SINCE my years as a colonial and later postcolonial person in Nigeria, I have seen three events that I have found unbearably dispiriting: failure to avoid the civil war; failure to avoid the annulment of MKO Abiola’s election victory in 1993 and the repression it spawned in the Abacha years; and failure to escape the #EndSARS protest and its effects. Since the killing of protesters on what has become known as Black Tuesday, many newspaper articles from divergent ideological perspectives have appeared in our newspapers, to make other comments almost redundant, especially articles from an incurable social democrat.
The newspaper comments of the last two weeks have addressed what protesters should have done or not done; what governments, especially Federal and Lagos State governments should have done or said and how; what the military deployed to Lagos on Black Tuesday did or failed to do and what it should say or do to bring the matter to a closure; and what the government, especially federal and state executives and lawmakers should do, going forward. As is expected in a Nigeria Factor context, the more comments get made, the more the real issues are skirted or occluded almost at the expense of making crucial connections between the cause that must have led to a scenario that currently looks like a curse or jinx.
Since many brighter persons have already commented on a broad range of topics pertaining to the recent unfortunate crisis that made President Buhari to make special pleas with citizens about the imperative of national unity and of avoidance of anything that can bring division in the federation, today’s column will draw the attention of members of the ruling and ruled communities to what historians call remote and immediate cause(s) of any important event or development in the life of a country or society.
Interestingly, President Buhari stimulated a sense of history when he recently hosted a meeting of former heads of states over the #EndSARS protest. At the meeting, all the leaders whose rule had benefited directly or indirectly from existence of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad: Ibrahim Babangida, Ernest Shonekan, Abdusalaam Abubakar, Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan, and the incumbent president had the opportunity to exchange views about what has functioned increasingly from its inception as a monstrous police project, which 28 years after its establishment, finally pushed the country to a crisis that I identified earlier as one of the three crises that I have found most dispiriting in over 70 years of living on-and-off in Nigeria.
It is not certain that the club of former presidents will have another meeting soon over a problem common to all of them—advancing a police system that has removed justice, rule of law, equity, and the spirit of equality among citizens. One thing that is clear so far is that all the former heads of state, apart from President Buhari, must have had the benefit of distance from power to look back at the appropriateness of the vision behind SARS and other aspects of the country’s police system in relation to the role of police in fostering national unity and progress in a multicultural federation. It must have been instructive to leaders searching for solutions to the crisis thrown up by SARS that shortly before the meeting of former heads of state, sitting governors of 19 out of 36 states announced matter-of-factly that SARS has been good for all the 19 northern states, even without the opportunity of a referendum among the states. It is not an exaggeration that the preference of northern governors for SARS, if true, may lay land mines for fruitful post-protest negotiations about SARS and SWAT.
Since most of the heads of state at the meeting have had some experience with ruling or governing with SARS and have been blessed to live long enough to witness the #EndSARS crisis, it is not over optimistic to expect some of them to have become more critical of a police system that seems to be as repressive of citizens as regular colonial police system designed without any respect for the humanity of people considered as subjects rather than citizens.
Although it is encouraging that the federal government, owner of the police unit that had sparked, wittingly or unwittingly through past acts of omission and commission, the recent mass protest by young citizens in many parts of the country, no level of government should forget the main reason for the protest as the government embarks on police reform—bringing an end to all forms of police brutality to and abuse of citizens in the name of law enforcement. In addition to all manners of economic and social empowerment that both federal and state governments might find necessary to reassure the youths, one project that ought not to be overlooked is how to establish a socio-petal and life-affirming police system in the country to replace the current socio-fugal and life-denying police system that was bequeathed to Nigeria by British colonial rulers and was further energized by military rulers and their civilian collaborators over the years.
Incontrovertibly, Nigerians have not had the opportunity to discuss many important aspects of their political life including the structure of policing of their choice since the suspension of Nigeria’s Independence federal constitution in 1966. Clearly, the Nigeria Police Force inherited from the colonial era special police units that had grown out of the original structure of the NPF that has now proved to be unsuitable for free citizens. The new challenge is for the country to embark on sincere de-militarization of the police system preferred by former military dictators and that been energetically theorized over the years to have the potential to be more corrupt and and more abusive than one form of centralized police system. With SARS, the country now knows that the national centralized police structure is not any less oppressive and corrupt than the subnational police, proscribed by military rulers, if testimonies given by protesters is a guide.
Not having a constitution negotiated and approved by the people in 1999 has worsened the situation of policing in the country. It has enabled the federal government to make nonsense of the sharing of power between federal and subnational government, as it has sustainably put state governors beneath the Inspector-General of Police in terms of who has ultimate responsibility to exercise the power to protect life and limb in federating states. Such situation does not even exist in the United Kingdom. Since the 1704 Act of Union that brought the United Kingdom into being, Scotland has remained autonomous in many domains: legal, education, police, and faith systems.
While preparing for a new normal, police reform should not be limited to killing SARS and giving birth to SWAT. It is time to move to a more humane level of policing; one that requires national and subnational policing, with federating units handling law enforcement and the federal police being in charge of intelligence but with guarantee for cooperation between the two levels. This is what exists in most democracies and even in countries, such as the United Kingdom, that is referenced as unitary.
This column had called several times for de-militarization of the polity through creation of a constitution duly negotiated by citizens after the end of military rule in 1999. If governors and federal legislators since 1999 have not complained about erosion of power of federating units, the recent protest has shown that citizens are unhappy with the disempowerment of states by the 1999 Constitution, which has backed establishment of SARS. It is not likely that in a democracy that gives room for participatory democracy, such as referendum fosters, citizens in many of the states would have tolerated SARS and other police formations bequeathed by military dictators.
As the recent expression of dissatisfaction over philosophy and design of law enforcement in the country has implied, as unfortunate as this might have been to many citizens across the country, Nigeria needs a constitution that derives its legitimacy from citizens’ input; otherwise, our governments at all levels may be putting the country at the risk of periodic outbursts of repressed frustration, such as the country experienced on Black Tuesday. It is too late in the history of modern democratic governance for Nigerians to be saddled with a constitution that many citizens see more as a jinx deployed by former military dictators.
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