It is a shame that the Nigeria Police Force still has problems with re-orienting itself to fully accommodate the exigencies of a democracy. The police force defines its public role in very narrow terms, namely, defending and protecting those in government; or for that matter, business moguls with dirty hands. We should worry about this.
The Nigeria Police Force, it bears pointing out, is a civil state organisation, not a military force. The word ‘force’ in its name as established by section 214 of our much panel-beaten 1999 constitution, is a misnomer. The executive council of the federation under Obasanjo once simply decided to rename it the Nigeria Police. Its decision was scuttled by the constitutional wall against such arbitrary and ignorant decisions.
Ironically, the constitution assigns no specific roles to the police; instead, it allows the executive and the legislature to determine its role or roles. This has not been remedied by the many constitutional amendments since 1999. The implication of this is that our police men and women take undue advantage of this constitutional lacuna to assign themselves duties that impinge on the basic human rights and freedoms we believe that they are there to protect. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that quite often, they see the people as the enemies of the state and feel duty bound to protect the state, for which read, those in power, against the people. This is why it is easy for intolerant rulers to turn the police force into a veritable instrument of oppression and suppression.
And this, in case you did not know, is the reason most people are afraid of, and vehemently opposed to, state police. It would be naive to ignore its possible arrant misuse by state governors to oppress and suppress their political opponents. The native authority police were so used by politicians in the first republic. Ask Sule Lamido, former governor of Jigawa State. Fact is, even with a single federal police force, misuse goes on at all levels of government. This is one of the dilemmas of the Nigerian state.
Here is one disturbing evidence that our police force is still enamoured of the 19th century policing tactics in the 21st century. On January 23, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, the fearless former minister of education dedicated to never let the Nigerian state forget or be derelict in its duty to the people, was arrested by the Abuja police command along with the members of her peaceful protest group, #BringBackOurGirls. She is a co-convener of the pressure group to make the Nigerian state lose sleep over the uncertain fate of the 262 young girls abducted from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, in April 2014. The group had planned what it tagged #BringBackOurGirlMarch To the Villa but were prevented from doing so by the Abuja police command. Ezekwesili and the others were detained at the police command. The Daily Trust of January 24 published the photograph of Ezekwesili fenced in by police men and women holding hands. Were it not serious, it would be comic. They were later released.
I have some problems with the action of the police command. They might assume they did what they did to please President Muhammadu Buhari. But the president knows only too well that the proposed march was not in any way a threat to him as a person or his administration. Most members of the group are mothers who feel empathy with their grieving fellow mothers who lost their daughters to Boko Haram 1,378 days ago as of this writing. They are doing what all concerned civil society groups everywhere in the world do in such circumstances.
The group has never been violent in its protests since it was formed in 2014. But that has never prevented the Abuja police command from attacking them. Why would the police make them look like enemies of the state? The good thing is that the unfriendly attitude of the police has never deterred Ezekwesili and her group.
Last week the captors once again brought their crime against the girls and their families to the comfort of our homes. They released a group photograph of the girls still in their captivity, with a caption claiming the girls do not want to return, as if captives have any options but to do the bidding of their captors. The photograph indicts the Nigerian state. The Abuja police command seems blissfully unaware of this simple fact.
I need to remind us that the dividing line between a police state and a democracy is by no means thin. If you let the police determine how people can exercise their basic human freedoms, you risk making the police force the oga patapata at the top. The police, certainly, did not act on the instruction of the president or any of his aides. They acted to please only to displease. How awfully sad. The sight of the president receiving these grieving women in Aso Villa would show the difference between Buhari who cares and Jonathan who did not care about how the state should respond to the unacceptable treatment of its citizens. The Buhari administration has never been accused of repression because it has never repressed individuals or professional or civil society groups. If anything, it has done its best to protect and defend those freedoms that come naturally with democracy. I ask the police not to mess up this fine record at this time in the life of the administration.
Overzealousness has a long history among our police men and women. In their zeal to please, they make those whose interests they claim to protect look bad in the eyes of the local and the international communities. Police repression is an ugly face of dictatorship and and insult on democracy. Section 40 of our constitution guarantees us the right and the freedom to “…. assemble freely and associate with other persons, ….” It is a precious freedom in all democracies, real or pretended. I know that as a professional group, the exercise of this freedom within the parameters of another equally great freedom, the freedom of expression, is offensive to some elements in the police force. If a regime earns a bad name as a hater of these freedoms, you can be sure that the zeal of the police is at the root of it.
The police force touts itself as our brother. My brotherly advice to our police men and women is to resist the temptation to tread on the rights and the freedoms of fellow citizens.
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