The trial of the Nigeria Police,is the trial of Mr. Kayode Egbetokun, who, incidentally, was selected as one of the best police officers to be so appointed as the chief security officer (CSO) to President Bola Tinubu when he was the governor of Lagos State.
Egbetokun saw it all. He witnessed when Lagos State was under the leadership of Governor Tinubu, while Mike Okiro was the commissioner of police in charge of the state. He witnessed the rampaging armed robberies from neighbouring Benin Republic, as these vicious robbers attacked banks and homes, killing innocent citizens. Those were the dark days of Lagos State.
Egbetokun saw the quality, dedication and display of patriotic zeal among the officers and men of the police. That was the era when no police officer was killed on duty by criminals without thunderous repercussions, unlike what we observe today, when bandits and Boko Haram terrorists kill uniformed police officers and the leaders and colleagues of the slain officers look incapacitated and unconcerned.
Truly, the task ahead of Egbetokun is onerous and needs all the attention of a patriotic leadership that is very committed, bearing in mind that a lot of bad eggs (characters) have infiltrated the security agency. A time was when youths got recruited or enlisted into the Nigeria Police with the mind to serve their country, not money, bearing in mind that the government would eventually take care of them. Painfully, not anymore. The question is, can Egbetokun re-enact the spirit of total commitment to service? Can Egbetokun inspire the 40,000 members of the new police squad to rebuild the confidence Nigerians used to repose in the police?
(To be continued)
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Harrowing experience of easterners
For a long time, south-easterners have been reeling under the pains and suffocation of countless checkpoints mounted in the area by the Nigeria Army and Police. It is believed that the checkpoints are meant to enforce security and counter the activities of criminal elements. However, these checkpoints have not served that purpose.
The truth of the matter is that even with the presence of these checkpoints, many cases of kidnapping and killings by ‘unknown gunmen’ have continued to take place in several parts of the South East. Some of these incidents, often, happen close to the checkpoints, raising suspicions on the complicity of some of the men in uniform. The case of the former Prelate of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, Chukwuemeka Kanu Uche, is still very fresh in our memory.
When he was kidnapped near a military checkpoint around Lokpanta on the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway and forced to pay huge ransom, he pointedly accused some of the security formations along the road of complicity. His case was not an isolated incident. Several cases of abduction of innocent travellers have occurred on the eastern highways, even with the intimidating presence of these checkpoints. The question is: what is the essence of these checkpoints, with the rising spate of kidnapping and robbery on the highways?
Can`t security agencies do their jobs without these numerous checkpoints that litter all the highways in the South East? In civilized climes, crimes are fought through intelligence. This armarda of checkpoints serves mainly as extortion points to bleed drivers, including commercial and private. Those who do not have money to part with are treated shabbily and often brutalized by the servicemen who see themselves as being above the law. It has become a harrowing experience travelling on eastern roads, with the suffocating presence of the checkpoints and brutal conduct of the unfriendly operatives that man them. These personnel, who are mainly drawn from outside the South East, behave like occupation forces, with no empathy for the locals.
The suffering and humiliation the people are subjected to on these roads are nothing to write home about. At some of the checkpoints that are manned by the military, motorists and passengers are forced to come down from their vehicles, irrespective of age, to walk across with hands raised up. I experienced this on a recent trip from Abuja to the East through Enugu Ezike and Nsukka in Enugu State. I don’t know any part of the country where citizens of Nigeria are subjected to such condescending treatment. I find it humiliating and discriminatory. I am yet to get any satisfactory explanation for this atrocious act by soldiers who are being sustained with taxpayers’ money.
I counted the checkpoints from the Enugu border to Umuahia, my destination point. The statistics that emerged showed that the South East is frighteningly under security siege. From the border town of Enugu Ezike in Enugu to Umuahia in Abia State, a distance of only 186 kilometres, there were 46 checkpoints manned by the Army and Police. But from Gwagwalada in Abuja through Kogi to the Enugu border, a distance of 328 km, there were only 14 checkpoints.
A breakdown of these figures shows that, from Abuja to the Enugu border, there is an average of one checkpoint after a 23km distance. On the other hand, we have one checkpoint to a 4km distance in the South East. In most cases, these checkpoints are closely arranged near each other, making travelling on those roads cumbersome and traumatizing. These figures speak to the maltreatment of the South East by the security authorities in Nigeria. Those in authority should intervene by ordering the military high command and Police Headquarters to dismantle these checkpoints or reduce them to the barest minimum.
A comparison of the international routes show that within the ECOWAS sub-region, Nigerians are being subjected to unnecessary hardship in their own country. According to data derived from ECOWAS, there are only 37 security checkpoints on the 1,122 km Abidjan-Ouagadougou Highway, which is the longest regional corridor in West Africa.
This comes to one checkpoint per 37km distance or three checkpoints per 100km distance. The second longest corridor, which is the Cotonou-Niamey Highway, with a distance of 1,036km, has only 34 security road blocks, which gives an equivalent of three checkpoints per 100km distance, like the Abidjan-Ouagadougou Highway. The Lagos-Abidjan route, which is a distance of 992 km has 69 checkpoints, which is the highest within the sub-region. Even with that, it comes to an average of seven security road blocks per 100km distance.
Therefore, it is evident that we still have a long way to go, as what is happening in the South East is physical and economic annihilation of the zone and its people. It will be difficult for any industrial enterprise to survive under this kind of suffocating environment. No serious investor, both local and foreign, would want to invest in the area because of the multiplicity of extortion that takes place at the checkpoints.
According to economists, goods and services produced in such a besieged environment cannot be competitive, which is why the South East is suffocating economically and socially. Unfortunately, such experiences are not noticeable in the Far North where there is heightened insecurity. Therefore, there is an urgent need for political leaders from the South East to intervene and correct these anomalies, especially as we are approaching the festive season.
• Dr. Emeka Nwosu, a political economist, writes via [email protected]