SIR: Nigeria Police, indeed, is the proverbial leopard that had refused to shed its spots. The colonial policing mindset the present force inherited, like the cat with nine lives, has refused to fade and die. That mindset equipped the police as an instrument of oppression and suppression. But while the colonialists have long departed, the mindset is retained- setting the police in a collision course with the public. The most glaring example is the EndSARS protests that ravaged the country recently. Despite all these, the police have refused to learn- and this is their greatest undoing.
Incoming Inspectors General of Police (IGPs) know too well that they inherited a force with a very negative public image and the first thing they do is to reel out some reform agendas to enhance the Force’s image. But this honeymoon, if it at all existed, is short-lived. The life span is even shorter than the legendary Solomon Grundie.
The reforms range from the dressing codes of the police, the usual bail is free campaign, say no to police extortion, dismantling of illegal roads-which up to date, the public are expecting a clearer definitions of legal and illegal road blocks- to sundry extortions. But all these to no avail- are as good as their pronouncements. Indeed, they are mere stunts flaunted by the IGPs to attract public appeal.
The more you pronounce that bail is free, the more exorbitant they become. Does this mean that the force lacks internal mechanisms to effectively monitor its administrative policies? The more you try to clampdown on police extortion, the more daring it becomes. In fact, the level of impunity extortion assumes is beyond the geometric level. The more you direct policemen on stop and search and operations not to appear on ragtag dresses, the more they intensify the dressing to compound one’s ability to distinguish them from undergraduates of higher institutions on a rag day. Sometimes it becomes very difficult to distinguish these policemen from the other men who carry arms for nefarious purposes. How would one, in all ramifications, place a policeman appearing in what would be qualified as “dirty jeans” –dotted with tiny holes- and very indecent tops? It can only happen in our clime because police is not accountable to the public they police. Here, it is anything goes.
Here, tell them to vacate the road blocks, and before you could spell Jack, the roadblocks have proliferated in multiples. It is always alleged that the ogas at the top know the dealings going on in those roadblocks. The allegations stretch to the point that the big men enjoy fair shares of the loot.
So for the best interest of the force, the earlier the appropriate quarters of the force disabused the minds of this and delete this negative memory from the minds of the public, by presenting concrete, verifiable, and empirical evidence that can upturn any doubt on this, the better for the force.
Yes, we have received very encouraging and impressive reforms from our dear IGP, Alkali Usman Baba, which seeks to turn a new leaf in the force. But let’s watch and see if those policemen appearing in rags on our major roads will disappear. Let us equally watch if those nefarious activities on stop and search locations will cease henceforth. If they refuse to abate, there reforms will usually pass as one of those, and our dear IGP, Alkali Usman Baba, will be remembered as one of those IGPs that reeled very novel and beautiful reforms designed to give policing in Nigeria a facelift that ended up as nothing.
We have certainly seen many reforms by successive IGPs. Our dear Alkali Usman Baba, if I were you, I would try the other knob!
- Okechukwu Keshi Ukegbu,
keshiafrica@gmail.com