|
 Daily
Independent Online.
* Tuesday, June 22, 2004.
The police have done good, but
could do better
By Sam Amadi
The report card for the last
labour- coordinated nation-wide strike against fuel price hike returns
good grades for the Police. We have been told by no other person but
Adams Oshiomhole that the Police Force, especially in Lagos, acquitted
itself creditably in policing the crisis without needlessly cracking
heads. The Inspector General and the new Police boss in Lagos are lapping
up the praises.
This is a pleasing development considering
the record of the Police in responding to public ‘disorder’. In recent
past we have witnessed unbelievable want of intelligence in murderous
assaults on protesting members of the public. It is important to take serious
the minimal but significant change in the style of policing because of
its implication to democracy in Nigeria.
Nigerians have not taken policing
seriously. We have regarded that institution as largely dispensable and a
last-minute call up when unmanaged political or socio-cultural
dissensions breakout in chaotic forms. Police in our history has been
that malignant force of repression. And in spite of scholarly discourse
about the colonial and authoritarian characteristics of the Police Force
in Nigeria, little policy attention has been paid to the dynamics of
instituting a new police force for better civil governance.
This want of concern afflicts both
government- the oppressor- and the civil society- the oppressed.
Government is satisfied with retaining control of the hierarchy of the
Police force, as it guarantees it the maximal measure of violence against
its opponents. It does not ask for more as long as police goons can still
muster enough force to suppress public mutiny from the opposition. But government
will soon realize- if it has not- that this is a mistake.
Even a dictator requires an enlightened
and civil force to sustain its suppression of dissent. For when
suppression is covet and discreet it becomes more sustainable. But, if
repressive tactic becomes too open and brazen it engenders equivalent
counter-violence. The take-away from Anthony Gramsci’s theory of hegemony
as it applies to policing is that political hegemony is better protected
by a ruthlessly efficient but friendly police force.
But government has another reason to
sincerely desire to turn the Police Force around. It indirectly protects
itself by doing so. We have begun to witness a disturbing phenomenon of
police officers threatening to assassinate their bosses because of disaffection
with conditions of work. There are many ways to interpret this
development. But, surely it is another case of chicken coming home to
roast. With regards to the culture and psychology of policing we have
sowed a wind and are reaping a whirlwind. We have nurtured brutes- both
by conditions of work and psychological orientation- who now threaten to
undo us. Criminality can not be directed against our enemies without the
possibility that it could turn against us.
Civil society has largely believed that
its response to bad policing is abuse and fight-back. It has largely
failed to see the indispensable place of the police in the infrastructure
of democratic governance. Police do not only shoot down criminals, they
enable innocent citizens enjoy their rights. Any of those sanctimonious
bills of right in the constitution are decorative if there are no police
to create the enabling environment for their enjoyment. Engaging the
police and helping them learns new skills of better policing in complex
social contexts of globalized and democratized criminality is in the
interest of the ideals of civil society. The silver lining in the sky is
that groups like Center for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN) are
modeling this new engagement. A lot more should be done.
What did the Police do right in the last
strike? Simple. They applied intelligence to policing. They made a
distinction between the citizen as a criminal and as a dissenter.
Policing calls for subtlety and perceptivity. A good cop’s psychology is
to know when to apply preventive force and in what measure. Even though
the Police protect the social order, it still should recognize that not
all public contention and ‘violence’ destroy the social peace. In the
last strike police policed, rather abort the strike. I was delighted when
I read from the internet that Police kept a vigil at the NLC office and
shadowed, instead of harking the NLC leader down, to ensure he does not
stoke the fires of violence.
This is a practice the police should
internalize and apply to every public protest and rally. The truth is
that democracy needs more policing not less. But it needs a different
kind of policing. It needs a policing that intelligently understands the
dialectics of crime, and the mutation in anti-social behavior. It needs
policing that prioritizes human freedom above efficiency but prioritizes
efficiency above brutality.
The image of Nigerian police is shameful.
This has nothing to do with the individual competence and integrity of
men and officers of that traumatized civil force. In fact, some officers
in the force are highly educated and able to perform great under
different social conditions. The miserable condition of the police force
derives from its culture, orientation and infrastructure. These three
indices determine the quality of the police anywhere and everywhere. The
culture is the values that define it as an institution, that is, the
social contract between it and citizens. The orientation is how it
pursues this vision, and the infrastructure includes the techniques and
technology of policing.
Since 1914 Nigeria has remained a police
state, a predatory state that treats citizens as subjects. Apart from the
extremities of war or military rule, the police force is the most visible
agency of a predatory state. The psychology of the police has been to
consider itself as the protector of the ruling oligarchy and to use
terror as deterrence. In Nigeria the police has been politicized,
ethnocized and bureaucratized. In major riots (Tiv riots of 1960, 1964,
the Enugu Colliery riots of 1949 or the Ogoni crisis of 1993-95) the
police were deployed to brutalize not protect the peace.
Clearly, the leaders of the police should
realize that the anti-people psychology instituted by the colonial
masters and reinforced by post-colonial oligarchies can no longer serve
the interests of democracy and the force. The force must begin to
institute a new culture- a culture that recognizes that the citizen is
foremost a citizen not a subject, that the government is agent of the
people, that policing the peace may require helping aggrieved citizen
find a voice rather than reach for the gun, and that a friendly force
might be more intelligent and effective than a brutal force.
May be the IG and his men are learning the
lessons of policing in a democracy already. Then they should do more. To
inaugurate a new police force does not require a revolution. Something as
symbolic as shepherding protesters, instead of tear-gassing them, could
be hugely transformative. For a start, the IG should make it a duty to
judiciously and judicially attend to every application for permit to hold
public rally. He should refuse no request except he is shown documented
evidence of criminal intent on the part of the promoters. He should see
the public order as better guaranteed where aggrieved persons can holler
but not shoot. That is the secret of liberal hegemony. To preserve the
status quo by tolerating dissent.
The police force is a key institution for
liberal democracy. It will serve that system better if it moves from good
to better; if it replaces brutality with intelligence, obnoxiousness with
friendship.
|
