Police nko?

In the span of 20-sth odd years of living in Lagos (23 of those years being in the same house), my family has been attacked and held hostage by armed robbers in our home exactly 3 times, resulting in the deaths of 2 of our "mayguards" on separate occasions(security man seems too impersonal, as these pp had lived with us for several years and were practically part of the family). Attempted attacks probably number about 4, while roadside ones probably about 4.5 (normal for a medium-sized 4-bedroom house in a non-conspicuous location and above-average security measures?...you be the judge). In all these incidents, not once has the police ever been a reliable source of protection or order. I'm sure you all can relate. The Nigerian police force is one of those conundra(ums) that i have never quite understood how to solve, because to be honest, I don't know the answer, as it surely can't be as simple as providing adequate equipment and increasing salaries (Right?). Not only have the Nigerian police been "forced" into becoming criminals themselves but now, according to this Guardian article, other (more than well-off) people are stealing in their name...
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The Police Equipment Fund Scandal - By Reuben Abati

A FRIEND told the story of how on a certain occasion, armed robbers had laid siege on the Estate where he lives. The hoodlums moved from house to house wreaking havoc and robbing innocent persons of their lives and property. One of the neighbours who lived to tell the story put a call across to the police in utter distress, to ask for help.

"Calm down, can you give us the address?", the policeman at the other end, had asked. Help, it seemed, would be on its way at last. But the policeman asked yet another question.

"Oga, please can you tell me the kind of gun that the robbers are using?"

"How am I supposed to know the type of gun armed robbers are using and what has that got to do with your coming to help us?"

"Everything. I beg. It has everything to do with it.", said the policeman. He then implored the caller to place his phone slightly out of the window so he could transmit the sound of the gunshots, which continued to reverberate through the night. The confounded SOS caller did as instructed.

"Okay. Okay", the policeman later said furtively.

But the robbers continued with their evil operation for more than three hours. No police van showed up. The truth is that the security situation in Nigeria is compounded by the fact that the same policemen who have been recruited and mandated to protect lives and property are wont to take to their heels the moment their attention is drawn to an armed robbery incident. Similarly, Nigerian policemen run away from other criminals, preferring instead to limit their operations to safe activities such as the harassment and intimidation of hapless persons.

The explanation for this resort to cowardice as a rule of engagement is that armed robbers are better equipped than the average Nigerian policeman. Many of our policemen are carrying old rifles, whereas the armed robbers boast of superior fire-power. The sound of the robbers' gun alone could make policemen scamper for safety. This was the case a fortnight ago when armed robbers struck around Toyota bus stop, a shouting distance from Rutam House, the home of The Guardian newspapers. The hoodlums took over the expressway and shot persistently into the air.

As is often the case under such circumstances, people fled in all directions. Policemen pulled off their uniforms and rushed into companies in the neighbourhood, to beg for protection. People obliged the fleeing policemen because somehow the Nigerian public has come to accept the police establishment as one of the big jokes in Nigerian life and society. Our policemen have no communication equipment. They do not have enough vehicles. Often when people ask the police to come to their rescue, they could be told that there is no vehicle in the station or that the caller should arrange transportation for them.

Most of the police stations in the country were built around the middle of the last century, and they have also become terribly inadequate. Policemen across the nation, are holed up in a devil's slum known as police barracks, where there are no facilities that can guarantee decent living. Their take home pay is paltry, conditions of service are poor and salaries are never paid on time. In desperation, policemen earn their keep by extorting money from the public. They do so with such impunity which members of the public have also accepted. Motorists set aside "money for the police" the moment they get onto the roads.
Justice at the police station and with policemen is for sale. Far more frustrated policemen often turn their guns on the people. Police brutality remains a major issue in Nigeria. The problem with the Nigerian police is the continuing theme of many books and reports, the latest perhaps being Taiwo Kupolati's Remaking The Police: A Kaleidoscopic Inquisition (Lagos, 2007)

Nonetheless, Nigerians continue to nurse the hope that the Nigeria Police Force, despite all its imperfections could be rescued and made to serve its constitutional purpose. To this end, there has developed, in recent times, a culture of private support for the funding and equipping of the police. People buy vehicles for police stations, communities and private sector organisations raise funds for the police sometimes out of their own volition, at other times, they are blackmailed to do so. The mobilisation of private support for police funding is in itself a problem. It compromises the integrity of the police. When persons and institutions that may be investigated later by the same police directly on their own fund the institution, could there not arise a conflict of interest? There are police stations in this country that are kept going on the fuel of private goodwill. This speaks to the failure of government to provide adequately for the police and to tackle the national security challenge more seriously.

But no other case demonstrates the dangers of private funding of the police than the scandal that has now been reported in relation to the Presidential Committee on Police Equipment Fund, which was set up by the Obsanjo administration in 2006. All the details are sordid. They point further to the abuse of power that characterised the Obasanjo administration. The Police Equipment Fund was a scam from the outset. Three persons: Godson Ewulum, Joseph Agharite and Ibrahim Dumuje reportedly had a brain wave about what could be done to help the Nigerian police so they drew up a proposal on a Police Equipment Fund.

But not knowing how to get this accepted by government, they turned to Kenny Martins, Obasanjo's former brother-in-law and a self-styled man of influence. Martins took over the matter, presented it to his in-law and pronto, a Presidential Committee Police Equipment Fund was set up.

The reason the police equipment scandal has also become public knowledge is because of disagreements among the original promoters of the idea. Much of what is known has been thrown at the public by Godson Ewulum. He feels that his other colleagues, Dumuje and particularly Kenny Martins who used family influence to secure Presidential approval for the idea, have short-changed him in the management of the huge wealth at the disposal of the Police Equipment Fund. If Ewulum had been carried along and given his due, I doubt if he would have raised any alarm.

Soon after the Police Equipment Fund was established, local councils across the federation, 774 of them were forced by the Presidency to contribute 7.8 million each to the Fund and the money was deducted at source from the Federation Account, a completely illegal seizure of local council funds. State governments, companies and other institutions also contributed generously to the fund. In 2007, the Fund also took a loan of about $100 million from the US Exim-Bank and another N50 million loan from First Inland Bank. There were also donations from the Chinese government. Soon enough, the Police Equipment Fund had at its disposal a capital base of about N50 billion.

If this amount had been used to improve the welfare of Nigerian policemen, much could have been achieved. But then events moved swiftly. Kenny Martins allegedly turned himself into the main co-ordinator of the fund, Then in due course, he registered the Fund as a Non-Governmental Organisation and created a Police Equipment Foundation. This brazen diversion of the assets of the Presidential Committee on Police Equipment Fund is curious. Ewulum is asking for a probe of the management of the Fund, including where interests on monies kept in the banks are, and how the resources of the Fund have been disbursed. In the past few weeks, the public has been fed with utterly salacious details. According to one report, under the watch of Kenny Martins, N5 billion out of the police fund was spent on the purchase of luxury cars which were handed out as gifts to influential individuals and government agencies. The cars were bought at inflated price and without due process. Another hefty sum of N202.6 million was allegedly spent on a so-called pre-launch dinner. Members of the House of Representatives are angry. The House Committee on Public Petitions is conducting an inquiry into the management and conversion of the Fund.

President Yar'Adua should also take an interest in the matter. Long before Godson Ewulum went to the House of Representatives with his petition, other members of the original Presidential committee had also raised objections about how the Fund was being managed. The present Senate President, David Mark, then the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Police Affiars was said to have complained. But his observations were ignored as were those of others, because we could safely assume, President Obasanjo was in power and his "untouchable" brother-in-law Kenny Martins was the one in charge of the Police Equipment Fund.

The Yar'Adua government must not abdicate its responsibility in ensuring that the N50 billion is accounted for. The individuals who collected car gifts from the Fund should be asked to return them with immediate effect. And this should include the Yar'Adua Campaign Organisation which received 15 cars from the Fund! The EFCC also has a job to do here. Those who donated to the Police Equipment Fund did so as an expression of Corporate Social Responsibility in the honest expectation that the Fund will be used for its advertised purpose. But now, what we are faced with is a case of "obtaining money under false pretence."

This scandal is yet another explosive and embarrassing revelation from the Obasanjo past.

Reading these stories, the average policeman must be seething with anger. What has been done is like stealing from the dead. Political and family connections have been used to defraud society. The security of the lives of over 140 million Nigerians has been compromised. Rather than buy guns and bullet-proof vests for policemen, they were busy buying luxury cars and throwing lavish dinners! The last time anyone checked, policemen were still complaining about being poorly equipped, being poorly paid and being treated unfairly by the state which nevertheless expects so much from them. Lives could have been saved if the N50 billion had been well-managed. This just shows how callous and wicked some Nigerians could be.


But apart from the investigation of the Police Equipment Fund, the appropriate authorities must also begin to ask questions and provide answers to the conundrum of how the police is perpetually cash-strapped. The police receives its due allocations to cover its expenditure. How is this disbursed? Is anyone diverting police resources? These are questions that should be answered. To reduce the Nigeria Police Force to an organisation perpetually living off charity is unconscionable. This is certainly not how to ensure the safety of lives and property in Nigeria.
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Some/Any/All insight welcome.

The Price We Pay for Democracy

This letter, written by Funke, a friend of The Afro Beat, is a wake-up call addressed to our "democratically-elected" leaders to get up and do something about the plight of the people as it is THEIR JOB (for which, they are paid rather handsomely indeed) to see to it that their constituency is able to attain a certain (let's even call it a universal minimum) standard of living. She focuses on the dire security situation in Lagos but really, this applies to all parts of Nigeria (except maybe Abuja, feel free to correct us on this).

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The Price We Pay for Democracy - Funke

The recent and recurring spate of armed robberies in Lagos poses a serious threat to the security of life and property of its residents and makes our existence in this state a mockery. Lagos is under siege by armed robbers, hoodlums and thugs and our politicians pontificate. People are being traumatised on a daily basis and no one feels roused enough to take action. People have lost property that was hard won and cash that was hard earned and still we have people swaggering about, claiming leadership. People are dying and the cries of the dead fall only on the ears of their loved ones. The commercial nerve centre of the country is being targeted and the state turns its back while the lobbyists and apologists hold centre stage.

How many must die, lose their property, remain in fear and apprehension and cower under this reign of terror before action is taken, before resources are put in place, before the choice of the people reacts?

Fear. Apprehension. Terror. Trauma. Insecurity. Loss. Death.

These are some of the symptoms of a Hobbesian existence, where the state of life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” This is the regrettable and tragic state of life in today’s Lagos.

I say tragic because, according to Thomas Hobbes’s theory and philosophy, the role of government is to prevent people from their inherent selfishness and evil, which if left unchecked, would result in a constant state of anarchy and chaos. He believed that a people needed an authority figure to provide direction and leadership but also that it was important to have such a leader’s powers curtailed by a group representative of the people and their wishes. These theories are what have evolved into what we now know as democracy and the rules that bind civil society.

Now I ask you – when a people have elected individuals to lead them and other individuals to support that leader in ensuring that the people’s desires and expectations are met, and it turns out that those desires and expectations have not been met, are not met and perhaps never will be met, where does that leave the people? Exactly where they did not want to be when they elected leaders – in a constant state of anarchy and chaos. This is our tragedy.

Let us analyse each of the words in Hobbes’s famous quote one by one and apply it to the state of life in Lagos. 1) Solitary – means being by oneself, alone, lonely, or without associates. Lagosians today are in a solitary state. We have to fend for ourselves in a society and under governments where even the basic amenities of life are not provided. Each person or family unit is a city in its own right, providing its own electricity and water and their own security. 2) Poor – means with little or no possessions or money, to be pitied or of low quality. We have little or no infrastructure to speak of and what there is existing is pitiable and in shocking states of disrepair; we find it almost impossible to own property or acquire wealth given that most people are even struggling to feed themselves and their families and keep a roof over their heads, and finally, attaching the word quality to life is inconceivable. 3) Nasty – means something bad or disgusting. We exist in dire circumstances but call it life and the fact that those who are in leadership over us insulate themselves with the wealth and resources of other people’s toil and sweat is frankly disgusting. 4) Brutish – means resembling a beast, bestial, showing lack of human sensibility. People here have become bestial in nature as a direct result of the hardships they are facing, the absence of human comforts and niceties in society, as well as the decrepit state of tertiary and continuing education. The leaders in turn have repeatedly shown a lack of care for the plight of the people; after all they are in power to further their own needs and self interests. 5) Short – simply put, our average life expectancy has been considerably shortened by stress, hardship, turmoil and for most, not even the faintest glimmer of light at the end of the sweltering, stinking tunnel.

The collective senses of the people who granted you the right to reign and rule are affronted. Do something. Prove our votes right!

Funke, Ikeja