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| Policing Nigeria in a Democracy: review by Reuben ABATI |
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| Monday, 13 July 2009 17:19 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Sir Mike Mbama Okiro, the author of this book has served as Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police since 2007. Ahead of his retirement from the Police, he presents in Policing Nigeria in a Democracy, his reflections on the work of the police in Nigeria; his objective as stated in the opening pages is self-explanatory: “By the time I was appointed as the Inspector-General of Police in 2007 by President Umaru Musa Yar’Ádua GCFR, it dawned on me that I may never have any excuse not to document my experience on the job in a book that those behind me can always make reference to and draw inspiration from. That was how this book, Policing Nigeria in a Democracy, came to the front burner in my order of priorities.” Given its theme and the circumstances of its author, there is no doubt that this book will immediately attract the interest of scholars, sociologists, historians, security experts, serving and retired policemen, and general readers. It is Okiro’s fourth book, his earlier publications include Peace and the Nation, The Legal Implications of the Mismanagement of Public Funds in Nigeria and Surviving the Cities which was written during his tour of duty as Commissioner of Police in Lagos state. Public discourse is enormously enriched by this kind of example: having public officials in charge of important assignments reflect intellectually on their service and profession can only further deepen public discourse and expand the scope for public criticism and self-analysis. Mr Okiro has been privileged to preside over many of the critical moments relating to security and the protection of lives and property in the context of justice and human rights in the last two years, he has been a police officer occupying significant positions for much longer; it is most fitting that he has chosen to write a book on his experience. However, readers who may be expecting a no-holds-barred, tell it all, autobiographical documentation of Mr Okiro’s “experience on the job”, as he seems to promise may be disappointed. The author actually says very little about his experience, or himself, but a lot about the Nigeria Police as an institution: its history, evolution, enabling laws, and the challenges of policing modern Nigeria. The book contains a total of 12 chapters, and runs into 331 pages. The print is bold and reader-friendly, there are no photographs, no illustrations, but the overall print quality does little justice to the content and value of the publication. There are four distinguishing aspects of this book. The first is the intellectual and academic temper of the discourse. In practically every chapter, the author demonstrates a familiarity with both academic and journalistic publications on the history and place of the police in Nigeria and in the first five chapters, he provides much information and analysis, while responding to already published material, which is duly acknowledged in the endnotes attached to each chapter. Sociologists, historians, psychologists and police men and women will find this section of the book most useful for the information that it provides. Mr Okiro examines for example, the pre-colonial history of policing in Nigeria, drawing attention to traditional modes of law enforcement, the emergence of a modern police force and its colonial heritage, the history of the police since independence, focusing on major security challenges and the structure/organisation of the police. He further discusses the character and duties of the police, definitions of crime and its causes, crime in Nigeria and other countries, with commentaries on organised crime/advance fee fraud, money laundering, prostitution, and child slavery. Okiro makes a good case for the importance of the police in ensuring a regime of law and order and as a means of restraining lawless social conduct, to prevent a descent into a Hobessian state of anomie. The second feature of the book, is how the author further focuses on some of the key issues that have defined police-public relations in Nigeria since independence. He offers responses that are organically controversial, for the police is probably one of the most discussed institutions in Nigerian public life. It is worth noting the distinction that Okiro repeatedly draws between policing under military rule, and policing under democratic rule, and the specific challenges that police men and women face in discharging their responsibilities. He makes the obvious point that under military rule, the police was expected to obey orders and to disregard basic rules, and that this soon set the Nigerian police on a collision course with the public. While admitting that democratic rule provides opportunities for expression and for respecting human rights, he however laments in turns, how the special limitations that the police has to contend with (including court injunctions and constitutional provisions) could limit efficiency. He outlines these restraining factors on pp- 249 – 252. In responding to criticisms of the Nigerian Police, Okiro is even-handed. But on the whole, he submits that: “The police need to play their roles in accordance with the rule of law, the provisions of the Constitution and within the scope of the nation’s laws of procedure, such as the Crimimal Procedure Act (CPA), Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) and other regulatory laws. They need to realise that unlike during the colonial and military era, when they acted arbitrarily in the exercise of their powers, there are checks under democratic rule to evaluate their performance and activities. The personnel of the Force should realise that any action of theirs that violates the laws and rules moderating their functions would be counted against them and they would be made to face the wrath of the law. The role of the Nigeria Police Force in a democracy will only be effectively realised when the Police become more responsive professionally, provide quality service to the society as well as maintain a high sense of integrity and probity.” Many Nigerians who have had a taste of police brutality and inefficiency would wish that the following paragraph is taught in the Police College and drummed into the head of every policeman! Beyond this however, the book identifies threats to national security in Nigeria, particularly under the democratic dispensation and the efforts that have been made in more recent times to address these threats which are outlined and discussed in Chapter Six. Chapter Seven is instructively titled “Rise of Lawless Vigilantism”. Here, the author comments on the rise of vigilante outfits in Nigeria and the role that they played in the early years of the Fourth Republic. He argues that instead of complementing the work of the police, these vigilante groups, whose roots can be traced to the communal lifestyle of traditional societies, the high incidence of unemployment and distrust of the police, ended up “constituting laws unto themselves”. Okiro considers the OPC and the Bakassi Boys as the most notorious, and although he makes passing reference to similar groups across the country, it is only these two that he sets up for special review. But he certainly cannot be right with his insistence that other militant groups such as the APC, Yandaba, Almajiri, and Sharia implementation committees in the North, and the Egbesu Boys and Mienbutsu in the South South are less of a threat. The Federal Government banned the OPC in 1999, and the Bakassi Boys in 2002, but perhaps the more correct admission to be made is how the emergence of these militant groups was an expression of ethnic nationalist identity, loss of faith in the Nigerian system, and by extension the police, and ultimately, an act of social and political revolt. The author invites more debate when he takes on the subject of state police in Chapter 8 and Nigeria Police and Recent General Elections in Chapter 9. His bias with regard to state police is undisguised, but his arguments are not likely to persuade the proponents of the idea. His enthusiastic review of police performance in Nigeria’s recent general elections in 2003 and 2007 and his talk about “the first ever smooth civilian-to-civilian election in post-independent Nigeria” (p.232) is bound to be pooh-poohed. Is the Inspector-General of Police asking Nigerians to disbelieve the evidence of their eyes? How about reports of police complicity in election rigging and those sordid pictures of police brutality, or of policemen helping to snatch ballot boxes, or their use by authority figures and political kingpins to intimidate the electorate and the opposition? And yet, the IGP says: “Ëlection materials are rarely handed over to the Police. All the Police do is to safely escort the materials to the desired stations. So the chances of the police meddling with the electoral process seems remote.” (p. 230). Rarely? Safely? I ask: Really? Now to the third aspect of the book which is less controversial. Without saying so expressly, Mr Okiro also uses this book to pay tribute to his colleagues and also his predecessors in the office of the Inspector-General of Police. The book is dedicated to Asiwaju Sunday Adewusi, Inspector-General of Police (1981 -1983) of whom Okiro writes: “ä democratic Inspector-General of Police, who raised the need for police welfare to enviable heights and to all police officers, particularly those caught in the crossroads of policing under military and democratic rule.” In Chapter 11, titled “Internal Challenges”, the author reviews the contributions of former Inspectors- General Etim Okon Inyang, Mr Tafa Balogun and Mr Sunday Ehindero. The tone of discussion is slightly more animated in Chapters 10, 11 and 12, for it is in these parts that the author directly addresses his subject in greater detail. And it is only in Chapter 12 that he talks about his tenure as IGP at any substantial length under the title: “My dream for the Nigeria Police force. This part of the book deserves to be read with close attention, and if the chapters were to be re-arranged, these chapters ought to appear much earlier in the middle section of the book. Okiro attempts a review of the nine-point programme of action which he introduced upon his assumption of office as IGP with the objective to turn things around through strengthening, re-organizing, restructuring as well as re-equipping the Nigeria Police Force” (p. 284). In real terms the nine points cover the following: (i) Transparency and accountability; (ii) War on Corruption, (iii) Crime Prevention; (iv) Intelligence and Crime database; (v) Training; (vi) Police public image; (vii) Human Rights (viii) Community Policing and (ix) Inter-agency cooperation. As modestly as he could posibly attempt, Mr Okiro then outlines some of his achievements, and the constraints he has had to contend with given the limited resources at his disposal. At every turn in this book, the author demonstrates a keen awareness of the poor image of the Nigerian Police among Nigerians and he generously airs the views of the critics, but in his analysis, he seeks better understanding of the conditions of police service in Nigeria, and the contributions that the Force has made to the building of Nigeria. The argument about police performance is an open-ended one, it is better considered along with the larger Nigerian question and the failure of the Nigerian state, and the police whatever the Inspector-General says, is a veritable symbol of the hydra-headed crisis in all spheres of Nigerian life, particularly the institutions of state. It is not an argument that can be resolved intellectually, for it is of a far more practical import. As for Okiro’s nine-point programme of action, it seems obvious enough that the kind of far-reaching transformation of the Nigeria Police Force that he seeks can hardly be achieved in isolation of the general political and Constitutional re-orientation that Nigeria is urgently in need of. This much is clear in an evaluation of the four main recommendations with which Mr Okiro brings his book to a close. One, he wants the police to be funded the way the police is being funded in Canada. By this, he suggests that state governments shoudl fund and equip the Police in their areas of jurisdiction in order to make them more efficient. He admits that many states are already doing this and he is right, Lagos state for example funds the Police Command and the Rapid Response Squad in the state through partnership with the private sector under the auspices of a Lagos State Security Trust Fund. But then the Inspector General of Police adds: “However there is the need for a legal framework to compel states to fund and kit the police to lessen the burden on the Federal Government” (p. 304). Stating this matter of factly is not enough. Will the states also share the power of control over the police. Will the IGP go further to recommend a Constitutional review of Sections 214 -216 of the 1999 Constitution? Why should states fund and equip the police and yet the IGP argued much earlier that the idea of state police could be abused? And if the Federal Government shares the burden of funding the police with the states, will Mr Okiro also support the obvious implication that the Federal Government must take a cut in its share of the Federation Account? His second recommendation is that any estate with about 50 houses should be made to make provision for a police post and a mini police barrack, and that this should be a pre-condition for granting aproval for the building of estates. What then should government do if the people must provide their own social infrastructure and further add security to the enormous burden that they already bear? Three, he wants a national crime prevention and control policy. It is a disturbing revelation that Nigeria does not have such a policy! Finally, Mr Okiro urges the implementation of the recommendations of the M. D. Yusuf Committee on Police Reforms in both the short and the long run. Mr Okiro ends his submissions with a declaration that the “Nigeria Police Force under my leadership performed comparatively well considering the giant strides it made in the areas of administration, recruitment, training, housing and general logistics, among others” (p. 308). There will be forum and occasion for a more detailed assessment of this claim. But what is well established is Mr Okiro’s passion for his assignment, his understanding of the details of police work, hsi intellectualism, and the confidence with which he has articulated his views knowing fully well that in so doing, he lays himself open to criticisms and controversies. Policing Nigeria in a Democracy is a very useful book both for the information that it provides and the intellectual stimulation that it inspires. Researchers and students will find it useful as a reference guide and as an introduction to an Inspector-General’s reflections on the place of the police in a democracy. And if this is meant to be Mr. Okiro’s parting shot before his retirement, he has thrown more than enough challenge and food for thought in the direction of critics, governments and his colleagues, both officers and the rank and file in the Police, as well as the Nigerian people as he conveys the view that policing Nigeria in a democracy, in order to ensure progress and standards, is a collective responsibility in every regard. Mr Okiro refers to his “experience on his job”. He owes his readers for making that promise, a memoir in which he can offer more personal accounts of his career as a policeman, and the story of his life, to serve as a source of inspiration for younger policemen and other professionals. In the meantime, we should read his Policing Nigeria in a Democracy.
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