By Oguwike Nwachuku
One of the most crucial decisions the eighth Senate has ever taken was the ultimatum it gave to Inspector General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, on Tuesday, January 16 to arrest and investigate the perpetrators of Benue killings within 14 days.
Idris did not expect that.
That was why he seems to have deployed the usual ‘the more you look, the less you see’ police tactics of dealing with critical situations that affect the peace of the society. Like the one in Benue for which he must deliver willy-nilly in accordance with the Senate ultimatum.
On Friday, January 19, Benue State Commissioner of Police, Bashir Makama, was replaced with former Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni.
Makama, a Christian Hausa, was one of the few hardworking young police officers who in the ‘90s in Lagos laid the foundation for what we enjoy today as a secure Lagos.
While the Benue saga was raging, I sympathised with Makama, an officer I have known for more than 20 years, for his finesse and commitment to police work because I knew he was walking a tight rope with the Fulani herdsmen and Benue farmers, with Idris as both Fulani and Muslim, which Makama is neither.
Senate President, Bukola Saraki, stressed at the Senate session that what happened between herdsmen and farmers in Benue and other states signposts a breakdown of law and order.
No one agrees less, particularly after beholding the burial of the 73 souls whose lives were cut short by the marauding, wicked and blood-thirsty Fulani herdsmen last week in Benue.
Saraki said: “This killing is also a wakeup call for all of us to put all hands on deck to address this crisis.
“We want to see immediate action. One point raised here today is the issue of justice. Without justice we cannot see unity and that justice stands as one of our recommendations.
“In the next 14 days, the Inspector General of Police must find the perpetrators, arrest them, and the Attorney General of Benue State must prosecute them. That is the minimum requirement and it must happen.
“Our resolution is that some of our discussions here need to be conveyed to Mr. President. We appreciate his actions for calling us and giving us a brief on what has happened.
“Hence, we owe it to him to tell him what we have discussed and the seriousness with which we have taken the issue.
“It is a wakeup call for him and it is a wakeup call for us. It is a wakeup call for this government. We must address the issue of security. We cannot continue to allow this violence to keep going on from one state to another. Therefore, something needs to be done.”
The ultimatum to Idris reinforces Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom’s earlier plea to him to arrest the murderers, which he treated with the highest level of levity and ignominy.
Ortom had said severally he was convinced the leadership of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Owners Association was complicit in the killing of Benue indigenes. He insisted the leaders of that group had openly threatened attack if the state enforced its recent ranching law.
Idris should have started from the lead Ortom provided, even if for the sake of arrest, since they are his Fulani kinsmen. But he looked the other way, because he always gets away with looking the other way when matters involve his Fulani ethnic nationality or politics of his appointment.
The Senate’s ultimatum was not contrived. It was the outcome of a report of the Senate Ad Hoc Committee on the Review of the Current Security Infrastructure in Nigeria after it visited Benue on January 12 to ascertain the scope of the killings.
Committee Chairman, Ahmed Lawan, while presenting the report at plenary on January 16, said the recommendations included “re-examining, revamping and reinventing the nation’s security architecture and infrastructure in order to ensure that no community or entity was left unsecured and unsafe.”
Other recommendations are for the Senate to convene as a matter of utmost urgency, a national security summit in the light of the recurring violence and mayhem against rural communities before they threaten national cohesion and survival.
Lawan explained: “The Federal Government should examine the deployment of security personnel in our rural communities and borders to ensure that no one gets in or out of the country without proper documentation and regular surveillance.
“The Federal Government should ensure full compliance with the letter and spirit of the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of persons, cattle and goods with a view to ensuring that it is administered strictly to preserve the interests, safety and security of Nigeria and its people.
“The Federal Government should immediately re-examine the current deployment of security forces, particularly the police, DSS and Civil Defence Corp, etc. in order to strengthen their presence in the rural areas.
“The government should beef up and re-strategise its deployment of security intelligence capabilities with a view to obtaining actionable intelligence about impending attacks and plots in order to forestall and prevent the recurrence of rural violence and inter-ethnic conflagrations ….
“The government through the Ministry of Agriculture should as a matter of urgency convene a special National Council on Agriculture meeting to deliberate on the development and modernisation of Nigeria’s livestock and dairy industry.”
No senator had kind words about (in)security in the country.
All – from Philip Aduda (PDP, FCT) to Kabiru Gaya (APC, Kano) to Shehu Sani (APC, Kaduna) and Mao Ohuabunwa (PDP, Abia), to Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and former Senate President, David Mark – agreed that the time to act is now or the country is doomed security-wise.
Ekweremadu said: “The killings that are going on in Nigeria are assuming an alarming proportion and very disturbing. The Senate must rise to the situation by saying ‘enough is enough’.
“I don’t expect us to sit down here and not do anything. Nigerians expect us not only to say something but do something ….
“Nigerians are not only worried but the international community is also worried.”
Mark (PDP, Benue South), who described the issue as a national one added: “There are immediate solutions and long term solutions to the problem. Creation of cattle colonies, devolution of power and state police, those are long term solutions because we cannot do that first thing tomorrow.
“Presently, there is no intelligence transmission between the herders, villages and the government, or if there is, the government is not proactive, the government is not acting on intelligence.
“Nigeria is not the country with the largest cattle in the world. There are modern ways of doing things and we must grow with time. We cannot be operating an archaic system.”
Sani’s submission is a guide to Idris because it seems he views national issues and crisis from religious and ethnic perspective.
“If you are faced with a crisis and you use ethnic or religious lenses to view at it, you will see a religious, ethnic or sectional image.
“This is not the time for diplomacy and courtesy. This is the time to provide leadership for a nation that is in national emergency and national distress,” Sani advocated.
He reiterated the need to draw a clear distinction between armed herdsmen who must be confronted frontally and Fulani cattle breeders.
Something substantial may not come out of the 14-day ultimatum handed to Idris. Even before investigation was initiated, he had disclosed on January 6 that the killings were propelled by communal clashes.
I have said a lot on this platform about the capacity or not of Idris to effectively police Nigeria. Since his appointment in 2016, his actions have pointed to that of a police boss who wants to satisfy the powers that “graciously” appointed him as he acknowledged in his maiden speech.
The main responsibility of the police to citizens is the maintenance of law and order, and Idris knows it, but between him and his conscience, he knows whether his leadership has acquitted itself well over that sole obligation to the Nigerian public for which taxes are paid to sustain the institution.
Play back from the removal of the Benue Commissioner of Police as part of measures to calm frayed nerves to the developments in the last Christmas cum New Year festivities, you wonder why Idris should still retain his job.
In the past, a sweeping change that would affect the Commissioner of Police, the Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) in the zone and himself would have been announced by now.
But this is modern Nigeria where appointments are now based on where you come from and the purpose of your appointment.
One of the glaring features of the last Christmas cum New Year celebrations in the South East was the ubiquity of policemen guarding all manner of people the police believed to be “Very Important Persons (VIPs)”.
They paid no less than N10,000 per day per policeman to buy protection.
The number of policemen a “big man” gets depends on the amount he pays the police plus other commitments in form of accommodation, feeding and other expenses.
Every Dick, Tom and Harry I came across in my village and other parts of the South East who could afford a fairly used SUV had police escort.
Being followed about by policemen is the new status symbol. It is made worse by young Nigerians living in Malaysia, Indonesia, Dubai and other countries whose source of sudden wealth is not known.
They come home every Christmas and New Year and dominate the scene with an ostentatious lifestyle; riding in posh cars, lodging in top grade hotels and living in homes with masterpiece architecture.
This is the class of people the police leadership under Idris provides protection for, assigning hard trained policemen to serve for filthy lucre. What a shame!
It was an amazing sight as policemen escorted all manner of people regarded as rich under the watch of Idris.
A tragedy seeing police personnel meant to protect 180 million Nigerians parceled out to people of questionable identity who contribute immensely to the insecurity ravaging the country.
Idris, directly or indirectly, through his subordinates, gives approval to secure those who ought to be closely monitored by the police because their lifestyle oozes criminality.
We have a police leadership whose preoccupation and interest do not ally with threatening insecurity fueled by clashes between herdsmen and farmers as well as unending threat by Boko Haram and other ethnic militias across thy country.
You think Nigeria does not have enough police officers when you hear the excuses the police give when there is talk of personnel to deal with crime. But the reality is the misallocation of police human capital.
Of the 30 countries with the largest number of police officers enough to police 100,000 persons by an approximated 222 policemen, or one policeman to 450 persons, according to the United Nations’ recommendations, the Nigeria police rank the 10th.
These are the figures across the globe.
China (1,600,000), India (1,585,353), United States (913,161), Russia (756,859), Indonesia (579,000), Mexico (470,676), Brazil (436,514), Turkey (412,624), Pakistan (354,221), Nigeria (350,000), Italy (276,750), Japan (251,939), Spain (249,907), Argentina (244,683).
Germany (243,625), Thailand (230,000), France (220,000), The Philippines (170,000), Algeria (160,000), South Africa (156,489), Bangladesh (155,800), Ukraine (152,000), Colombia (150,000), Belarus (136,990), England and Wales (UK) (129,584), Peru (104,000), Malaysia (102,000), Poland (100,000), South Korea (99,060), and Kenya (95,000).
Former Police Affairs Minister, Caleb Olubolade, reportedly said: “I am aware of United Nations’ recommendation of 222 policemen per 100,000 citizens. The population of the Nigeria police is 370,000 to about 170 million Nigerians.”
Which means the 350,000 figure may have long been overshot.
If argument of Africa’s police being woefully understaffed in line with the United Nations’ recommendations of one police officer for every 450 citizens is applied to countries like Kenya (one for every 1,150), or Tanzania (one for every 1,298), or Ghana (one for every 1,200), it should hardly apply to Nigeria.
In other words, Nigeria can hardly be said to be struggling to provide enough policemen to secure itself like other African countries.
I agree with Rita Abrahamsen and Michael Williams, researchers at the University of Wales, who argued that the Nigerian society “is over-policed and under-secured.”
They noted in a report they wrote in 2005 that Nigeria’s police officers and men stationed in the so-called crime prone areas are “often unable to enforce law and order.”
In their view, Nigeria’s problem is not a lack of officers as policemen are themselves a significant source of insecurity since they are “often engaged in criminal activities – particularly corruption and extortion.”
As the Senate awaits how Idris will deal with the situation in Benue, and perhaps elsewhere, it is important senators take extra steps to ensure the implementation of all the other recommendations the Lawan committee submitted, if we are to make any headway.
Failure to do so will make a bad situation worse.
