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Yar’Adua and the Nigerian Police Reform By
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, 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.
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
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