If I were a Governor

I do not know what caused it but a sudden surge of néesear came over me shortly after I watched a group of former Inspectors General of Police visit to the President. All they went to say was that Nigeria was not good for State Police or that State Police was not good for Nigeria. Their reason? That the governors will use it against political opponents. To say that I was non-plussed is to make an under-statement. Here are a group of privileged citizens from whom the ordinary and less –privileged expects some modicum of noblesse oblige, or some feelings of empathy, given our current travails of insecurity and the attendant enormous loss of life and property- a testimony to the inefficiency and unusefulness of the unitary police system which we have. In the first place, the services which each and every one of them rendered for which they received full salary and allowances, with the compliment of pension and gratuity did not leave us with nostalgia; instead, their protruded belly is an instant reminder of the hay they made while in office. Each of them still retain some security details and so, enjoy personal security than the rest of us. Not a few citizens are angry that the IGs succeeded only in obfuscating the issue of security and state police by their ill-motivated visit to the President. To have mystified the subject of security as if it is an exclusive knowledge is, to live in the past for, the whole gamut of security and policing could be downloaded from the internet by anyone with computer savvy. While in office and aside from their budgetary allocations, state governments and other agencies assisted the police with huge sums of money and materials, not a nickel-and-dime amount. What effect did it have on the operations of the Police? Almost every former Inspector General was sacked for one failings or the other; the last one of whose headquarters was bombed by a trailing undetected suicide bomber. So, to have formed an Orchestra whose purpose is to orchestrate why there is no use for state police is, altogether nugatory. The performance of the Nigeria Police Force, their famed inefficiency and deep-seated corruption is, to say the least – a crying shame. Those who have presided over such a decadent agency at one time or the other has lost all moral grounds to preach to us on security or policing; not with living evidence of soiled hands. The truth which is the kernel of this debate on State Police is what the former IGs are seeking to obscure. Yet, what makes the Nigeria Police corrupt and inefficient is not so much in the persons of the policemen alone but in the system, and that is the very item the former IGs are seeking to preserve. What is that truth? Every unitary police force in a multi-ethnic society is bound to be inefficient and corrupt, and it is more vulnerable to be used against political opposition, regional or religious minorities than State or Regional outfits! The Nigeria Police was used to rig the 1959, 1964, 1983, 2003 and 2007 general elections, not state police! What we have not been told by the former IGs is their individual and group interest and benefits if the status quo is retained. We could discern what they stand to lose if state police is created in terms of miscellaneous patronage and sundry tips or gifts. If the unitary Nigeria Police have gained notoriety for election rigging and political violence for over five decades, their managers are certainly bereft of any useful ideas on state police, not when they volunteered themselves to be so used! Moreover, policing is an open-and-shut case, a matter that is easy to decide or solve if stripped of the mystique with which it is wrapped. Physical policing has to do with the knowledge of the people, the environment and then the language, culture and ways of the people and area to be policed. This is not a job for strangers or benevolent do-gooders, no! It is the job of the citizens of a given territory to police and secure themselves and so, it is a local matter located in a locale. What the team of former IGs did or said on state police represents a betrayal of the truth, for on May 26, 2010 in a public speech, former IG Mike Okiro said: “The exclusive federal control of the Police leaves the political heads of the other two tier of government helpless in the fight against crimes and maintenance of law and order. The inability of these elected officials to direct police officers to perform their duties had made a mockery of designation of the officials as the chief security officers of their units of government.” Why did he unashamedly eat his words? If I were a governor under the unitary system of government with the fakery of federalism, and given the security challenges confronting my state and the helplessness and defeat of the unitary Nigeria Police, I will take the bull by the horn. The Constitution named me as the chief security officer of my state, an entity which is recognized as a tier of government with a measure of autonomy. To prove the autonomy, I have the State House of Assembly which makes or approve laws for the good governance of the state, and the Judiciary that arbitrate or adjudicate between government and citizens In addition, if I remember that I took an oath to protect the citizens of my state as their Chief Security Officer and that I remain on oath for the duration my tenure, I will establish a state police to do just that. If I am partisan, I can use the state police against political opponents for four or eight years only. Unlike the unitary Nigeria Police that can be used against opponents for ever. I will disregard self – appointed police Prefects whose legacy in office is to surrender themselves to be used by presidents or governors against helpless political opposition. Try me as a governor and see!