Peter Egbe-Ulu
10 November 2009
opinion
Lagos — The word 'rogue' is not used lightly, nor is it intended as a hyperbole. Some people may find it a bit extreme but what do you call a government that has consistently evaded political responsibility right from inception and seems to have surrendered policy making for public interest to a small band of both faceless and overt insiders, who have held the government and the people hostage to their whims and caprices.
Since 1999 there has been no improvement in political practice. The reason for this state of things is that those in authority do not want things to improve. They profit from the status quo. It is that simple. Obasanjo's style of governance made it possible for public officers, including governors, ministers, LG council chairman, legislators, etc, to think nothing of raising personal militia to fight elections or to fight opposition. Under that government the country achieved unprecedented levels of lawlessness and insecurity. What has the nation gained from that culture? One is that the nation's legislative chambers are now occupied by political delinquents who lack the slightest ideas of their strategic responsibilities to the people they are supposed to represent. In functional democracies legislators make ground breaking laws for good governance but in Nigeria legislators break new ground only in appropriating more emoluments for themselves and in seeking to exclude themselves from the prosecutorial process that other citizens are required to comply with when accused of wrong doing.
What a typical Nigerian senator considers ground breaking is to table a farcical bill to regulate how women may dress, taking the matter all the way to the United Nations in New York, to the eternal embarrassment of not only her 'distinguished' self but the nation also. A common refrain in official circles around the country is that there is a 'cordial relationship' between the executive and the legislature: code for the ineptitude of the latter in respect of its ability to perform its oversight functions and proactively pursue the interest of their constituencies. It is also a euphemism for a tacit agreement between the two arms to share the spoils of office to the exclusion of all other stake holders. Another name for a situation that is so often described as a 'cordial relationship' between the executive and legislature is a rubberstamp assembly. It is not a relationship based on mutual respect. It is one based on mutual vested interest, a conspiracy against the people in whose name the government exists.
In the 2011 elections the world will be watching to see the role the police and other security agencies will play in it. The role of the Presidency and the police in the Ekiti-re-run elections was disappointing. The great hope is that in the coming elections in 2011 President Yar'dua's true character will prevail and that security agencies will be given a free hand to do their jobs professionally and will be firmly guided away from it, if and when they choose to do otherwise.
16. At the point in which the nation now finds itself in its political development, the security agencies (i.e, the police and the military) have a choice to make. They can hasten the country's freefall into anarchy by partaking in the corruption that has overtaken the polity, by looking the other way while it lasts or they can choose to be professional and patriotic by ensuring that they are not compromised in the critical months and years ahead. It is within the power of the security forces to deliver the nation out of its present pariah condition. This can be done at institutional level. That is to say without necessarily taking over the government politically. Extant and proximate experience shows rather clearly that the nation cannot rely on the political class to bring about any progressive change. That leaves the security institutions, the only ones with any measure of discipline, at least potentially, as the only hope for a better future for the country. This is by no means a new idea. In places such as Indonesia and Turkey, to mention only a few progressively developing democracies, the military, while staying in the background, has acted as the guarantors of stability and as a bulwark against extremism. It has to be admitted that in Nigeria past military and police leadership have not lived up to expectation, to say the least, in this regard. Military leaders who seized power seemed to focus on the spoils of office when they are not engaged in what can best be described collectively as distractions. They did not think much of institution building although they all seemed to be aware that they will someday be handing over to a democratic government.
The police for their part of course simply placed themselves at the disposal of whosoever is/was in power; not that they had any choice in the circumstances though. Current leadership of these institutions seems to have only one option in the present situation in which there is a nominal democracy, a democracy without solid institutions: change the trend in the national interest. The police and the armed forces must reject any attempt to compromise them for partisan political ends or any temptations for personal enrichment. The police and the military must be conscious of the need to uphold the integrity of their respective services in all circumstances, from the management of crime, to the management of sundry internal security challenges to the management of elections.
17. There is reason to believe that the armed forces, particularly the Army remains professionally strong and constitutionally accountable. Cases such as Odi in 1999 and Zaki Ibiam/Markurdi in 2001, it is hoped, are now a thing of the past and should at any rate become the exception rather than the rule. The Americans are accepted to posses one of the most sophisticated military in the world. But in Iraq they treated the world to the Abu Ghraib abuses. The integrity of their defence and security apparatus and even that of their justice system was also called to question over their treatment of terrorist suspects in their custody at the Guatanamo detention facility. Such incidences will occur at the best of times and at the worst of times too, especially when forces are under intense pressure. What is most important is that in a well led, well trained and well equipped military such deviations are redressed promptly and openly, those responsible brought to book and that corrections are made in the statute books and in the procedures for the future conduct of operations to ensure there will be no repeat of such derelictions.
18. In the aforementioned African Pride saga and in the navy helicopter crash also, the Navy and the police failed to stand up to a reprobate, dissolute chief of state. Those were good examples of what professionalism was not meant to be. For Nigeria to move forward from where it is today this tendency must change. The survival and the viability of the nation's institutions depends on their ability to defend and uphold such institutions' norms, ethics and traditions at all times, no matter the odds. The idea that a public office holder in particular the president, owns the police, the military or any institution for that matter and can therefore do what he/she likes with them, including serving vested or partisan interests, must be positively discouraged. Despite the condemnation of Hurricane Sanusi in some quarters he could not have been so effective in dealing with errant banks if he did not have the moral high ground. The fate of the guilty banks is an example of what can happen to an institution, including those in the security community, when it compromises its professional integrity or public interest. In one South American country some years ago the federal government disbanded the corrupt police department of a prefecture, sending in the army to hold brief until a new police establishment was built from scratch. In the early sixties Julius Nyerere's government in Tanzania disbanded the country's army following an aborted mutiny. Elements of the Nigerian Army were sent over there to build a new army from scratch. While the possibility of such a disbandment may seem remote in Nigeria it is not impossible. Nigeria today faces a real possibility of imploding as a consequence principally of political corruption. That will make the country a United Nations peace-keeping/peace enforcement liability, an outcome that is worse than disbanding the police or the military. The armed forces and police must resist any attempt to get them involved in partisan politics. On no account must the armed forces or the police allow themselves to be used as a tool by any political party, ruling or not. Unless this is so the future of the country is in grave danger. The security agencies, particularly the armed forces, have a duty to defend the nation against tyranny, whether the threat is from outside or from inside. The partisan role the police played in the Ekiti re-run was difficult to miss and even more difficult to forget, even for a casual observer.
19. State institutions which reduce themselves to or allow themselves to be used as tools of powerful individuals or a powerful elite, to pursue vested interests rather than public interests, degrade themselves. Senior officers of state institutions, particularly those in the security community (i.e. the IGP, chiefs of staff of the Army, Navy and the Air Force) ought to know that they could not have gotten to their posts in a vacuum. They are products of their respective institutions. They rode on the back of their institutions. When they leave it is only fit and proper that they leave a solid institution behind. That is the universal definition of continuity and no democracy can survive without continuity in its institutions. It will make no sense at all to destroy the institution just to please some transitory political personage, particularly if he/she is of doubtful integrity. It is all right to work with a political authority personified by someone who knows what he is doing, what is required of him and who respects the constitution and the statutes. But when a political office holder chooses to deviate from these principles he should be told in no uncertain terms that he has lost the loyalty of the concerned institution or at least he should be made aware of the implications of such a disposition. In situations like that it would be in the public interest for the concerned chief of such institution to offer to do so or to actually resign if that becomes necessary, than to submit to political blackmail. In the African Pride incident and the ill fated naval airlift of ballot boxes incident the Navy submitted to political blackmail and paid dearly for it. It is only just now trying to recover from the experience. The police of course is a serial offender in such matters. That is why in general Nigerians do not trust the police and the relationship between the police and the public is fraught. To be fair though the police is far more exposed to such abuse than other forces because it is constitutionally primarily in charge of internal security. The problem however is that over recent decades the police has not even tried to resist or otherwise deal with such abuse. Instead they have willingly submitted, sometimes too willingly, to it. The most recent egregious instance of this was apparent during the period when Tafa Balogun headed the force.
Egbe- Ulu wrote from Lagos
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