The Nigerian Police’s penchant for disbanding working unit

Juliana Francis

Mohammed Adamu

We’re back to where we were some years ago and my stance has not changed.

When people called for the scrapping of SARS, I was against it and today I’m against the disbanding of IRT satellite offices across the country.

Different IGP’s have this mad penchant for dismantling working tools, while they bring nothing to the table. I don’t know who they are trying to impress.

After Tafa Balogun, Mohammed Abubakar and Solomon Arase, I’ve not seen any IGP putting much effort into the police and welfare issues of personnel.

We keep making the same decisions and mistakes, yet we fail to tackle the real issues. Police continue to cut the branches of the tree, instead of uprooting it.

Like my late friend DIG John Haruna used to say, corruption in the Police is a systemic problem, not a unit problem. The police is a microcosm of the Nigerian society.

Different IGPs repeatedly failed to consolidate on their predecessors’ creations and achievements, reason we keep retrogressing and circling same potholes for years. One step forward, 10 steps backward.

We’ve been on this beat for years and we shouldn’t pretend to be an ostrich. We know the issues. What we need is change, not power play, political intrigues, petty jealousies or tantrums.

It’s sheer foolishness to sacrifice your joker during a card game. And for those that are not clear about the situation, IRT has not been disbanded, only its satellite offices. It means they will be working from Abuja, using the same personnel. Please take note of, “same personnel.”

Solomon Arase created IRT and only someone who doesn’t know the inner workings of the police, will say they had not achieved great and unimaginable feats. IRT redefined investigations out of nothing.

Many of the operatives died in the process. They target high profile cases and it’s no mean feat to crack such cases. Oh, how Nigerians easily forget.

Nobody ever talks about the dead policemen or those maimed in the line of duty.

Why? How come no NGO has been formed to look into the cause of policemen and fight for them? Why are wounded policemen abandoned and the families of the dead left to their fates?

These are part of the issues that continue to give rise to corruption in the police, with these guys mouthing, “Everyman to himself and God for us all.”

Ibrahim Idris came on board and created STS. For what? Beats me! The Unit was practically doing the same work as IRT. Every time IRT makes a commendable arrest, STS will ride on its back. You’ll hear, “the operation was carried out by intelligence and tactical support from STS.” Nonsense!

I don’t even know what Idris was thinking when he created STS or what he had hoped to achieve. Just as IRT had satellite offices, so also did STS. For wetin naaa?  A waste of manpower!

Some politicians will just sit in their offices and make anybody an IGP. They don’t even bother to examine his level of intelligence.

What can we remember Idris for? Aside from policemen and women on different WhatsApp platforms sharing information on how much to pay for promotions and how much they paid, what else?

We wrote and wrote stories until our fingers developed muscle pull and arthritis, yet nothing was done about payment for promotions during the Idris era. And people think we have leaders.

This same STS are the ones creating problems and damaging the police's already battered image here and there. When you have children, all working on the same units and committing similar offences, you pick on the worst and hammer on it.

STS atrocities since its creation have become legendary. Does this mean that IRT, Anti-Cultism or SARS units are filled by saints? Far from it?

Do they commit human rights violations? Yes. But STS puts others to shame. For long, I’ve been complaining of STS human rights violations, but who listens to an old woman?

Don’t even let me begin to tell you stories of last year and this year. The last story I did on STS, I had to co opt online media. Premium Times did a job. Punch did well too.

I’ve learnt to pick my battles. I don’t jump into every fray. I delve into issues that angers or saddens me, seeking for justice with my piece. I can never understand the rationale of suspects dying in custody. A suspect died in STS custody this year and till date, we don’t know the truth of what happened.

This brings me to the crux of my argument. If the police hierarchy are saying, they are not aware of what some of these policemen are doing, including extortions, torture and arrest before investigations, they lie!

You cleanse the stable, not by always dismantling and disbanding working and achieving units, but targeting the bad eggs.

Let’s come back to the calls that SARS should be scrapped. SARS is just a unit in the police. The unit can’t operate without human beings. Since I started covering the beat, SARS Units are known for achieving results, but they are reckless when it comes to human rights violations and extortions. Anti-Cultism is closely behind it.

If you scrap SARS Units and create another unit to tackle robberies and other heinous crimes, who will be working these Units? Is it not the same human beings? The same policemen, with the same mindsets, characters, with the same recklessness and same disregard for human rights? Policemen who lack shame and behave like armed robbers?

What would the police hierarchy have achieved if they had listened to the call to scrap SARS? Absolutely nothing! The problem in the police is not about the units, it’s about the personnel.

Mohammed Abubakar checked the prevalence of roadblocks in Nigeria when it was becoming a nightmare. People thought it couldn’t be achieved, but he did it. He left and the roadblocks came back. These days, you can count hundreds travelling from Lagos to the east.

Solomon Arase warned policemen to stop checking phones without warrant and it worked, now he’s out of Louis Edet House and the act of forcibly collecting phones from Nigerians to check their bank balances are back.

If anyone takes a peep into the Force Headquarters, Abuja, he’ll see catalogues of complaints against policemen, especially from lawyers and rights activists. How many of these policemen have been queried or investigated? Do I think PSC is doing enough in attending to Nigerians’ complaints on corruption in the police? No!

Journalists report every day about policemen and human rights violations. Some journalists even take pains to mention names, rank and offices of the offending policemen and yet nothing will be done about them.

These are the bad eggs, why not sack them? Don’t give them a second chance. Why will the Force continue to retain a police team that arrested a suspect and forced him to transfer N1.5million to an account at gunpoint? If that’s not robbery, I don’t know what is.

You don’t leave the team and then go after the units they work, to start disbanding them. Nobody is thinking about the dynamism and cosmopolitan nature of crime and criminals.

We need to start weeding out these disgruntled and corrupt elements. To achieve this is not a dash, it’s a marathon. We do it bit by bit, picking one policeman after the other to chase out.

Emohimi Edgal earned my respect. I knew Edgal when he was just a DPO at Ikeja. But I’d always felt he was too brash and rude. We never became close. He then became CP in Lagos and my stance on him changed.

I didn’t have to like him to know that he gave his all into policing Lagos. He worked like a maniac and went to crime scenes. He was not an armchair policeman. He achieved great feats.

Most importantly, during his time in Lagos, I got used to hearing policemen being arrested for human rights violations. He arrested many policemen. Many went through Orderly Room Trials. Many were sacked and others were demoted.

I got used to hearing policemen complain that cells at the Lagos State Police Command were full with policemen detained by Edgal.

Policemen working in Lagos began to tread on eggshells. The fear of Edgal became the beginning of wisdom.

What the heck is the police leadership doing in Abuja? What is PSC doing? Don’t they read newspapers? Don’t they read online news? The atrocities of these corrupt policemen are therein every day. Kick them out of the system. Stop collecting money from them in order to shield them from the consequences of their actions.

Don’t transfer them to another state and return them when the case has been forgotten. That’s sheer rubbish! Such transfers is the police hierarchy saying, “Oh boy go to Taraba State to continue your extortions and killings. Nobodi sabi you there.”

Let’s also not forget that those top officers at Abuja, are often the ones encouraging these policemen to commit shocking human rights violations, with the end purpose being pecuniary gains.

Imagine the case of a guy that was killed in Anambra State. He was abducted in his house, blindfolded with his boxer and marched out. The following day his corpse was found. His wife saw the faces of the kidnappers. They were members of their communities and till date, some senior policemen, who claimed to be working in legal departments, Force headquarters and Anambra State Police Command, have been handling the case like monkeys. It is instructive to mention that the prime suspect is rich.

You don’t come around to destroy a unit that’s a success story because of a few bad eggs. Yes, I said a few. We have millions of policemen and not all of them are corrupt. Just as we have corrupt journalists, traders, activists, politicians, lawyers, pastors and others. I can go on.

It was in this country, some lawyers and activists in Anambra State made attempts to give an award to a policeman, who everyone knew had killed too many people. This, however, doesn’t mean all lawyers and activists are corrupt. It means there are some tainted eggs.

I’ve met and worked with the best and brilliant of our policemen. We have brilliant lawyers among them, medical doctors, PhD holders, trainers, researchers…

Have you ever wondered why our policemen always topped their classes, whenever they go for international training? Please chew on that.

Another major challenge fueling corruption in the police is funding. That’s why I said we should stop playing the ostrich, especially those reporting/covering security circles.

We know these issues. Don’t pretend all is well. Till date, police units are not given money for investigations. Do you know that statement sheets, maintenance of their police stations, cells, departments and fueling of their patrol vehicles are done by them?

Just madness! Do you seriously think that’s right? Don’t we know those to hold accountable? Dismantling units is not going to make the problem disappear. It’s like sweeping the dirt under the carpet, to gather more dirt.

You want a crop of policemen to investigate kidnappings, terrorism, which entail travelling and transporting to different states, lodging in hotels and eating, but no money is made available for such? You want these selected policemen to use their meagre salaries for such investigations, even though they may be killed? Haba, think am naaa.

Some people are in Abuja, who ordinarily should be looking into these issues of funding in the police, but they are not. They are busy sharing billions, marrying five wives, sleeping during meetings, slapping women, having thousands of concubines, making videos of their fleet of cars and doing other unmentionable things.

Do you know creation of forensic laboratories in Nigeria and training of personnel to man them, will check torture and arrest before investigation syndrome?

We can’t continue to treat craw-craw, while ringworms are destroying us.

Yes, I’ve never understood the need for STS, but I’m still solidly behind IRT. Definitely, there are bad guys among them, but first ask yourself, “Is IRT really working?”

Weed out the corrupt folks. People complained of SARS. But the police are making do with the personnel they have. Yes, that’s why you find atrocities entering units. If police create a new unit, it will poach personnel from SARS or other units. And these personnel are not all corruption free.

It was a lawyer, Justus Ijeoma and another friend of mine, working with Amnesty International that first told me about a case that IRT handled in Imo State. It was a messy case.

In the course of writing that story, I tried to balance it. I reached out to the guy heading IRT, Abba Kyari. I will never forget his response. “Any of my men that commits a crime, is on his own and he will go in for it.”

Have we exhausted that? Making the person culpable to pay?  Ijeoma mentioned the names of policemen in his allegations. What has happened to them? Has the police hierarchy bothered to invite Ijeoma to tell what went down? What he discovered or to authenticate his allegations? No!

These ogas at the top just read these things in the dailies and move on. They’re not doing anything about a particular case and person mentioned, but they want to down the tool working for them. Na dem sabi!

The police are underfunded and now that the IRT Units have become centralised in Abuja, who the heck is going to bring money to send operatives to different states for investigations? When they had offices, the cost was minimal because a state unit focused on crime nearest home. Now, I don’t know.

There’s a case that has been at Area M Command for five years without an arrest. I advised the lady in question to go to IRT. They made an arrest within a week and the matter had a closure. The victim was happy. Yes, there was a result.

Let’s think about results before we start having orgasm over the disbanding of IRT.  Do you know that the IRT Unit started investigations on Evan without prompting, using their own money? Passion! This followed reported cases of kidnappings at Festac axis. If the police want to destroy what is working for it, na dem sabi. Wetin concerns me. Soldier go, soldier come. But what legacy are you leaving behind?

Solomon Arase, well done.