USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE POLICE COLLEGE ROT

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From: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:30:28 +0000 (GMT)

To: <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>

Subject: ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE POLICE COLLEGE ROT

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ON THE POLICE COLLEGE ROT   Ayo Olukotun   "There are so many committees on police reform that somebody would even think that we are in the industry of reforming the police on paper." Ayo Obe, Human Rights activist        Following the gripping and sensational images of decay and desolation at the police college Ikeja, brought to our living rooms by Channels Television, a spirited national conversation, yet to subside has broken out. It is of course correct, as several analysts have pointed out that the plight of the colleges and the horrifying portrait of an abandoned humanity living on the margins of civilisation, is a metaphor for our rotten public institutions; for a hollowed out state in which the stupendous luxury of a few translate into the arresting ordeal of the majority.     Consider that the specimen of stranded citizenry that we saw in those footages are not refugees from some war-torn neighbouring country hurriedly encamped in makeshift circumstances as a humanitarian gesture. No; they are a vital artery of the national security infrastructure, crucial to the maintenance of law and order in a country seeking to tide over existential challenges. Kayode Soremekun, Professor of International Relations of Covenant University, Ota, it was, who, following a spate of aviation tragedies involving high state officials wrote that the Nigerian political class should be pitied rather than berated for it could do no worse than fail to take measures that will guarantee the safety of its own leading members as they go around the country. In other words, even a remiss and underperforming ruling class should at least observe some ground rules which ought to include ensuring the survival and safety of its members. That a political class could train its police force in such a horrible condition tells us something unpalatable about its judgement and instinct of self preservation; not to mention its reproduction and medium-term entrenchment.      Punch columnist, Chido Onumah argues in a write-up published on January 25th, that so comprehensive is the tyranny of our governing class that even the Nigerian flag flying at half mast at our embassy in Washington DC is a sorry dishevelled sight. Onumah then queried poignantly, 'How much does a flag cost?' No matter how many eloquent speeches are made about the transformation agenda, the world will form its own opinions about us by such details as our flag, the state of our embassies and the work ethics of our accredited representatives abroad.    Regrettably, state decay is complemented by civic rust in which the agency of society, its good neighbourliness are contaminated or arrested by a corruptive state. Social capital is often criminalised or weakened as we see in the multiplying ranks of kidnap barons, pipeline vandals, predatory bank executives, thieving business moguls, fake drug dealers, religious charlatans and all manner of extortionists.  I do not mean to excuse those whose official duty it is to create a decent environment at the police colleges; but one asks in passing why it took so long for us as a nation to discover the abysmal depths to which a major security training institution had sunk?  What happened to the police community relations association? The philanthropic elite clubs or to corporate social responsibility? I am aware that the Channels TV scoop was a calculated precursor to raising public awareness and resources for remedying the parlous and callous abandonment of the colleges; but perhaps the commendable initiative could have come much earlier in a more vigilant society. In other words, there is a sense in which we are all in a manner of speech, guilty of complicity at our own bondage. For as the Yoruba sages put it: "If the heavens come crashing down, it will lead to collective perdition."      Having said that we must now return to the black box of governance and ask whether presidential response so far to what The Punch described editorially as 'the shame of a nation' is not superficial or even misdirected.  It was alright for Jonathan to be concerned about security issues surrounding media entry into the college; but as several others have commented, the touching squalor of that environment and its implications for police capability and ultimately the safety and well being of the citizens ought to have been at that point the primary concern.  He squandered the potential moral capital of the surprise visit by putting in the public space what he could have discreetly investigated. As was subsequently revealed, Channels television broke no laws as it obtained permission for the splendid editorial work it carried out. Knowing that the matter was already in the national and international media, decisive gestures and actions on the part of the president would have been more to the point than lamenting an unverified security breach and setting up yet another committee despite the plethora of previous committee reports on the police.      As the opening quote attributed to Ayo Obe, human rights activist and former member of the Police Service Commission indicates there has been a traffic of expert documentation on the plight of the police as an institution including the decayed status of the police colleges since the beginning of the civilian administration. For example, in 2006, there was the Presidential Committee on Police Reform under the chairmanship of a retired Deputy Inspector General Police, Mr Muhammed Dan Madami. At the time Jonathan was vice-president under the Umaru Yar'Adua administration, yet another panel on police reform was set up under the chairmanship of Mr Muhammed Yusuf. This was followed by the well publicised Parry Osayande panel in 2012 under the current president's watch; there also exists another extensive documentation of institutional decay known as the Civil Society Panel on police reform closely connected to Ayo Obe. Given the surfeit of police reform panels whose recommendations are available to government it is extremely doubtful if much good will be served by the 11 man panel investigating the plight of the colleges. It is probable that some of the earlier reform panels would have done a more thorough job than the recently constituted panel whose purview is limited to one dimension of a holistic, severe deterioration more so as the panel is in my view erroneously  headed by a director in the Ministry of Police Affairs. The point being made here is that the ministry is a central actor in the controversy that has broken out over the sordid plight of the police colleges and ought therefore not to be as it were a judge in its own cause.    The national outrage over the sorry status of the police colleges has once again brought to the fore the underside and fault lines of governance and to a lesser extent of civil society. It remains to be seen whether the authorities will read public dismay correctly as a wakeup call to urgent and spirited remedial action.       Prof Olukotun is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies at Lead City University, Ibadan. ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com 07055841236