An IGP’s unsubstantiated claim about roadblocks and corruption in the police force
Obviously, the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, was on an image-laundering mission when he presented the Nigeria Police Scorecard in Asaba, Delta State. His loud remarks had a ring of self-satisfaction, but the public was not impressed. When he declared that “Removing roadblocks in Nigeria has reduced corruption in the police by 80 percent,” he might have been speaking of a wish rather than actuality. Nigerians, who regularly bear the brunt of police improprieties, evidentially do not share Abubakar’s strange optimism.
Perhaps the positive picture he painted was understandable, given the fact that one of the striking moves he made upon assumption of office was the banning of police roadblocks, which was greeted with public relief and praise. His presentation, therefore, not only sought to re-validate the policy; it was also an indirect way of congratulating himself and stressing his relevance.
However, being an interested party clearly makes him a suspect source for such details. It is unclear whether there was any methodical approach to the estimation. Or was it just a supposition? Indeed, for credibility, such information ought to be research-based, which it does not seem that Abubakar can claim. An independent assessment informed by scientific expertise would have been more believable.
Furthermore, the blanket figure was statistically vague, for it suggested that roadblocks alone accounted for 80 percent of corruption in the force but gave no clue about the other aspects of police sleaze. For instance, what about the contentious issue of bail, which is generally known to encourage corruption in the force? What about the problem of bribery for the perversion of justice? It is instructive that Abubakar also said that the force had dismissed thousands of officers in the past one year for corruption-related conduct. Again, his failure to elaborate on the specific acts that led to the said dismissals further put a question mark on his assertion about the scale of reduction of corruption connected with roadblocks.
If Abubakar was right, it raised disturbing questions about the pervasive corrupting influence of roadblocks and the fact that the fraudulent practice existed for so long before his intervention. There is no doubt that the roadblocks were notorious for police extortion tactics. In the case of commuter buses, for instance, it was no secret that policemen at such checkpoints had a fixed minimum charge of N20 to allow unchallenged passage. In fact, in extreme cases, there have been reported killings by armed policemen at roadblocks, resulting from alleged uncooperative attitude by road users.
Regrettably, the undeniable reality is that the evil roadblocks, despite the prohibition, still exist under other guises. In other words, the ban merely inspired greater inventiveness on the part of policemen who still do checkpoints for so-called “stop and search.” Ironically, even Abubakar’s words tended to support what may be described as limited roadblocks. According to him, “The essence of roadblocks is for a temporary arrest of crime and as soon as this is done it is dismantled; this is the situation in other countries of the world.”
Apart from the doubtful accuracy of Abubakar’s scorecard, it is perturbing that the no-road-block policy may prove to be a personalised operation without the guarantee of continuity. The undesirable implication of possible institutional review is that even the level of success claimed by Abubakar may well decline after his tenure.
At bottom, the significance of the Inspector-General’s apparently exaggerated assessment must be the fact that, perhaps inadvertently, he again helped to turn attention to the nature of official corruption in the force and its diverse dimensions. It goes without saying that positive transformation of the country’s police is a laudable objective, but it is well beyond mere unsubstantiated talk.
