Cops and criminals, crime writers have contended over time, often live close to each other, closer than is acknowledged publicly. It has been so for ages. Contact between the two entities – the hunter and the hunted – initially operating from bipolar ends of social reckoning, always commence on a pedestal of mutual suspicion and resentment. Gradually, trust develops. This engenders nearness of sorts, which in turn begets an intricate relationship. This, it turns out, is often the root of some evil.
Society is not exactly unaware of this uncomfortable propinquity. It has had to contend with the situation however, essentially because there is not much that can be done. The link-line between the cop and the criminal does prove helpful at some crunch times, though. At such critical moments, it takes one to catch the other, using routes known and unknown.
To live in proximity to someone is one thing. To be in bed with the person is entirely a different scheme. Good cops do everything possible to avoid being found in bed with criminals, no matter what. That, as it has turned out, did not apply to Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Abba Kyari, whose unravelling seemed complete last week. DCP Kyari, obviously does not give a hoot about being in cahoots with criminals. It is either that, or that the man who was once dubbed super cop, was too far gone in sleaze and crime to bother.
Kyari’s second and more damning crash last week was indeed a huge shock and disappointment, except, perhaps, for those who knew him better on a personal level. A number of these latter group insist that the ‘super cop’ tag was a creation of the media, a myth he does not approximate in any objective assessment.
The entire context of the DCP Abba Kyari saga says a lot, once more, about Nigeria’s faulty belief that it can smoother higher values and ignore character in selecting individuals for sensitive public positions and still manage to build a viable society.
While it is scandalous for Nigeria and its police especially that a DCP was busted by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency [NDLEA] for drug offence in such unbelievable drama, much more damning for Kyari, the police and, indeed, the country, is the fact that the same man has been nabbed over and over for entanglement in criminal acts. It must either be hubris or criminal incompetence, if not, why would a supposed experienced cop be caught red-handed in all his theatres of misdeed?
Kyari was accused of being involved in a series of international fraud featuring Abass Ramon, aka Hushpuppi. In that particular charge, the DCP was caught virtually with his hand in the till. Consequently, America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] is awaiting him to come and defend himself. Nigeria’s end of the investigation of Kyari’s involvement in the Hushpuppi case is going through administrative gymnastics, with no end in sight.
There must have been those with the belief that Kyari would, somehow, survive the Hushpuppi scandal and continue his runs in Nigeria Police. Such hope, for those who harboured it, must be over now. It is unbelievable that, while the Hushpuppi case was still pending, Kyari was nabbed again, this time for drug offences with his face, voice, hands, all of him caught in the trap. What type of super cop is this? Clearly, Kyari is irredeemable.
Try as he did, Inspector-General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba could not successfully mask his shame and pain at the Kyari drug scandal. Unfortunately, in an effort to defend the police and protect whatever remained of its image in the face of the massive blow, Mr. Alkali Baba presented himself as sulking and unhappy with the NDLEA. His attempt to fight back through contending on air that the drug agency also has its own bad eggs, was, at best, puerile. According to the IGP, investigation by the police showed that the drug cartel worked with some NDLEA operatives at the airports. The presentation seemed more like an afterthought.
If indeed the police had any evidence against NDLEA operatives at any of their formations, the police did not bring that forward until one of their top men was caught in the act. The Nigeria Police Force is definitely in a tight corner. It will be difficult now for it to say or do anything against NDLEA that will not easily be perceived as a grudge campaign.
Not surprisingly, the NDLEA wasted no time in striking back at the IGP’s whimper. The agency’s response was emphatic; “it was Abba Kyari’s team that was contacted by the [drug] cartel and without doubt the records clearly show how their ring works.”
Nigeria is weak in facing the truth. The police must come to terms with the problems in their fold. An Abba Kyari is not made in one day. His likes are moulded and reinforced over time by the Nigerian state, nurtured through a permissive system that allows them impunity after impunity, excesses after excesses, one overbearing criminal conduct after another overbearing criminal conduct, all of these while higher authorites who may be godfathers look on with no reprimand or even one restraining word. Sooner or later, self-destruction sets in. And the society is worse for it.
IGP Alkali Baba may need to do a lot more about the character of the men he leads. It is often said that Nigeria Police has fine men in its fold. That may be true. It is true, no less, that there are many bad eggs in the fold too, and these cancel out the work of the good cops. Only recently, for instance, a character called Baba Zango, another DCP serving in Lagos, was reported to have brazenly threatened a man who legitimately acquired a property next to his, back in Yola, Adamawa State.
What was Zango’s problem? The man who bought the property next to his was Igbo. Zango, a police officer, in the service of Federal Republic of Nigeria, and presently based in Lagos, had the gall to declare that he would not welcome any southerner to have a property next to his own property in Yola. He reportedly threatened that he could not guarantee the security of Mr. Vincent Umeh, the incurable Nigerian, who legitimately acquired the property. Interestingly, Zango was offered the same property when it was put up for sale, but he could not afford it. Baba Zango is a serving policeman. There is no report yet that the police force under IGP Alkali Baba has reprimanded Zango nor has any other authority in Nigeria done so. Someday down the line, the sectarian spirit of Baba Zango will manifest in a more grievous form and the society will express surprise.
Tales of DCP Abba Kyari’s ruthlessness and impunity were rife all along. The more the cries by victims of his high-handedness, the more he was elevated and celebrated. His types are many in Nigeria and they operate above the law. Until they meet their comeuppance. A serious system could have moderated Kyari’s indiscretions and possibly saved him from himself. But that would not be Nigeria, not of this era.
When, as a last-ditch effort in self-defence in the face of his damning drug offence, all that Abba Kyari was reported to have as explanation for his criminal acts was that it was IPOB/ESN [Indigenous People of Biafra/Eastern Security Network] that were after him (spiritually or physically, he did not say) for his attack on them, it became apparent that the man was daft. A super cop cannot be that cheap and empty.