Yar’Adua and the Nigerian Police Reform
Normally, there is nothing wrong with the Nigerian president, Umaru
Yar’Adua, seeking British help in reforming the Nigeria police. After
all, the annals of history abound with instances of one country lending
a helping hand to another. British engineers played a vital role in
early German railroad construction and industrialization. Following the
Communist takeover of China in 1949, the Soviet Union sent tens of
thousands of engineers and other experts to help the new Chinese
communist government with nation building. While the British assistance
to Germany and the Soviet aid to China may have succeeded, the British
help in transforming the Nigerian police will fail. Neither the British,
nor any foreign influence can significantly improve the Nigerian police.
The problems of the Nigerian police are symptoms of deep rooted societal
maladies. The rot in the Nigerian police is only a reflection of the
moral and ethical decadence of the Nigerian society. It is only a
manifestation of our national culture of corruption and lawlessness.
Corruption has eaten so deep into the national psyche. It has corroded
our national will, distorted our collective sense of fairness, and
perverted our value system. It undermines equity and merit, entrenches
inefficiency and mediocrity, etc. With corruption so embedded in the
Nigerian society, no public institution can function effectively. So,
until official corruption, and its corollary, lawlessness, are seriously
dealt with, no external help can change the Nigeria Police Force.
Just as children subconsciously behave like their parents, the people
unwittingly behave like their leaders. It is the greed, fraud and
lawlessness of the power elite that pervaded and perverted every segment
of the Nigerian society. After all, the Nigerian police have performed
well in foreign assignments, in countries with a different national
orientation. That is, in countries where the elite have not glamorized
theft and bribery, gloried in violence and murderous intolerance,
extolled extravagance and the flaunting of illegally acquired wealth,
and shown contempt for the law and the legitimate aspirations of the
people; and consequently, the national culture is not that of arrogance,
selfishness, greed and cupidity.
The Nigerian ruling elite have a penchant for stealing government money
and pompously displaying their opulent mansions, private jets, fleet of
luxury cars and other trappings of their unlawfully obtained wealth. The
last two former Inspector Generals of Police, Tafa Balogun and Sunday
Ehindero are both culpable of the theft of public funds. Rumors that
trail our legislators are replete with acceptance of bribe and other
forms of financial impropriety. Governors and other public officials
embezzle public funds to maintain a breathtakingly luxurious lifestyle.
What then is wrong with policemen accepting bribe, conniving with
thieves, or actually stealing, whereas the ruling elite are guilty of
similar offences? So, to attempt to reform the police force without
first addressing the evils of the power elite is an exercise in
futility.
Umaru Yar’Adua has given the impression that he has good intensions, and
Nigerians are impressed by his apparent genuineness. But it will take
more than good intent and making a favorable impression on Nigerians to
address the moral decay in the Nigerian police and the Nigerian society
in general. It will require a relentless assault on the vices of the
political class. And this will demand courage, essentially, reckless
courage, political will and moral authority and above all political
legitimacy.
Yar’Adua lacks political legitimacy. He came to power following the most
blatant electoral fraud in the history of Nigeria. His presidency is
the product of egregious cases of official corruption, arrogance of
power, derision of the law, and disdain for the collective will of the
people. Only a free and fair election will legitimize his presidency.
For the good of the country, he should reject the April 2007
presidential election that brought him to power, and hold a new free and
fair election. If he looses, then the people have spoken and their
expressed will must then be respected. If he wins, he will have an
unalloyed mandate of the people.
This unalloyed mandate will extricate him from the grip of his People’s
Democratic Party (PDP) political godfathers and the corrupt ex-governors
that sponsored the fraud that propelled him to power. It will give him
the moral authority and political legitimacy to address the ethical and
moral questions of the ruling class, and then by extension, the Nigerian
society. It will provide him with the moral and political wherewithal to
uphold his promise that his is a new kind of leadership, marked by
respect for the rule of law and zero tolerance for corruption. If the
country is prodded by exemplary leadership towards reverence for the law
and total abhorrence for corruption, then, the problems of our police
force, which are only a reflection of the social order, will, without
any foreign intervention, be resolved over time.
Without this unadulterated mandate, power, because it was determined by
prior collusion in political crimes and resting on earlier infamous
agreements, will remain very personalized among the elite. And national
policy will continue to be driven by elite relationships rather than by
public needs. And even if in all honesty, he desires to restructure the
police and transform the society, these will invariably be subordinated
to the unending need to service the expensive elite relationship that
brought him to power and that will be needed to keep him there.
He will most likely emerge victorious from the Election Tribunal, not
because the April 2007 presidential election was free and fair, but
because he would have successfully defended the indefensible. He will
then remain in office because the misrepresentation of facts,
exploitation of legal technicalities, quibbling and sophistry by lawyers
swayed the case in his favor. Still, not even this victory can validate
his presidency. Armed robbers and other sociopaths, even when guilty,
plead not guilty in court, and leave the burden of proof of their guilt
to the State. Employing these tactics of evasiveness and falsification
is not the essence of a moral crusader, a reformer, that quintessential
leader (that Yar’Adua is professing to be) that will move the country
forward by fostering a new national ethos established on the adherence
to the law and complete intolerance for corruption.
To repudiate the election that brought him to power and hold new
elections may seem like a lot to ask for a president already ensconced
at Aso Rock, and wielding all the powers of the president. But in the
interest of Nigeria, that level of selflessness and sacrifice is needed.
The problems of Nigerian leaders have always been selfishness and
insensitivity. If he is any different from those who came to power
purposely to loot the national treasury, enrich themselves, friends and
relatives, and strut to the accolades of the office, he must then be
ready to make this sacrifice. What is leadership without sacrifice,
monumental sacrifice? Leadership of any sort - be it in the form of
idealistic pacifism of non-violent movements or the murderous lunacy of
communist revolutions - must involve sacrifice. Actually, there can be
no leadership, except for dangerous and retrogressive leadership,
without selflessness and sacrifice.
Within his present political confines, that is, encumbered by his
political illegitimacy and earlier disreputable understandings with his
corrupt sponsors, Yar’Adua‘s campaign against corruption and lawlessness
will most likely fail, or at the very best, score a marginal success.
And, as the Nigerian society will still remain entrenched in graft,
dishonesty and fraud, and muddled up in disorder, there will not be an
enabling environment for the reformation of the police. Therefore, the
British police reformers will come and go and the Nigerian Police Force
will remain the same.
By Tochukwu Ezukanma
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.