The Nigerian Police, Abba kyari and Streaked Reforms -By Jimi Bickersteth

As the police and Kyari’s reputations has been caught in a cleft stick, so to speak, the question now is, how far?! So long for pleasant dreams of a once ebullient, lofty and dizzy police career, but now its horrors. Even, if he gets absolved of the wide and wild allegations and gets substantively indicted by the police force, he’ll by then have had his media created ‘supercop’ status and accolades strained and stained, as his character would have become badly flawed.

For here and now, the dismal and depressing nature of the information so far released and his own dull, dumb and dunce reactions and statement of defence as a police officer on Facebook was hollow and inadmissible and even by laymen standards in the social media trial he instigated. It is relevant to state here that the FBI, a professional outfit, is not a compromised Nigerian Police force, and would not readily indict if the evidence was not concrete and cast iron enough to make a stand.

In his allusions to the FBI indictment on his Facebook page, kyari, like, the hungry puppy awaiting his alpo got his stomach ached not from hunger, but from fear and insecurity. After the many frolicking in companies of characters with a not too impeccable taste and integrity; and this was quite unbecoming of a crime fighter, (I’m reminded here that that was a brand of his own social media creation), a very senior one at that, (who was always fighting for space and glory with his surbordinates). The man who was noted for arrests, but hardly gets any convictions of the arrested in the courts. Now, you begin to wonder what transpires in his gulag with the arrested suspects.

Arriving this midnight from far away kwatakashi in Gusau, Northwest Nigeria where the news of Mr.Kyari’s alleged indictment by the FBI had spread like wildfire in the dry season, and has opened up a pandora box for the nation and the Police itself, a box that should be opened and examined. Looking at the sky for inspiration and answer like an ifá neophyte, all I saw was the Abuja skyline that glowed and flickered under a half-moon: Wow, it’s beautiful!

I wondered if Mr. Abba now knows that the “abíyá ò lègaèjìka!” as the Yorubas would say. Ah! This wisecracks and truisms. The armpits can never be taller than the shoulder. He had this air of reckless arrogance as he paraded the nation’s landscape with reckless abandon either in his official capacity and or when caught frolicking at social events usually in the company of characters that he should be asking questions bordering on their characters and propriety.

The ice got thinner as the man with the cap and the name AbbaKyari inscribed in gold embroidery design skates into the vast murky world of speculation, short on facts, but the FBI seemed to have done its homework properly. His friends left with no strategy to plot some serious damage control should by now be horrified at a man whom exuberance has killed his dreams and visions and a potential IG. All of his present predicament did not change the nation that have watched him bewildered in times past.

The clouds would soon broke as the half-moon lightened. This is not the time for a long discussion about his options, but on what the nation should be doing to sharpened and fortified its Police force and its weary personnel. Let’s stop this fusiness of a chef selecting tomatoes at the market with the state of insecurity and crimes everywhere and shattering the stillness of the nation’s peace and security. Everyone was sick of ‘punks’ trying to kidnap, Rob, kill and pillage and sick of crime and living in fear of felonious elements.

Still thinking of a way out and for measures that would change the present narrative of insecurity, crimes and police force’s collisions and coalescing and aiding and abetting criminals, I contemplated how close to death everyone was, Mafia like the Boko assaults, proleferation of arms and munitions, shocks, heart attacks and moral decadence in the society, and, I thought that this Kyari’s escapade is enough impetus for the Police force to polish its excessively dented image, improve its efficiency, restore morale and secure wider public confidence, even, as it allay public fears and anxieties over their safety, and particularly, also from the hands of its rank and file that has been portrayed as colluding, abetting and conspiring with moneybags and kingpins of the underworld.

The public expectations and criticism of the role of the police, logically extends to the policymakers within and outside the Nigeria Police Force. They had in the nation’s democratic experiences been politicised by a government that had over time glossed over its ineffectiveness and inefficiency and concentrated on issues concerning the proper and real integration of the police force’s externally and in its internal mechanisms.

The inadequacies has been exposed in the Abba Kyari’s and the new man in his place’s CV’s. The new man with a Master’s degree appeared to have been in the force 8 years before kyari joined the police, yet, for some reasons, other than logic, commonsense and objectivity was Disu’s senior in rank, don’t the police operate with a nominal roll, you are wont to ask! It’s a time to consider this huge, and other issues concerning the police force’s in its apparent neglect and consequential dereliction and lackadaisical approach to people and duties; and measures to be put in place to be able to enhance its performance, character and efficiency.

As we speak, in some parts of the federation the police were being hounded out of their stations, as the stations were being overran and burnt, and the captured ‘police’ beheaded. It appears that the police have lost the people’s confidence, and have become a collosal national failure; most of the people that have suffered in their hands were trying to get back at them, such that the institution and its personnel are being gradually rendered incapacitated to perform their sacred, statutory duties. Sad that it was happening at the time of zero-tolerance for corruption.

It has become glaring that matters concerning the police urgently deserves concerted efforts, consumate skills and tact in efforts that is geared to align the police force’s market properly with the nation’s government and the society they serve. Any conflict between the government – like fingering of its personnel in international crime syndicate and society, have some impact, directly and or indirectly, on the police system. That is the mask cut.

Negatively, the police with a big p become convenient criminal scapegoats for the Police Force’s acts of omissions and or comission. Also, the factors of leadership, time and circumstances which determined the delicate relationship between government and society do affect public perceptions of, and reactions to, such key institution of state as the police. In pursuance of its long established role of buttress of government, therefore, the Nigerian Police Force today partook of odium the public associates with unpopular governments.

It would be recalled that the Police/SARS under Kyari’s (that deployed 5 of his ‘aides’ to arrest my wife for a minor disagreement in our daughter’s workplace; yes, my girl was detained and tortured, not minding that she was in state) watch became arguably, Nigeria’s most visible and most discussed felony since the 1970s, in fact, has been part of the ecology of crime whose cause still defied definitive analysis, fed from a variety of streams — economic, political, social, individual and others. I’ll stress that like armed robbery, 419, Yahoo Yahoo and corruption, the police force’s has done well in international duties and has also given the country a bad name in the committee of nations.

It has continued to so do and like cancer, police in Nigeria has proved insensitive to measures of control, if any. Significantly, the police added a further dimension to the state of terror in the land, which has become like a soap, an endless drama of hate and intrigues, such episodes of frequent occurrence, aggravated public anxieties and fears over their safety and security. This has been validated by the clips of transmitted mutual messages from a felon and criminal accomplice to a ‘feeding bottle’ senior police officer and a ‘celebrated’ crime fighter.

The rising public anxiety over the operational role of the police, especially in combating the wilful notoriety of its rank and file, newer waves of crime in order to generate better understanding and cooperation of members of the public who have come to view them as ‘cash and carry’ operatives. It should find a way to accommodate the age-old controversies concerning the need for local police even as it sought to improve its services to the nation.

Today, the police force’s have become the nation’s security problems. They are collosal, so serious, so complex. The people are so disenchanted and are patently fed up with the present system of policing. There is no security of life and property. The present policing system has failed itself and has indeed failed the nation, its people and society at large.

The police components in development in general, that peace and security and stability are essential to development is one argument many can endorse, that the police constitute a major shield in the fight against crime and delliquency is another argument several would really accept. That in carrying out the onerous role the police has become a fearsome, fearful menace is another argument majority would subscribe to and which has led to the last October 2020 12-day #ENDSARS trauma across the federation, resulting into arson, mayhems and deaths in several places while it lasted.

The government and its predecessors satisfied with power and the loyalty of a weak, demotivated, dispirited police force, concentrate on how to acquire or retain power, the key to considerable national resources, and not on issues, concerning a comprehensive strengthening of the police force as part of national development the way it services the military. Where they did, they half-heartedly concentrated on operational needs without taking into consideration the cumulative effect of earlier policy decisions on the control of the police. Less defensive, on similar grounds was the Nigerian Police Force’s other lack of enduring success in combating the menace it was to the general public, particularly, the good people of Nigeria need not detain one here.

But, presently, the faint light just after the early morning sun has gone down as the police that was surviving in a twilight world of truth, lies and untruth as its path let in a faint way in its twilit gloom at the nation on a threshold of a new era at the 21st year of the new millennium but must also as a necessity pass a quality threshhold. All of the police force’s inadequacies coming at a time policing, security and crimes were assuming a more complex posture and dimensions in the political, economic and social development in the country was like the police system is waging a war with society, and it was indeed making no sense.Crime and criminals were becoming more daring and sophisticated in the society that is equally becoming very dynamic. Thus, crime and security problems require commensurate police efforts to match the dictates of the time. The government carry the vicarious liability as it contributed in no small measures to the nation’s descent, since it could not provide adequate funding to acquire modern equipment. Could the police in its present form and state confronted the banditry in the north, for instance, with the hopelessly dilapidated assemblage of ammunition and weapons in its possession.

The media have often given sufficient vent to the various criticisms of vocal observers who found one reason or another to condemn the police. Although, in assessing the basis of such criticisms, there is the need to draw an essential line of demarcation between issues of government and public policy and those of eventual operational use. It is also necessary to distinguish between the strategic and tactical aspects of the issues of policing. How often, and in what direction,  for example, did policymakers, given ample opportunities, embarked upon a substantial review of policies concerning the police to meet the dynamic and challenging and changing needs of the new era, larger population (about 200 million the last time I checked), wider areas of coverage, modern crimes and methodology and criminology, logistics and above all building, nurturing and transforming the character traits of personnel.

In an era of blistering and far-reaching moral dilemmas, socio-economic and political change, issues concerning the police force’s integration, identity and development often, constituted, to wit, serious challenges to this important agent of social defence. How able was it able to control or to withstand the unpredictable strains and stresses of the system. Issues of integration, identity and development affected the nation’s police in certain ways. Policymakers, have to consider the essential lines between internal security and orderly development in its widest possible sense.

The nation in its search for a way out of the whole lot of threat and logjam its police has become should not insult itself asking those that took part in the present charade the force have become to advance solutions for problems that they have helped create. That would be somewhat inappropriate and the circus show would continue. The police have ignited widespread flagrant human rights abuses. The impunity of SARS under Kyari’s watch was a challenge to the nation watching innocently unconcerned.

It was like living daylight in the jungle. I adlibbed the rest.
As the sun was beginning to make its second efforts of the day. A dark and treacherous future, hopefully, it could not be as horrible as the present. Something has to give with a little faith though.

#JimiBickersteth

Jimi Bickersteth is a Communication analyst, writer and a super blogger. He can be reached on Twitter@alabaemanuel@bickerstethjimiEmails: jimi.bickersteth@gmail.comjimi.bickersteth@yahoo.co.uk