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By Godwin Etakibuebu
- Facts about the Nigeria Police that all of us should know.
- The sole reason of creating it is to brutalize the people to submission.
- It was never designed to protect the people.
- Most; if not all, of police leadership are ignorant of how the force was formed.
- Unless we move beyond ‘cosmetic window dressing’, both the police and us are doomed.
- A fundamentally foundational restructuring is needed to build a peoples’ police.
- And until this foundational restructuring is totally achieved, we shall continue to have a “killers’ squad” as police force in our hands.
In my past narrative in this column about the formation and establishment of the Nigeria Police Force, in April of 1861, by the authority the British Home Office granted to Stanhope Freeman; then Governor of British Africa Territories, a 30-man Consular Guard was recruited and trained in a thorough military faction, “for the assignment ahead”.
The name given to the Force created in 1861 was Consular Guard – it is important to take note of this so that we can catch up with the ‘flaw of formation’ when we arrive there along the line of this discuss.
That “assignment ahead” was “subduing of the natives that are agitating against the authority of the British Agents, mostly in payment of taxes”, was what the request Stanhope Freeman sent to his Principal in London revealed.
The newly recruited 30-man Consular Guard, having been thoroughly trained in purely military style, with the aim of invading “the enemy territory”, was deployed into action against the people of Epe Division and the result of that deployment remained one monumental tragedy and holocaust of uncommon proportion in the history of developing British Africa Territories. The scars of that invasion and torture in ‘subduing the people to payment of taxes’ were properly documented by historians for all generations. Epe was in fact invaded two times within a year and resistance to British Authority in this part of Africa vanished from the people.
I did promise in some past interventions to elongate or escalate the rendition of the Police’s formation by publishing a letter sent to the British Home Office by Captain John Glover R.N; Lieutenant Governor of Lagos, demanding for an increase of the 30-man Police Force, from 30 to 100 men. In the letter dated June 18, 1863, and reproduced unedited below, Glover highlighted the achievement of the 30-man Consular Guard, which he described as “faithful fighting soldiers” in their recent outing at Epe. Readers should please take note of this particular eulogy of the 30-man Consular Guard, and make a deduction about the type of Police given to us by the British Colonialist.
“I will suggest to your Grace that this armed police force is increased to a hundred men; they are adept in learning their drill and l am proud of these soldiers and they have shown on two recent occasions at Epe that they can fight faithfully and well . . . they would form the nucleus of a future permanent force”.
His request was hurriedly evaluated by the Home Office, approved and the approval remitted back to him for full implementation and this he; Captain John Glover R.N – Lieutenant Governor of Lagos, implemented in 1863. With the implementation came a very devastating twist in the tale. Yes, Captain Glover increased, as was approved for him by his Principal, from 30 to 100 men, but with a twist that we need to understand.
He recruited the whole lots of 70 men from one tribe and that is the Hausa tribe of the Northern part of the geographical zone of the British West Africa Territory [don’t forget that Nigeria was not in existence then]. And if that bizarre action of travelling that far to recruit “these essential workers” [workers that would have their training in Lagos and shall be Lagos-based after the training] was not enough, “mother” of all complications was introduced into the matter as the British Captain John Glover changed the name of the Force from Consular Guard to “Hausa Guard”.
Why would the British Authority take that decision of recruiting all the additional 70 men of the Force from only one tribe in the North? Most importantly, why did it change the name from Consular [which properly represented the Colony] to Hausa Guard? Do you really want to know these hard facts? Are we willing to open up those doors that will lead us into the rooms where reasons for why these changes had to take place are kept? Can we really go into that stage without opening up boxes of Pandora?
We may have to go there but not without first of all evaluating the tense narration that has been going on within the past few years about the Nigeria Police Force’s action in turning against the Nigerian people, brutalizing and killing them for no just reason. It is most unfortunate that things have gone so bad for the Police within few years, when too many Nigerians, mostly within the youths’ cadre, have fallen by police bullets – bullets purchased for them by the Nigerian people to secure them.
We surely shall not be drawing the curtain over this exercise today because of its complexities.
Before moving ahead, we should not forget that the 8 Nigerian Senate completed an assignment on the Police Reformation Bill that was sent to the National Assembly by the Executive before the end of its tenure. In the reformation, the Senate dealt more with the tenure of the Inspector General of the Police, in addition to the overhauling of the 1943 amendment of the Police Law, than total holistic surgical review of everything about the Police Force.
Having done “a good job of reformation”, so it [the Senate] must have told itself, it passed the bulk to the House of Representative for “concurring”, probably. But let the truth be told here, and now, that what the National Assembly looked at, and worked upon, has nothing to do, with all due respects, in transforming the “killer-Police-Squad” we have in our hands now to the Nigerian-Peoples-Police-Force of our dream.
The National Assembly failed in reforming the Police during that exercise for one reason, to wit: it did not understand the complexities of the foundational flaws which brought the Police Force into being in 1861. And as such; having no understanding of the catastrophic Police Force established in the beginning [1861] by the British Colonialist, and without any attempt of finding out from those who know the dilemma, the National Assembly embarked in exercise of “cosmetic window dressing” [in the words of that great late politician; Earnest Ikokwu], in total futility.
We shall continue this narration next week, by the grace of God.
Godwin Etakibuebu; a veteran Journalist, wrote from Lagos.
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You can also listen to this author [Godwin Etakibuebu] every Monday; 9:30 – 11am on Lagos Talk 91.3 FM live, in a weekly review of topical issues, presented by The News Guru [TNG].