Why the embarrassment in high places must stop
By Jide Ajani
ADC to the wife of a late dictator: That is the only nugget in the profile of the Inspector General of Police, IGP, Suleiman Abba.
When on August 1, 2014, he was appointed as acting IGP, the only, perhaps, notable accomplishment in a manner of speaking, was his service as ADC to Mariam Abacha, wife of late maximum dictator, Sani Abacha. Those who appointed him would have seen in him something unique. That he was chosen to do that job speaks volume of his person. Without prejudice to competence, maturity and good sense of people in the military and the Police, being appointed to serve as an ADC to a state governor or the President and Commander-in-Chief in Nigeria, is not as straight forward as appointing the CEO of a blue chip multinational firm using a global best practices grid of performance or competence quotient.
Therefore, when Abba came on board as acting IGP, many attempted to place him since there was really nothing of note before the appointment.
Yet, consider. Before the appointment of MD Abubakar as IGP, many in Nigeria had known him as a disciplined, no nonsense police officer – intellectual even. One, just one, in a long list of accomplishments, was his disguised visit to Panti Police Station in Lagos, during his time as Police Commissioner for the state, to ascertain the quality of policing his men were providing for the people of Lagos. He was arrested in the typical shambolic and malicious manner the police is known for; and then dumped at the station like a common criminal.
He allowed the officers and men to exhaust themselves (you know, saying all the nonsense about helping you procure a soft-landing or being treated the hard way) before revealing his identity as the police commissioner. Some of the officers present actually jumped through the window while trying to escape. That was just one exploit. And when, in the very first days of his tenure as IGP in 2012, Abubakar ordered his officers and men to stop the erection of the notorious checkpoints used for extortion, many found the order too difficult and complicated to appreciate as executable. He persisted and virtually all Nigerian roads were spared the menace of checkpoints. But he was merely acting true to type as per professionalism.
Another example: for those who were around in the mid and late 1970s, a certain Mohammadu Gambo was Commissioner of Police, Lagos State. His war against pick-pockets, kidnappers and armed robbers was very successful that his rise to the top was just a matter of time.
And when Gambo became IGP, a time when notorious Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini, popularly known as Anini The Law, terrorized the people of Benin, it was within months – less than four months – that Anini’s terror was reined in. He was arrested; along with his gang members. Gambo built on a legacy. He is alive and still respected.
Now, in what can best be described as a barbarous application of raw power, Abba’s men, acting in utter contempt and disdain for the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the principle of separation of powers and the sanctity of the legislative arm of government, elevated the abuse of power to an art.
They locked out legislators under what has now turned out to be a spurious intelligence that thugs were going to invade the National Assembly complex; and for added fear, that a bomb may have been planted there. But all these fell flat because other legislators were allowed into the assembly complex. By allowing other legislators easy access, it is either the police deliberately opened a select group of legislators to the dangers of a possible bomb explosion or it had an agenda it was pursuing.
But all of these amount to nothing in the face of what a legislator described as a decidedly contemptuous Abba who stood logic on its head the day he appeared before the House of Representatives’ Committee.
When he referred to Speaker Aminu Tambuwal as an ordinary citizen and the members attempted to caution and correct him, the all-knowing Abba said “commenting on a matter before the courts is subjudice”.
Because because fallacy of thought breeds fallacy of speech, Abba either conveniently forgot that his position, which was the non-recognition of Tambuwal as Speaker, was in itself contemptuous or he just chose to be selective in his understanding of what constitutes an act of subjudice, he totally missed the point. His position, that Tambuwal was no longer the Speaker, a matter before the courts, is the mother of all subjudicial acts. And as if driven by a certain spirit, Abba declared that those who scaled the gates of the National Assembly were thugs. He may have succeeded in extracting a pound of flesh by saying so; but interrogating his statement further would demonstrate that Abba may have bitten more than chewable.
The members who scaled the fence suspected, and rightly so, that if they did not make up the numbers in the House that day, another Ekiti episode would have happened – seven members in an assembly of 26, escorted and aided by Abba’s policemen to the Ekiti State House of Assembly, sat, deliberated and sacked the Speaker.
Abba may also have been right to describe, as the Holy Bible did, that an individual who ignores the door way to a house but opts to come in through the window or jump over the gate, shall be called a thief or a thug. But the Bible did not reckon that a certain Inspector General of Police would have his own unique idea of law enforcement, by stopping owners of the house from coming in.
Yet, after all the condemnation on the floor of the Senate the previous day, Abba, brimming with confidence, perhaps misplaced, refused to acknowledge Tambuwal as Speaker, but went a step further to say the legislators who scaled the gate were thugs.
In so far as they scuttled the intendment of those who planned another Ekiti, Nigeria can best be described as a nation thuggery is the antidote for executive reckklessness. Well, thugs were the ones who mounted the staunchest opposition against the maximum dictator whose wife Abba served as ADC – perhaps, a hangover of that era exists in certain mentalities. Thugs were responsible for the fight to earn Nigeria its hard-earned democracy. The BRINGBACKOURGIRLS’ crusaders are thugs because they are demanding that the abducted Chibok girls should be rescued – an abduction that was partly due to the incompetence of the Police – are thugs. because they are asking that the government do more to get the abducted girls released.
Yes, this is a nation of thugs. Michael Tabman, a former Fairfax County, Va., police officer and former FBI agent, said people attracted to police work often have personalities that are “machismo-oriented” and “comfortable with a lot of authority,” among other traits.“A lot of that is a type of personality that in a perfect storm … can morph into anti-social
behavior,” said Tabman. In Kenya, after the killing of inniocent mine workers by Al-Shabab, the Police Chief promptly resigned. Never so in Nigeria.
Abba should not be stopped from doing his work by any individual. People in high places should not drag the Police into purely constitutional matters that should be handled by the courts. But by the same token, Abba should know the limits of his work. Providing security for the real thugs in Ekiti should be condemned in its strongest terms.
The consolation? Like other bad things that have happened before, this bad thing will pass away; and it would become another instance in infamy but with a name tag.