The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Uniform

  • Brutes in uniform?

    It happened again for the umpteenth time. A young man was cut down in the morning of his life, leaving Parents and loved ones to mourn. He committed no crime. His killers were not armed robbers, cultists or hired assassins. He was murdered by those paid to protect him and the rest of us. His case is just another in the long list of killings by brutes in uniform.

    “God punish your father! I can kill you right now for nothing!” an officer who sounded like the leader of his squad yelled repeatedly as he punched and gun-whipped a young man in a despicable demonstration of power over life and death. His subordinates begged him to no avail as he kept cursing in the video. This happened in a country supposedly governed by the rule of law.

    Kolade Johnson, the most recent victim of deadly assault by police brutes was a sports enthusiast watching a soccer game at a viewing center. That was his crime. One of the officers that killed him reportedly announced his resolve to “kill someone today.” Those paid to protect us have a monopoly of access to deadly weapons which they unleash on innocent citizens. And we think nothing is amiss!

    From available reports, the killers of Kolade were affiliated with the Special Anti-Cultism Squad (SACS) with a mission to eliminate the menace of cultism. A genuine mission! But what means did they adopt? They apparently decided to identify cultists by hair style. Anyone with dread lock is a cultist! If it has not led to such a tragic outcome, you would think that someone had a rich sense of humor. Dreadlocks as a symbol of cultism? I have professorial colleagues wearing dreadlocks! By the hair-style identifying formula of SACS, my colleagues are cultists!  It is too mind-boggling to contemplate where this leads us.

    In the middle of last month, Lagosians and the country heard with dismay the heartbroken news about a young school girl killed in broad daylight by the Police in Ikorodu. According to media reports, she was hit by a stray bullet fired into a group of young people whom the police contingent suspected were hoodlums. As the girl laid in her pool of blood, the squad hurriedly escaped in their van as the youths pursued them. Perhaps the girl could have been saved if the police tried to take her to the hospital. But they cared less, and an innocent life was taken without moral qualm. In what other country can this happen?

    In June 2018, a Police Inspector and two Sergeants tear-gassed an asthma patient whom they accused of being a fraudster. He went into crisis and they fled the scene. As The Nation reported on June 18, 2018, the three were subjected to internal discipline and dismissed from the force. However, it is undeniable that these internal measures have failed woefully to sanitize the Force or bring it to the desirable end of professionalism and respect for human rights.

    In August 2018, Vice President Osinbajo weighed with a directive for a complete overhaul of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), after numerous public complaints and a #EndSARS campaign. Amnesty International has also demanded reforms to rid the Police of the “criminal network” which “tortures and extorts” suspects even in phantom and cooked-up cases.

    The totality of our national experience with our Police is comparable to a horror movie. The difference is that horror movies are unreal.

    What is most depressing about all this is that the Police is an essential institution for the internal security of the nation. We need the Police because there are bad people with criminal minds whose raison d’etre is the perpetration of evil. However, we do not need a back scratcher with a glove of thorns. When the murderer camouflages as the savior, we are done for. This is where we are in our police-citizen relation in this country. We have a misplaced hope.

    The Police has its organizational vision and mission statements which speak to its role as a public safety government organ. Part of its vision is “to create a safe and secure environment for everyone living in Nigeria.” Vision statements are generally aspirational, pointing to an envisioned future. The point is to keep improving until that end-time is reached. But what improvement have we seen in the decades that we have had the Nigeria Police Force? The above cited incidents provide a damning answer.

    Complementing its vision, the Police also has the admirable mission of building “a people-friendly Police Force that will respect and uphold the fundamental rights of all citizens.” That there is a gulf between this mission statement and people’s experience with our law-enforcement officers is clear. The question it must address is, what must be done to bridge the gulf between aspiration and actuality? What does the Police need to do to build a people-friendly Force?

    Answering this question does not require knowledge of rocket science. A humanist with common sense should be able to address it effectively. There is a short-term and a long-term solution to the crisis, which it is.

    First, we have the long-term constitutional issue which many, including the National Assembly, have failed to address since 1966. Nigeria appears to be one of only a few countries its size with a federal system and a unitary policing system. With this comes the serious issue of effective management which we, obviously, do not have a handle on. Yet we, true to our human nature, are afraid or suspicious of change.

    It is however true that policing at the level of states and local government is bound to be more people-friendly simply because it is more community-oriented. A nation-wide community policing sponsored by the federal Police cannot generate the kind of community feeling and sense of belonging that a local Police with personnel from the community can generate. Therefore, if we want a people-friendly policing, we would opt for a constitutional amendment to establish state and local police. We also must call out the cop-out excuse regarding finance. Transform EFCC into our federal Police in the manner of the FBI and dismantle the Nigeria Police with its budget transferred to the states.

    Second, however, we know that while this approach is right, it is wishful thinking because we are paranoid about change. Meanwhile, then, let there be an effective management of the Police that we have now. There is no doubt that recruitment needs to be overhauled. The mindset that sees every citizen as a hoodlum must not be allowed near the corridors of police stations. A mentally challenged and unbalanced individual must not be given access to a gun. But there are now many with mental issues parading as officers in the Nigeria Police. How did they get recruited?

    Third, the various special squads-SARS, SAKS, SACS- apparently see themselves as invincible agents of destruction. They are given these AK-47s which they parade with glee and with arrogance of power. What psychological or mental tests, if any, do they go through before they are enlisted in the special squads? The various atrocities they have committed over the years are enough evidence of the failure or ineffectiveness of such tests.

    Finally, the matter of police qualification and welfare must be taken seriously. With the explosion in the population of graduates of our tertiary institutions, it should not be difficult to have a pool of outstanding candidates with excellent mental states. With such quality candidates, however, we must be prepared to overhaul the welfare package for recruits and officers in the force. This will justify our expectation of a professional force and an effective implementation of a code of conduct that eschews bribery, extortion, and corruption.

    In his inaugural address upon his appointment last January, the Acting Inspector General, Mr. Mohammed Abubakar Adamu assured Nigerians that he was “mindful of their yearnings for a policing system that will not only assure them of their safety but treat them with civility and hold their rights sacred.” He then promised that “their deserved aspirations will be met henceforth.” Nigerians are still waiting to cash this promissory note.

     

  • Uniform: Lagos begins clampdown on non-compliant motorcyclists

    Uniform: Lagos begins clampdown on non-compliant motorcyclists

    Acting Lagos Police Commissioner Imohimi Edgal has said the command would today begin the enforcement of dress code for commercial motorcyclists.
    He warned that any motorcyclist caught without the approved uniform would be arrested, prosecuted because the period of grace was over.
    Edgal stated this at the weekend during a meeting with leaders of transport unions held at Ile-Zik Bus Stop, Agege.
    According to him, the state could no longer tolerate the lawlessness by some of the commercial operators, adding that it was time they had a uniformed identity for security reasons.
    He said: “We have two recognised unions of Okada riders in the state. Nagerinkikowa Motorcycle Owners and Riders Association of Lagos State (NNAMORAl) and Motorcycle Owners and Riders Association of Lagos State (MOALS).
    “If you want to do business as okada rider, you must register with either of the two associations. You must wear their uniforms. If you are seen not wearing uniform, you will be arrested and prosecuted.
    “We are very serious about the clampdown. Armed robbers are hiding under the guise that they are Okada riders. We are collating a database of all the Okada riders in the state. If your name is not in the database, you are a criminal and would be treated as such.”
    Warning them to restrict themselves to only approved routes, Edgal said commercial motorcycles flaunt the state’s Traffic Law without remorse.
    He said: “They run through BRT lanes, carry more than one passenger and ply restricted areas. They cause avoidable accidents.
    “We are tired of the menace of illegal Okada operators. We want to bring sanity in the state. We want responsible people to operate Okada.
    “The public should assist us by not patronising riders without uniforms.  We would arrest and prosecute any passenger patronising unidentified riders. Without you, they will not operate.
    “If you are a military personnel, policeman or paramilitary and you want to operate as an Okada rider, you must wear your uniform and belong to either of the two recognised Okada riders’ associations.”
    Commending the police chief on the initiative, an association leader  Tijani Perkins, said they would further orientate their members.
    He said: “We are going to comply with your directives. We will compile the names of all our members and send them  to you. We are going to assist the police in every area they need us. We will make uniforms and inscribe our numbers on them.
    “People can call the numbers when the need arise. We will give the police our maximum support. Our concern is on the people who patronise illegal okada riders. We cannot succeed in the war without their support.”

  • Uniform: Bus conductors get Jan. 1 deadline

    The Bus Conductors Association of Nigeria (BCAN) said that its members in Lagos State will start wearing uniforms from January 1, 2018 for security and effective service delivery.

    Its National President, Mr Isreal Adeshola, disclosed this  in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Sunday.

    Adeshola said the operational uniform would bring sanity to the service in the state and the country as a whole.

    According to him, the association has started training its members in Lagos State and educating them on the job procedures and attitudinal change while on duty.

    “The association has been able to train a reasonable number of conductors on behavioural change.

    “We started the registrations and training at Lagos State Drivers Institute for attitudinal and change in orientation of the members toward passengers and traffic rules.

    “By January 1, 2018, all our registered members will be in their operational uniforms for proper identification and effective service delivery,” he said.

    The president explained that part of the reasons for training its members was to ensure adequate security of passengers and good customer relationship with the people they relate  with.

    Putting on uniforms with identification numbers, he said, would ensure accountability and brought sense of responsibility among the members.

    Adeshola said the association was working towards eradicating the menace of using under-age as bus conductors across the country.

    He announced that persons from 18 years and above were qualified to join the association.

    The president added that any minor found operating as a bus conductor should be arrested.

  • ‘Establish uniform royalty, single fiscal regime in mining sector’

    ‘Establish uniform royalty, single fiscal regime in mining sector’

    Solid Minerals, Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Assistant Director, Dieter Bassi, has called for a uniform royalty to be paid by mining companies operating in an area, and single fiscal regime for the sector.

    He said such uniformity would create the enabling environment for foreign and local investors in the sector. “There is the issue of multiple taxations based on the constitution as some states and agencies collect royalty on some minerals that are on the exclusive list.”

    Bassi, who spoke with The Nation at a forum in Lagos, said the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development was supposed to collect royalties, but that, in some states, the local government areas and certain agencies of government collect  royalties in one form or the other.

    He also said changing royalty’s  name into what he described as production tax or development levy would not encourage investment in the sector.

    President, Miners Association of Nigeria (MAN), Musa Shehu, also called on the Federal Ministry of Mines to give adequate protection to miners, who have paid their taxes, noting that licensed companies had been prevented from mining even when they had brought in foreign investors to site. He added that this development, among other factors, encouraged illegal mining.

    He, however, advocated a synergy between the Ministry of the Environment and its state counterparts.

    Also, Director, Planning, Research & Statistics, Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, Pade Davies, supported the approval for setting up the National Council of Mines and Mineral Resources by the Federal Executive Council (FEC). This, he noted, would create a forum for states and local government councils to come together and address issues relating to multiple taxation, community agreements and how to resolve them.

    Meanwhile, an expert in the mining sector and pioneer lecturer in the Department of Geology and Mining, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, K’tsoNghargbu, has stressed the need to involve Sociologists and Psychologists in the public relations departments of mining companies in the country.

    This, he said, would reduce the hostilities companies and individuals that have mining titles suffer in accessing their sites in the country. He said their services would help to sensitise host communities on happenings around them as well as inform them on what they stand to benefit from the mining operations around them in the short and long terms.

    Such experts, he suggested, needed to be drafted into the communities and make them to settle to work before the arrival of equipment and personnel into such communities, insisting that it will help to eliminate resentment and misgivings.

    Nghargbu agreed that there were issues hindering the success of mining operations in the country, but  advised mining firms to have community relations units and first deploy their members of staff in such units in communities before moving in their equipment.

    Mining companies, he said, should not end up with geologists and engineers, adding that they needed sociologists as well as psychologists. If that is done, nobody should protest for want of knowledge of what is happening around him or her and would not attack the company in the area.

  • Uniform controversy: SANs back Senate

    Uniform controversy: SANs back Senate

    Frontline Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs)  have given their support to the  position of  the Senate that  the Controller General of  Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) Hameed Ali  should appear before it wearing his uniform.

    Although they unanimously  agreed that the constitution is silent on the subject, the SANs advised Ali to have a rethink  and  wear the uniform.

    In a response to our correspondent’s question on the subject,  a  SAN, Chief  Mike Ezekhome, said: “ “Even if wearing Customs uniform was not legally compulsory, wearing uniform instills in the wearer and his peers, a unique sense of identity, security, pride, unity, belonging, responsibility, espirit de corps and team work.

    “The law governing Nigerian Customs is the Customs & Excise Management Act (CEMA), Cap 45, LFN, 2004. Although  CEMA is silent as to whether it is mandatory for the Comptroller General of Custom (CGC) to wear uniform, however, the Customs and Excise Preventive Service Regulations made pursuant to CEMA, make specific reference to uniform. He must therefore comply with the provisions of both the Act and the Regulations, by wearing of the uniform of Customs, as a Para-Military Agency that even handles weapons. Not to wear the uniform is to blatantly undermine the very laws and foundation of his appointment, by disobeying the Rules and Regulations governing the appointment.”

    In a telephone chat, another SAN, Chief Ladi Williams, also enjoined the Customs’ boss to wear his uniform. He said: “The law is silent on this but all officers of such parastatals are enjoined to wear uniform especially if the occasion demands it.  A medical doctor who wants to go into the theatre room for an operation must wear uniform. The same thing applies to lawyers.

    The position the CGC is unnecessary. The legislature is an arm of  government. The CGC is part of the executive that needs to work with the legislature for the purpose of moving the country forward.  Therefore, if the senate insists that he wears the uniform, so be it.  If he feels too big for the job, he should resign. What is he trying to prove by denying the senate?

    While flaying the senate for giving too much attention to the uniform issue, a SAN, Kemi Phineiro said: “No agency or individual should defy the authority of the senate. It is not right for anybody to refuse their summon. We must not undermine the constitution by doing such.”

  • Much ado about a uniform

    Much ado about a uniform

    •The senate lacks the moral authority

    When the senate invited the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), Colonel Hameed  Ali (rtd), to appear before it to explain a controversial order requiring motorists to show proof of payment of the appropriate duties or pay up on demand, it was exercising the oversight function it is vested with by the Constitution.

    As such, the senate’s invitation was unexceptionable.

    The NCS’s drive for additional revenue is unexceptionable also, especially in a system riddled with leakages and corruption.  It has the unquestioned responsibility of ensuring collection of duties on imported goods and chasing down those it reasonably believes paid far less than the appropriate duty or evaded payment altogether.

    To that end, it launched what can only be called an indiscriminate ambush, demanding from motorists proof of payment of duties on vehicles that have for the most part changed hands several times over several years. That was carrying its revenue drive too far, and the Senate was right to call the NCS to order.

    It is not enough for the comptroller-general to suspend the controversial directive; he should rescind it and seek other sources of revenue that do not prey on the citizens buffeted by the recession. He must know, surely, that the practices he seeks to root out are often aided and abetted by his own officers and men, and that the crackdown should begin at home.

    That, more or less, is the course the matter should have followed.

    However, the whole thing degenerated into farce when the senate angrily walked the comptroller-general out on the curious ground that he had not come wearing his official uniform as the lawmakers had requested. The senate then set another date on which he must report in the comptroller-general’s full regalia.

    The uniform became the issue.

    At this point the embattled Customs chief served notice that he would no longer answer any summons because a lawsuit filed against him and the senate had rendered the whole thing sub judice. The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice wrote to the senate confirming the development and advising it to desist from further action.

    The senate’s reaction was nothing if not petulant. It disparaged the comptroller-general in language most un-parliamentary and demanded his resignation, failing which it urged President Muhammadu Buhari to dismiss him.

    This recourse is even more disturbing in the light of what is now known – that the senate had been engaged in self-dealing; that it had sought to evade payment of appropriate custom duties on an armoured SUV costing N300 million for the use of its leader, and all this in the time of recession, when the senate’s  high-living leaders already have at their disposal fleets of the finest automobiles provided  at the public expense.

    We wish Ali would don his official NCS uniform occasionally, if only to identify with its rank and file, regardless of whether he never belonged in the NCS, and regardless also of the fact he is a retired military officer specially appointed to the position by President Buhari. But the senate cited no law mandating him to wear the uniform, much less one requiring him to appear before the lawmakers decked out in that manner.

    The senate not only overreached; its conduct was overbearing. Its authority, real and presumed, now  stands tarnished. And when that authority was flouted by an official who has nothing to lose, the senate found, to its humiliation, that its power is limited.  This is in a way like the taming of the proverbial schoolyard bully finally confronted and worsted by a playmate who could take it no more.

    Power is most effective when sparingly invoked. The senate must learn to exercise its constitutional powers judiciously, without the indecorous tantrums and vacuous posturing that often characterise its proceedings, and the transactional calculations that usually inform its conduct.

    Above all, it needs to establish its moral authority rather than merely assert it, or expect the public to take it as given. A good way to start is to publish its budget and open its books to public scrutiny, as organs of the state are enjoined to do.

  • Ali versus uniform

    Ali versus uniform

    If you have stood close to Hameed Ali, you will see two things that collide. The air of an aristocrat and the mien of an army officer. In between, you observe the impulses of an entitled man. So, if you are the Senate, you cannot expect the man to simply cave in when you ask him to wear a uniform.

    Ali will not say it, but he believes he is done with the uniform. He was done when he retired as a soldier. To him, when you say “old soldiers never die, they only fade away,” it also includes the uniform. His army uniform, in all its imperial glory and starch, is fading away, and that is just fine with him. For him to put on the uniform of the Customs officer, he sees as degrading. You cannot be a soldier, where you rose to an elite rank and became military governor, and stoop to an inferior garb.

    After all, as military governor and senior officer of the Nigerian Army, the Customs was a subordinate agency. Its comptroller-general could not puff beside a colonel during the military era.

    The army officer sneers. But then he is also an aristocrat in bearing. He believes he belongs to a power elite in ethical and ethnic senses. With such double-barrelled accolade, he did the Senate, with the Oloye snorting, a rare privilege by appearing in the chamber to answer their questions.

    Ali thus represents the irony of power in our democracy. He imbues the hauteur of an army officer and emblem of a feudal elite, and why did he agree to be the comptroller-general? Because he can, and he can get away with such contradiction. He sees himself as superior and saviour. In his special way, he has stooped to conquer. By asking him to wear uniform, they are trying to conquer him into stooping. Oliver Goldsmith’s 18th century play, She stoops to Conquer, fits into this narrative. Except that the play’s principal actor disguises to conquer. Ali is too patrician to hide under any cloak.

    That is why he is defying calls to wear a uniform. He knows no law court can compel him to do so. No law asks him to wear it. Decency is the only reason, and who is to tell an aristocrat what is decent? Decency is for the common pool, and we don’t tell the big man what to wear and how to dress. As Mokokoma Mokhonoana, a South African writer and philosopher noted, “what to wear: an employee chooses. How to dress: His employer chose.”

    Ali does not see himself as an employee. He sees himself in the mould of an employer. If you come from the vault of power, how else can you think? Enough has been said about how the fight between him and the Senate betrays the fissures in the APC. But for me, it is a far more symbolic thing.  Wearing a uniform was a way to make the strong-head Customs head conform.

    The man is known to be doing well on his job. He is raking in money. He is a sort of corruption czar in a cocoon known as the Customs. The top brass of that agency must be nervous to have him around. The agency is, by common consent, the most corrupt in the country. Those who work there live the peacock life, the sort their legitimate incomes can never even dream of.

    It seems the real peacocks of this democracy somehow fell into the shadows of the Customs bear. They wanted a bear hug, instead the beast pounced on them. The animal has them in their claws. I am referring to the Senate and scandal of Senate President Bukola “Eleyinmi” Saraki, the extant Oloye of the upper chamber of Nigeria’s legislature.

    Every member of the top class wants a big car into the country one time or another. We have learned that Oloye has fallen into the man’s net with a big, armoured vehicle. Oloye is denying ownership of a Range Rover impounded by the Nigeria Customs. Saraki’s spokesman says it is a matter of the supplier. But they have not been able to clarify why his name was not inserted in it. Well, we now know that the Senate intervened not because of the outcry over NCS impunity on the streets by impounding vehicles with antiquated papers, but because it touched their bones. What a selfless Senate and its leadership. Oloye had to fight back, and he wanted to put the man back in line by wearing uniform.

    It’s clear now, this is no trivialisation of uniform. The Oloye has a keen sense of symbolism. Politics has always used uniform or sartorial markers for effect, either for good or ill. It’s not for nothing that presidential candidates changed their clothing from region to region during campaigns. Goodluck Jonathan was adept at this. The stiff Buhari, who never cared to change his habiliments, was compelled to do so in the last presidential hustings.

    Appearances are too important in politics to be left in the hands of stylists. Key political actors are their own aesthetes. Hitler had his tuft of beard. Mahatma Ghandi looked grand in his half-cloth, and defied Churchill who called him “a half-naked kafir” in the heat of the Indian’s anti-colonial maelstrom. Abacha loved his goggles. Trump’s turbulent toupee is gaining notoriety. Charles de Gaulle had his cap and so did Churchill. Nyerere had his French suit.

    Yet these men knew that the hero was not about the uniform, but about the man, as Andrea Randall wrote: “Heroes don’t always have capes, badges, or uniforms. Sometimes they support those who do.”

    Ali believes he is supporting those who wear uniforms. Saraki and co. want to force him to don one.  The uniform, for the point of view of Oloye, is not the stuffy khaki. It is obedience. Ali gets it and that is why he is kicking. Uniforms are about obedience. Individuality is about sacrifice. Ali would not sacrifice his individuality, though, to an institution. The reason is that he has come as a messiah. Messiahs in history have tended to be humble. But they have also been individual without alienating their folks. Jesus whipped the money changers in the temple. What do you expect when a combo of soldier and patrician takes over a can of worms like the NCS? Perhaps, Ali may have the moral bona fides for the job. He does not seem to have the humility. Just like his boss, Buhari, the fight against corruption calls for men of integrity. But history tells us that winners triumph with other weapons as well, including cunning and strategic flexibility. Sentiment, sometimes, supersedes principle, when appropriately harnessed.

    Ali would not wear the uniform, and that is wrong, not in law but in optics. As Apostle Paul noted, all things may be lawful, but they may not be expedient. If he can stoop to fight the corruption war, he should respect the men by donning their clothing. He becomes their leader in and out, in and out of uniform. It does not make him less of soldier or patrician. It makes him a better man.

  • Uniform question

    It isn’t trivial that the controversial Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Colonel Hameed Ali (retd), continues to trivialise the uniform of the agency by his unyielding refusal to wear it.  From the look of things, Ali is unlikely to wear the relevant uniform during his time as Customs chief. He enjoys the status, but it would appear that he is contemptuous of the uniform that reflects the status.

    Ali seems to have come to the job with a superiority complex, thinking and believing that his background as a retired army officer means it is beneath him to wear the uniform of an organisation he rates as inferior to the Army, even if he happens to be the boss.  Of course, there is a uniform that goes with the office and rank of Customs CG, and that uniform is supposed to project the agency, and its boss, who may be said to be the face of the organisation.

    Ali showed his mindset during a February 2 interaction with the Senate Committee on Customs and Excise concerning a proposed bill to restructure the NCS. A report said: “A member of the committee, Senator Obinna Ogba, demanded to know why Col Ali as Customs CG still appears in and wears mufti close to two years after his appointment. The Ebonyi Central Senator noted that the continuous appearance of Col Ali in mufti several months after his appointment appears to be ‘highly demoralising to officers and men of the front-line revenue generating agency.’ Ali fired back, saying that as a former military officer, tradition does not permit him to wear any other uniform.”

    When another member of the committee, Senator Dino Melaye, recalled that Halidu Hananiya, a retired Army General, wore the uniform of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) as its Corps Marshall, Ali reportedly “told the committee that Gen. Hananiya made a fundamental mistake by wearing FRSC uniform.” It is food for thought that a retired Colonel suggested that he was more professionally conscious than a retired General.

    It is interesting that Ali’s position provoked Senator Ogba to the point that he “angrily walked out of the session.”  The report said: “While walking out of the hearing room, Ogba retorted “this is how you people keep on deceiving Nigerians on wrong action and still defend it.”

    Ali’s stance is indefensible. It exposed his complex; it also complexified   the uncomplicated.  If Ali thinks he is too big to wear the uniform of Customs CG, but does not think he is too big to be Customs CG, then he needs to be encouraged to rethink.  Hopefully, he won’t think he is too big to have a rethink.

    Whether Ali can be compelled to wear the Customs uniform is not the issue.  So, the dramatic divergence between the Senate and Ali on the matter, which has attracted public attention and has been compounded by other matters, is a drama of distraction.

    It is interesting that activist lawyer Femi Falana entered the fray with the argument that Ali “can’t be compelled to appear in uniform.” Falana said in a statement: “The Senate engaged in another illegality when it exceeded its powers by asking the CGC to appear before it in customs uniform. Neither the Constitution, nor the Rules of Procedure of the Senate has conferred on it the power to compel the CGC to wear customs uniform when he is not a serving customs officer. Indeed, the directive is a reckless usurpation of the powers of the Board which is the only competent body to decide on the wearing of uniform by customs officers. In many countries, including South Africa, customs officers do not wear uniforms. It is on record that the first four heads of the Customs department in Nigeria never wore uniforms.”

    Falana continued his argument:”With respect to the customs service, its officers are required to wear uniforms in accordance with Section 8 of the Customs Excise and Preventive Service Regulations which provides that “clothing and equipment shall be of such pattern and worn in such manner as the Board shall determine.” The suit challenging the legal validity of Col. Hameed Ali’s appointment has been dismissed on the ground that the President has the power to appoint a non-customs officer to head the customs service. Since a competent court has held that he is not a customs officer, Col. Ali cannot be made to wear any uniform by the Senate. If I am said to be wrong, I challenge the Senate to refer to any law that supports the wearing of uniform by the head of the customs service who is not a serving customs officer.”

    The question is not whether Falana is right or wrong. This issue is beyond what the law says; it is about brand logic.  If the Customs is seen as a brand, it follows that its head should be seen to be projecting and promoting the brand.  If Ali is the face of the organisation, not wearing the organisation’s uniform, or more specifically, trivialising what represents the organisation’s brand identity, amounts to doing a disservice to the brand.

    Ali does not need to be compelled to wear the uniform of the organisation he heads, or pressured into embracing the brand by wearing the uniform that defines it.  Wearing the Customs uniform should be a matter of duty for Ali; it is a commonsensical approach to organisation governance.

    Beyond the sound and fury that have characterised the public debate over Ali’s refusal to wear the Customs uniform, the heart of the matter is that Ali, by his stance, continues to exhibit a narrow understanding of organisation governance and the logic of organisation cohesion.

    The question may be asked: What will it cost Ali to wear the Customs uniform? To put it another way: What has Ali got to lose by wearing the Customs uniform?  He may indeed have more to gain because it would show that he is a thinking man who can rethink things, which may make him a right-thinking man.

  • Uniform drama: Senate chasing shadows

    SIR: The concentration of the Senate, for weeks, on the attire of the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Colonel Hameed Ali (retd), indeed leaves much to be desired. Nigerians expect to see profound bills passed by the National Assembly to aid the service-delivery of the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

    Even when crude oil prices, Nigeria’s main source of revenue, crashed beyond the benchmark, the lawmakers were hectically padding the budget to the detriment of the common man they supposedly represent. The question begging for answers: Of what value is it to the nation in these trying times whether a retired Colonel politically appointed to head the Nigeria Customs Service for set objectives wears a uniform or not?  Who will pay for the sitting allowances for these wasted hours on Customs CG not appearing in Custom’s uniform?  How many people-oriented bills have been passed by the 8th Senate?  There are so many other questions.

    It is believed in many quarters that the uniform drama is a script sponsored by some aggrieved senior officials in the Nigeria Customs Service who felt shortchanged by the appointment of an outsider to head the agency.  The alleged imported-cars saga linked with some principal officers of the Senate cannot be overruled on account of enormous energies devoted to the aimless supremacy fight. Without a doubt, corruption, which has been reigning in the Nigeria Customs Service for many years, makes it expedient that some drastic actions to be taken. It is no politics to state that the declaration of a state of emergency is long overdue in the agency.

    Admittedly, by the ambiguous oversight functions vested in the National Assembly by the Nigerian Constitution, it could drift into such a fight as cheap as trying to get the Customs boss to wear the agency’s uniform under the cloak of patriotism. However, by the provisions of the Customs & Excise Management Act (CEMA) 2011 as amended, such issue is alien, hence baseless and a no-go area for the Senate to endlessly pursue except its rule of law is dependent on wishful thinking.

    Democracy is characteristically a government based on laid down rules. In other words, while the oversight functions could allow the Red Chamber to issue directives extravagantly to all MDAs (ministries, departments and agencies), the respective enabling Acts like CEMA which specifically guides and determines the management and operations of the agency will reduce such directives and threats to ultra vires, thus, null and void. Overall, the legislative arm must qualitatively be up and doing with know-how on its core responsibilities instead of contentedly prioritising politics and its gimmicks at the expense of the people.

     

    • Carl Umegboro
  • Uniform and Uniformity

    Uniform and Uniformity

    (The unfolding travails of the Nigerian State)

    Those who see the tiff between the Customs’ Comptroller-General, retired Col Hameed Ali, and the senate over the wearing of uniform as a superficial tussle, are profoundly mistaken. But many who get it right may also be looking in the wrong direction for an answer. We should ask ourselves why this kind of political circus cannot be contemplated or even imagined in properly functioning democracies.

    Last Thursday, the senate upped the ante by asking Ali to resign or be fired on the grounds that he was too old and unfit to hold office. This is the self-same senate that is teeming with all kinds of contrary and colourful characters, some of them not too old but certainly too unfit to hold legislative office—to put things with diplomatic restraint.

    Yet we ought to have known that an extraordinary drama redolent of state incapacitation and possible anomie is in the offing when Malam Ali walked into the senate chambers in mufti with two of his topmost lieutenants in tow only to be summarily evicted. A bigger beast is being stalked in the jungle. If you abuse a dog in this manner, you are actually abusing its master.

    It is a sign of dire emergency, flashing warning signals to the Fourth Republic. Rather than being a cosmetic wrangling about appearance and formal submission of a high ranking state functionary to the dictates of a powerful branch of government, it speaks to a deep dissonance and disarticulation of state components which has become characteristic of the first inter-party regime-change in the democratic history of the nation. Already implicated in the stalling and smooth running of government, this messy wrangling is likely to eventuate in a nasty power commotion or even a violent dismissal.

    The uniform is an integral symbol and totem of the modern state. It is emblematic of state authority in all its diffusion and dispersal. Through the uniform, and as the name implies, through its harsh homogeneity, the state grinds the nation into conformity and a uniformity which is bleak and inescapable.

    Through the uniform, the modern state determines who to criminalize and restrict to prison and who to section and contain in the lunatic ward. It also chooses its representatives and bearers of its instrument of authority. The uniform evokes and evinces the symbolic aura and legitimacy of the state.

    Yet it may also be the case that the fundamental defects of a nation can begin to rear their head in the most dramatic and unexpected of ways. A nation lacking in organic coherence cannot produce uniformity and unanimity at the level of the state. This crisis of uniformity may be structural, ideological, cultural or political but it finds outlandish manifestation in the most seemingly innocuous of circumstances. The uniform of Malam Hameed Ali is symptomatic of the crisis of the Nigerian post-colonial state.

    To be sure, no one in his right senses can fault the moralizing and sanitizing zeal which led President Mohammadu Buhari to the choice of the implacable, no-nonsense former military administrator of Kaduna State as the man to bring sanity back to an institution widely perceived as corrupt and debased through and through. In the Customs, President Buhari saw a dire national emergency and rightly so.

    Yet that being the case, the president should have made wider and more cosmopolitan consultations as well as a more thorough exploration of the options available to him. However debased the Customs had become, bringing somebody from outside its ranks and a retired member of a rival service for that, is disruptive and destabilising enough, but bringing somebody who regards the uniform of the institution he has come to redeem with obvious contempt and disdain is unduly confrontational and counterproductive.

    What the president should have done was to appoint Col Ali as Sole Administrator of the Customs and Excise department with a time limit and an Order of Procedure handed to him. With that instrument of authority, he can logically decline to wear uniform without disrupting service cohesiveness and uniformity, or drawing the ire of an unfriendly senate. As it is, what General Buhari has done is akin to bringing in a non-uniform wearing outsider as the Inspector General of the Police or a former immigration boss as the head of prison services.

    All of this is however small beer compared to the main drama of which the senate versus Ali imbroglio is an adjunct scene. The main drama is of course the fact that the main opposition to the ruling APC is the ruling APC. This is a rousing democratic conundrum which could only be thrown up by a dysfunctional state in the throes of a major institutional crisis. What is going on is perhaps the longest political coup in the legislative annals of modern Nigeria. The ugly denouement may yet be approaching.

    With the remorseless and incorrigible PDP on the prowl and waiting to take advantage, the executive is beginning to remind one of a huge rat petrified and immobilized by the presence of a mammoth predatory snake. But if the wayward senate leadership is hare-brained enough to overreach itself by reaching for an impeachment clause in order to force open the gridlock, the entire circus is most likely going to be dismissed by some other forces waiting in the wings and watching the current political shenanigan with barely concealed disgust and irritation.

    Either way, the Fourth Republic may be approaching a remarkable endgame. In a sense, the APC is proving to be more dangerous to the health of the nation than the PDP. Unlike the PDP which is an integrated consortium of political sharks and other major players in the extractive industry, the APC is an organized conspiracy to capture power which is proving incapable of coalescing into a coherent and organic party after its triumph. Ambition should be made of sterner and more sterling stuff.

    As it is, the only other example one can think of is the coalition of contrary forces which unseated President Daniel Arap Moi in Kenya only for it to disintegrate into its ethnic components ahead of the next election. The resultant crisis snowballed into a tribal conflagration which pushed Kenya in the direction of a brief civil war.

    A state that lacks uniformity of purpose and vision cannot produce organic parties that will drive national interests. What is happening in the senate is the transmutation of personal interests to national interests without any mediating vision of the nation. Many have fingered the executive itself of being complicit in this ideological balkanization of the nation. In this version of the national narrative, the dominant but not hegemonic CPC faction of the APC has simply substituted its regional and religious agenda for party principles leaving the old and jaded ACN to carry the short end of the stick.

    When Bukola Saraki carried out his opening political offensive against the dominant mood and political wish of his party, he was not doing so in the national interest but in the interest of a consuming and overweening personal ambition facilitated by the undomesticated and unassimilated PDP cabal moonlighting in the APC.

    In retrospect, it may well be that the hard-headed and harshly pragmatic son of the departed Oloye knew what many didn’t know at that point in time. In a nation lacking in foundational principles, there are no national or party interests for that matter, only personal interests parading as national interests.

    Halfway into the Buhari administration, nobody has been able to do anything about that. On the contrary, the fellow from Ilorin is in firm control of his democratic troops and is waxing from strength to strength. Even if you don’t like his politics, you have to respect and admire his chilling focus and single-minded pursuit of what matters to him.

    It is unfortunate that matters are headed in this direction. Yet only those who plant cassava and are expecting to harvest yam would be surprised. Every attempt to move Nigeria democratically forward is scuttled by the foundational problems of ethnicity, cultural animosity, religious incompatibility and mutual contempt which override the dictates of party affiliations, political associations and ideological fraternities.

    If the APC was going to turn out its own worst enemy what was the whole point of the heroic pan-Nigerian uprising against the PDP? There are optimists who point at all this as minor teething problems in the growth and development of a nation. But when a fifty seven year old is still growing teeth, well that must be Ajantala himself. The combination of permanent infancy with perpetual dark experience makes for a dangerous toddler indeed.

    On the other hand are those who take a longer perspective of history, who believe that in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation, you cannot crash the gear of history. In other words, it may well be that we need to get to this point in order to gain greater clarity and a greater awareness of our true situation shorn of panic and political hysteria.

    If we align with this perspective, it is possible see the current tussle not as a Manichean struggle between saints and sinners or heroes and villains but as a gigantic collision of political forces on the chessboard in which God marches on the side of the bigger battalion. Thus, the APC needed to come together in the overwhelming national interest. But it may also take an internal implosion of the party or its major reconfiguration to move the nation forward.

    In all this, General Buhari’s fabled integrity and probity may help to tilt the balance of forces. But they can no longer be the sole determining factor. Due to a combination of adverse circumstances compounded by political naivety, the last two years have seen a drastic whittling down of his auratic presence. Just as it happened with his first coming when these qualities at their most potent could not prevent his military adversaries from coming together to depose him, other contrary forces are also waiting in the wings this time around.

    The problem is not the uniform of Malam Ali. The problem is the lack of uniformity and national consensus among Nigeria’s ruling class and the sheer absence of unanimity among state actors about what it takes to move the nation forward. In any nation where there is this fundamental collision of political altars, the foundational basis of the state ought to be re-examined. This is the only way the state and the political elite can retain the initiative against the street and its restive mob.