By Godwin Etakibuebu
Last week Thursday, 5th of April, 2018, there was yet another display of robbery notoriety in that quite ancient town of Offa in Kwara State. It was not the first time Armed Robbers visited the town but this time around, it was with difference as the operation was coated in cynical brutality. It was mercilessly and crudely executed, so much that the people of the town shall never forget the operation of that day in a hurry for many years to come.
The number of people the armed robbers killed within one hour of the operation spread between twenty and fifty, depending who is giving you the figure between the Nigeria Police Force and the Kwara State Chapter of the Vigilance Group of Nigeria. While the State Commissioner of Police, Mr Lawan Ado, said that “17 people, comprising nine police officers and eight civilians died”, the Operations Commander, Vigilance Group of Nigeria Offa, Kwara State Chapter, Wasiu Adepoju, said on Saturday that “Vigilantes in the State counted about 50 dead bodies after armed robbers attacked and robbed five banks in Offa on Thursday”.
The difference here is the numbers of those that died or were killed from the two reports. Whether we are picking the number given by the Police Commissioner or the Operations Commander of the Vigilante Group, a fact of waste of human lives in Offa in the day in question remains inescapable. In addition to this colossal waste of human lives was economic waste as the armed robbers carted away millions of Naira with much ease. The banks robbed on that fateful day included Union Bank, Ecobank, Guaranty Trust Bank, First Bank, Zenith Bank and Ibolo Micro Finance Bank.
How on earth could the armed robbers have gained such confidence to operate without any outstanding challenge from security agencies? How come they [robbers] were able to cage the only visible apparatus of security operating in the town? I am aware that the Nigerian Navy holds a little security fortress somewhere in that ancient town of Offa, ditto the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps [NSCDC] but on that occasion of blood-bath, the Nigeria Police Force alone was left at the receiving end. The Commissioner of Police admitted casualty of nine of his men.
While we cry for this monumental disaster, it creates an opportunity to re-evaluate the strength of the Nigerian security machinery in curbing and checkmating crime. Until we come to this exercise with sincerity of purpose and be willing to do the needful with spirited determination, crime will keep gaining ascendancy over and above law and order. And this will be most unfortunate. The first question we need to ask is how we arrived this point where hard crime now dictates the pace of where to go and the instrument of getting there.
We are where we are today because of loss of value in morals at all the fabrics of the Nigerian Society. Let us look at the way society celebrates criminality, immorality and all types of vices all over the country. If we are bold enough to accept culpability for this wrong-doing then we should be on our way to sanity. But as long as we continued in this journey of perfidy, so shall the speed of our collective descent into the abyss of destruction be assured. Let us go back to the police organization because this is the only organ of the government [Executive] saddled with the responsibility of protecting lives and properties within civil community.
Back to our reference point – the Offa robbery episode, the Commissioner of Police for that State admitted killing of nine officers just on one day with such ease. It means that the slain officers did not have the time to defend themselves or were unable to defend themselves. Yet, the armed robbers met them in their duty base – Police Station. Something terrible must have happened. I was told that one of those that died was a pregnant policewoman while another; a policeman, was heading for retirement at the end of this month – April.
The first thing that brought doomsday narration to the victims was element of surprise; exercised by the armed robbers, on one hand. In the other hand, lack of adequate and continuous training; the type that keeps professionals at the state of preparedness all the times, was missing on the part of the victim. This is not to say that l am saying something wrong about the dead because they [the dead] deserve our respect but what l have just said remains an obvious indictment of societal apparatus than the individuals.
The type of training given to the recruits at the Police Colleges all over the Country may be adequate for a starter but remains grossly inadequate for continuity of the job. There is need for training and re-training from the entry level of Constable [recruit] till the rank of Inspector. This is for the lower cadre. At the upper level of officer-Cadet [Assistant Superintendent of Police – ASP, one-star] there is need to take training and re-training to another dimension of continuity. But unfortunately, this is never the practice in the Nigeria Police Force. There are more calamities bedeviling the police organization in our nation.
When a policeman is transferred into a new territory without befitting accommodation, what type of civility is expected of such a man? This man is expected to wake up as early as 4 am so that he could have his bath “somewhere anyhow” within the periphery of the Police Station where he is attached to, that is after spending the night sleeping on top of a bench or somewhere not suitable for human’s habitation.
If this is the same man that shall be issued with a riffle; AK 47 most likely, with probably less than ten bullets in the magazine; a magazine that ought to hold twenty six bullets in the first place, then what is being sent out to mingle and adjudicate with the public is not a “safe policeman but a lethal moving corpse”.
With such a deprived man gaining access to the maximum hold and utilization of that caliber of gun, “accidental discharge” with its consequential results shall be a reoccurring decimal.
This same man sees his bosses, either in the Police organization or outside the Force [worse for those assigned to take care of politicians and most of these politicians are people of dubious characters] living the life of uncontrollable affluence or he is assigned to escort money on daily basis from one bank to another, and sometimes “helping to take care of Oga’s money to places like Osborne Towers in Ikoyi” [where raw dollars alleged to belonging to the NIA was discovered by EFCC], anachronism must takeover better part of a Saint, not to talk of the half-baked individual we early described.
As much of disaster as our evaluation on the path of the lower officers could be, it is worse when the instrumentality and criteria of appointing the Police leadership is subjected to scrutiny. And these days, the moral sound equilibrium of those being appointed Inspector General of Police is not only doubtful, the quality of sanity of those appointing them needs thorough examination by world-renowned psychiatric. If, for example, a mad man anointed another semi-mad man to rule over a city, it must be a miracle for anything near sanity to show up in such community. This is what is happening in Nigeria of present.
A driver of a friend who was an Inspector General at that time reported his “Oga” to me once. The IGP with his driver, without Escort, visited his [the IGP] Lebanese friend in Apapa GRA at about 12 midnight. The Lebanese was very generous to his IGP’s friend by even helping to load some “Ghana-Must-Go” into the car and the same Lebanese gave to the driver a bundle of money [N250, 000, according to what the driver told me] because he knew the driver to be very faithful to his friend. “Oga” IGP took this bundle of money from his driver before they got to Number 11, Temple Road, Ikoyi [the official residence of IGPs at a time.
That was my friend then and there are others with their different vices. We heard very recently an Inspector General of Police, having being accused of having marital affairs with some of his female officers, retorted back, and saying that “there is no Police Acts that says I cannot have affairs with Police female officers”.
It is for the reason of IGPs like these two briefly mentioned that we need to examine the heads of those appointing them than the appointees themselves. The sad truth remains that with continuous decline in the quality of leadership of the Nigeria Police Force, Offa scenario and its tragedy shall remain with us.
Finally, this sad evaluation is not limited to the Nigeria Police Force alone. It is everywhere in all segments of the Nigerian Society. Could this be the reason Nigeria is not moving forward?
Godwin Etakibuebu, a veteran Journalist, wrote from Lagos.