The appointment of Mr. Kayode Egbetokun as the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) by President Bola Tinubu was like kicking the dusty ground and not expecting the consequences of the dusty reactions that would eventually follow. Every policeman or woman enlisted into the service to achieve a dream, and when such a dream is truncated based on ethnic or religious considerations or other things distant from personal disability, health challenges, death or otherwise, then such action cannot be swallowed peacefully.
The question many have been asking is, why did the President appoint an IGP based on ethnic considerations, instead of seniority, which would have further strengthened the moral fabric of the institution than creating the present disaffection and disunity in the system? Is the law not meant to further unite the institution rather than causing disaffection? What special assignment does the President want to achieve that the constitution is incapable of actualising?
Unfortunately, the same senario was ignited in the military, where a junior was elevated above his peers, resulting in the sacking of 40 Generals. Can this tradition be sustained, where senior security officers are rendered ‘redundant’ because of “political appointments” carried out each time a new President is takes office? Does it mean that the voting of a President is tantamount to complete disruption of our security system? This has resulted in the unnecessary, abrupt retirement of over 40 Generals before their official retirement date. Such procedures should be revisited with a view to changing the obsolete law for the better, strengthening our institutions. The arguement that it’s the President prerogative to select whosoever he wants to be the IGP should be revisited in the Constitution. What happened to the Council of State? Should that body not be assigned the power to select an IGP from the most senior Deputy Inspector-General of Police, instead of the President being beclouded by ethnic, religious and other considerations that do not augur well for the interests of the country? Each President that has ruled the country exhibited tribal, ethnic or religious leanings in selecting an IGP. President Olusegun Obasanjo picked Tafa Balogun, Muhammadu Buhari picked Ibrahim Idris, Mohammed and Alkali Baba, while Tinubu picked Egbetokun. This trend does not express the true unity we are clamoring for as a country. After all, the police and the military are not political institutions but are supposed to be apolitical in their official dealings with members of the public.
It is either the police council or the Council of State that ought to carry out the first selection procedure by selecting two or three most senior police officers and tabling their names before the President for his final choice, instead of the random selection, which is usually based on either ethnic or religious considerations. Such weakens the structure and injects hatred and misunderstanding into the system. The fact still remains that, whether the President solely appoints the IGP or not, his directive is sacrosanct and final. So, it is not because the President selected the IGP that he would obey and comply with presidential directives. After all, IGP Idris Kpotun flouted Buhari’s directive to proceed to Benue State but instead went to Nasarawa state (Don’t ask me if he was disciplined for insorbodination).
However, the sudden retirement of the four DIGs has further thrown up more questions, if actually it was the IGP that suggested their retirement to the Police Service Commission (PSC), what was the IGP afraid of in the same officers who were his coursemates? And if it was not the initiative of the IGP, on what basis was the PSC basing its decision to retire these DIGs by sacrificing them as sacrificial lambs? Indeed, the sacrificial lamb connotes helplessness. Such a lamb cannot help himself but only hopes on a mightier power to come to its rescue. Many police officers have been sacrificed on the platform of selfish political, ethnic and religious considerations.
Could this be the reason why experience is lacking in the police? A cursory evaluation of the standard performance of the police shows an institution that is weak operationally, covers up maladministration and ill-motivated officers and men abound. A police institution where a few plan for themselves without consideration for the future of the institution. Here is a President who solidly supported the idea for the establishment of state police, but from his body language it seems he has jettisoned this novel idea that is operationally progressive around the world’s policing system. Unfortunately, instead of proposing progressive ideas for the police, what is being introduced is a distractive policy of extension of retirement of age from 60 years to 65 years, probably to accommodate the incumbent IGP whose official retirement age of 60 years would be September 4, 2024.
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‘Ember months’ of pains
The four calendar ‘Ember months,’ September, October, November and December, present a frightening atmosphere in the country. Things are not looking impressive as people are complaining of hard times. Youths find it difficult to be employed. On their part, workers struggle to live comfortably while ordinary citizens are living in penury. Government at all levels speak tongue in cheek and the people no longer understand their political leaders. There is pain everywhere, at homes, along the roads and in markets. People carry their pains and sufferings to religious houses for solution and when such does not actualise, they transfer such frustration to their neighbors and society.
No wonder the society has become a breeding ground for hoodlums and various types of criminals who are perpetrating evil everywhere. Unfortunately, the Ember months emerged like a thunderbolt when, last week, the commissioner of police in charge of the Federal Capital Territory, Haruna Garuba, disclosed at a press conference that locally fabricated firearms were recovered from criminals. The import of his conference was that, despite the increase in the number of criminals in the federal capital, his men were exhibiting impressive proactive operational acts to curb their menace. Cars and many other items were recovered. The same criminal trend is spreading across the country. Today, car owners are attacked in traffic hold-up, many streets without light expose people to danger at night as hoodlums have their way attacking innocent citizens. Many unemployed youths have sold their consciences as tools to the devil of destruction. Interestingly, the President’s address in India to Nigerian youths who have refused to sell their consciences to the devil, where he narrated his life’s personal story, disclosed that he once did menial job to keep his soul and body together. According to him, “I was once a security guard despite my good education, which later helped me.”
Painfully, the growing rate of youth unemployment presents a very worrisome situation across the country. Records shows that “Nigeria’s youth unemployment rate forecast between 2023 and 2024 shows that the rate for 2022 was 13.44%, a 0.21% decline from 2021.
There is, therefore, an urgent need for security agencies to proactively stop criminalities in their areas of jurisdiction, while state governments should endeavour to establish industries to absorb the teeming number of unemployed youths. Also, social infrastructures should be put in place by the federal government. Security File hopes government at all levels will do the needful so that the Ember months would not be months of pain.