Policing the police
In a 2002 poll conducted
by Gallup International
on behalf of Transparency International (TI) involving over 30,000 people spread over 44 countries, respondents were asked a simple but challenging question: “If you had a magic wand and you could eliminate corruption from one of the following institutions, what wo-uld your first choice be?” The institutions listed were business licensing, courts, customs, education system, political parties, utilities (phone etc.), medical services, immigration/pass-ports, police, private sector and tax revenue.
The results of the poll, which were released as the Global Corruption Baro-meter Survey in 2003, found among others that: “Political parties were revealed in 33 of the countries surveyed to be the institution from which citizens would most like to eliminate corruption. This preference was most acutely expressed in Argentina and Japan, where more than half of all respondents picked political parties. The courts were identified by one in seven respondents worldwide, most notably in Peru and Indonesia, where they were pinpointed by one in three. The police were singled out by one in nine respondents worldwide, and by one in three in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mexico and Nigeria. In Bosnia and Herze-govina, Croatia, Geo-rgia and Poland, one in five selected medical services”. According to Laurence Coc-kcroft, Chairman of TI (UK), “This indicates a serious lack of confidence in those in authority worldwide”.
The TI Global Corru-ption Barometer is a survey of international attitudes, expectations and priorities on corruption, developed with Gallup International’s “Voice of the People” survey. To a large extent, the findings of the survey did indeed reflect the true voice of the people in most countries, particularly in Nigeria where one in three people surveyed identified the police as the institution most in need of reform. And what voice is weightier than the voice of the President and Com-mander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, President Olusegun Oba-sanjo, who only recently observed in his characteristic candour that the “police hire out their guns to armed robbers”. Most certainly, in Nigeria, majority of the citizens, if given the “magic wand” and could eliminate corruption, would choose to start with the police. Corruption has become endemic in Nigeria, and like a malignant cancer, eaten deep into its social fabric. Undoubtedly, the police couldn’t have been immune to a fierce social ailment that has attacked the whole nation. But that one in three Nigerians regarded the police as the institution from which they would like to eliminate corruption was not unexpected given the fact that, on a daily basis, hapless citizens come face to face with police corruption. I consider police corruption as criminally infectious because, in addition to encouraging corruption and crime in other institutions, it also gives the criminals the protection they do not deserve. Imagine a situation in which police highway patrol teams, instead of patrolling the highways and making them safe for travellers, would rather mount roadblocks and convert the official vehicles at their disposal into unofficial tax collection centres. Imagine another frightening state of affairs in which a total of 142 AK rifles were recently recovered from armed robbers in one state alone. As the President noted in utter surprise and disgust, “This (quantity) is enough to equip a military company or to wage a war on a big city”. And the robbers have been literally waging such wars—on cities, villages and highways.
It is thus no longer surprising why the robberies (and now assassinations), staged out of this world, take place across the country with astounding frequency. Many reasons have been adduced to explain the upsurge in crime. One hackneyed thesis that has been bandied about is the infiltration of foreign bandits through the country’s porous borders. While several foreigners have been captured or killed over the years, we cannot continue to blame foreigners for all the banditry on Nigerian roads. Evidently, Nigerians commit more than a few of the robberies and in many cases, allegedly with the direct or indirect connivance of security agents. For obvious reasons, many concerned Nigerians for the most part point accusing fingers at the police. But I think the other security agencies are equally culpable. President Obasanjo did observe, for instance, that “custom man is the chief smuggler”, and I think similar vile but valid comments can be made with respects to many other security agencies. Under such depressing circum-stances, as the President queried, in anguish, “What do we do?”
Ordinary Nigerians are powerless and bewildered by the sheer brazenness of the bandits on the highways; often talk of the ‘road being sold to the robbers for a certain period’. They may not be entirely wrong. Cons-idering the recent revelations by no less a person than the President, I think the ordinary Nigerians have been vindic-ated. If, as the President rightly said, the police are hiring their guns to armed robbers, what will stop the same police from ‘selling’ the right of way in the use of the roads to armed robbers? For now, we can only find consol-ation in the President’s pro-mise that “one thing we must do, no matter who is involved, no matter what part of the country is involved, is to ensure that there is no haven, no comfort for criminals”. Let us keep hoping that this promise will come to pass. The citizens can also help in their little ways to curb criminal activities. But when the same agents of the state, charged with the responsibility of safeguarding lives and property and enforcing the law, commit such crimes, the citizens are rendered helpless. And because they do not have the legendary “magic wand”, they can only wait and see. The President does not have a “magic wand” either, but he can garner the political will to police the police force, now!
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