Nigerian newspapers and magazines, and three Editorial Board members.
It was hosted by the Executive Governor of the oil rich Niger Delta State His Excellency Obong Godswill Akpabio. That was before he defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), in which he is now Minister of the Niger Delta Affairs. At the conference, this writer was privileged to speak on the emerging state of insecurity in the country. As at then, the major security threat Nigerians had to contend with was the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East.
Before the whole world, I told the gathering (which was an interactive session) that Nigeria was ripe for State Police. I told the attendees which included the governor, the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) then Dr. Umanah Umanah and a select group of commissioners and media aides to the governor that if Great Britain, a population of 60 million people from where we borrowed our policing system had 47 policing formations including Federal, State, Local Government and Metropolitan Police, then Nigeria with a population of 160 million people (as at that time), was overdue for State Police. To drive home my argument, I told my audience that Nigeria with a population of 160 million people, was twice the size of Egypt, three times the size of South Africa and twelve times the size of Zambia.
In area, Nigeria was roughly equivalent to France, Italy, Belgium and Holland rolled together. From Lagos in the South West to Maiduguri in the North East is the distance between London and Warsaw. The country has over 250 tribes and more than 400 languages. There are three major tribal groups, even though it is now a conference table with more than 250 legs. It has the Igbo in the South East, the Yoruba in the South West and the Hausa/Fulani in the North. The minority tribes together, however, are more or less equal in number to the Big Three combined. The most important minorities are the Edo, Urhobo, Itshekiri, and Ijaw in the Mid-West; the Ijaw (again), Efik, Ibibio, Ekois, Ejagan, and Ogoni in the East, and the Middle Belt tribes - the Tivs, Jukuns, Idoma, Igala, Bachama, Birom - in the North. The latter are largely Christian or animist in contrast to the Muslim Hausa/Fulani and Kanuri of the far North.
I told them that you cannot have such a country and decide to bark orders to the four corners of it in an over-centralized policing system or through your command police commissioners. It would simply not work, for long. If Nigeria had a Federal Constitution in 1954 and later had a Republican Constitution in 1963, then the country must have a Republican policing system. It is an aberration to keep running a Federal Republic like a Unitary State since 1966. I also told us that the Inspector General of Police (IGP) must not necessarily be a policeman. The police in Nigeria is in a decadent state. According to the law of Vicarious Liability, you cannot pick someone from a decadent organization and make that person head of that organization. It is an anathema, to say the least.
I told my audience that when the late Dr. Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and in 1994 became the first black president of South Africa in the first non-racial general election, the police force he met was an apartheid police which was anti-black. Mandela had to appoint Dr. E.M. Meyer, the Chief Executive Officer of the South African Breweries, the second largest after the German Breweries, to reposition the South African Police.
His mandate was to use his vast knowledge and experience to reorganize the police in South Africa and make it people-friendly. It is expertise that turns an organization around, and not service. My message sank into the governor's head. Even the BBC reporter said openly that he had been reading me but had not met me in person, as my speech drew acclamations from my audience. My colleagues in attendance including Ochereome Nnanna of Vanguard and Dr. Robert Obioha of The SUN, also spoke exceedingly on different topics.
A week later, Akpabio told the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) why it was imperative for state governors to seek for State Police. While all the State Governors including their Northern colleagues accepted Akpabio's proposition for State Police, the Northern Governors recanted about a week later, saying that State Police was a form of restructuring, which the North was against. Why would the North be against what would salvage the entire country? Yes, the concept of State Police has some demerits. But the merits outweigh the disadvantages.
Retired IGPs who argue against State Police simply do not want to rock the boat they had captained. Now, I learnt that many northern governors including Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State who confessed having paid huge sums of money to bandits or armed Fulani herdsmen from other countries to stop killing his people in Southern Kaduna, are gunning for State Police. It is the right way to go. As Chief Security Officers of their respective states, as recognized by the Constitution, the Governors have no choice on this.
As we write this piece (Saturday March 20, 2021) about 129 schools have been forced to shut down and several people rendered homeless in the North alone. Bandits have virtually taken over all states in the country. In twelve states of the North alone more than 10 million children have dropped out of school. Many houses have been burned and so many killed by bandits and armed Fulani herdsmen. The meaning of Boko Haram, "Western education is evil", is beginning to gather momentum as schools are being closed down and over 7,000 people kidnapped as a result of attacks by bandits. One cannot easily travel by road to any part of the country again for fear of being kidnapped by bandits. Also, until this insecurity problem is adequately taken care of, preparing for the 2023 general elections is a receding mirage.
The menace has taken over all the states in the North and is spreading to other parts of the country even as people are being kidnapped on a daily basis in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, FCT. It has graduated from a challenge to a problem as the Federal Government becomes handicapped by the day. About a week ago, the American government offered to help Nigeria flush out the bandits. They said they would use special forces to drive the bandits from our soil. But President Muhammadu Buhari rejected their overtures insisting that Nigeria had the capacity to deal with the bandits. Buhari is right. There is no way another country would come to address another's internal security problems.
Buhari might not be the creator of the overwhelming Nigerian anomie. But he has failed to live up to his oath of office of protecting the lives and property of Nigerians, which is the first responsibility of government. Nigeria would have been difficult for the bandits to penetrate if we have had State Police in place. Speaking recently on the unnerving weight of insecurity in the country, Governor Ezenwo N. Wike reiterated that if the Federal Government had taken decisive action to tackle kidnapping when the Rivers State Government appealed to it for assistance, the menace may not have spread to all parts of the country. Wike is very correct. Former Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State allegedly sponsored the first set of kidnappers in Nigeria when thugs were reportedly armed by the State Government and also Bayelsa State to help rig election for him and the late Dr. Peter Diepreye Alamieyeseigha in 2003. After the exercise, the governments could no longer disarm them and they became bandits who survived through kidnapping. The phenomenon now spread to the South East and other parts of the country.
Whoever brought the foreign bandits to Nigeria is not the import of this piece. But Nigerians must insist on a true federal structure whereby all states can have their own police force to secure their territories. That way, you reduce ungoverned spaces to the barest minimum. The United Nations suggested a policeman to 400 people. But what we see in practice is incredible. As it stands, there are no consequences for criminality as many states have passed capital punishment for kidnapping and banditry yet they cannot implement it.
The way the country is being run fuels crime because if Nigeria is run on pristine federalism, many states would not allow kidnappers and armed herders to roam their territories, killing, raping and kidnapping people with reckless abandon. Those that permit their presence will insist on ranching, the global best practice in animal husbandry. To say that state governors would abuse State Police is bunkum. Is the Federal Government not abusing the Federal Police? State Police with laws to curtail governors' excesses is the solution to banditry. Don't expect any action from this Federal Government.
*Amor, a Nigerian journalist and writer, is a regular contributor to this blog. (This article was first published in Daily Independent of Monday March 22, 2021)
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