The Rule of Law, Nigeria’s only hope for survival (3)
By Hassan Gimba
This is the concluding part of this article, originally published in December 2021. I feel compelled to republish it now because the issues it raises about the rule of law, insecurity, and the growing fear among ordinary Nigerians remain as relevant today as they were when it was first written. Its message serves as a timely reminder of the urgent responsibility to protect citizens, uphold justice, strengthen the rule of law, and restore lasting peace and security across the country.
Many patriots concerned with our rapid nose-diving in morals and abandonment of the rule of law believe that the British left too early. Some theorise that if our independence, achieved on a platter of gold, had been delayed for 20 more years, we would still have been on course.
Had we gotten our independence in 1980, about three generations of Nigerians would have gone through tutelage under the prim and proper Britons rather than just one generation. And perhaps respect for the rule of law might have been so engraved in our national psyche, they reason.
Well, our situation has moved beyond lamentation. After identifying the cause(s) of our problem(s), we should aim to offer the way out.
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The most important thing is to strengthen our crime-fighting and justice enforcement capability with the rule of law in mind.
At the height of the EndSARS protest, I wrote that the Nigerian Police Force, with the motto ‘The Police is Your Friend’, has a mission to ‘make Nigeria safer and more secure for economic development and growth; to create a safe environment for everyone living in Nigeria and to build a people-friendly police force that will respect and uphold the fundamental rights of all citizens. But is the Force friendly? Do its operatives care for our rights?
The Nigeria Police have done their best to be accepted by Nigerians as an altruistic institution. It created an excellent motto and, at one point, even changed its name by excising “force,” but apparently it has stuck. Happy to use force, it often never pretends to be a friend, even earning itself the sobriquet ‘Kill and Go’, especially when the Police Mobile Force (PMF) was in vogue.
Even though many innocent citizens have died at its hands, the Nigeria Police have done wonderfully well in crime-solving that, sometimes, one wonders whether they use magic. Beyond excelling in international missions, they have cracked many seemingly hopeless cases at home.
This is despite the known fact that the police in Nigeria are underpaid, under-trained, under-equipped and under-appreciated. The welfare of the average police officer is appalling as the force’s big guns convert provided funds for personal use, exhorting their juniors to “wait for your time”.
But the rot in the police force is beyond SARS. It is foundational, historical, institutional, traditional, as well as cultural that only education (training is part of education) can improve them and save our country from their atrocities. In the first place, the primary reason the colonialists established the police was to protect British economic and political interests, and the police achieved that through brutal subjugation of indigenous communities by the use of violence, repression, and excessive use of force.
Nigerian leaders who took over from the colonialists have continued to use the police in a similar vein. So all ministers, legislators, entrepreneurs, their wives, children, girlfriends, businesses, residences, etc., have adequate police protection, while our communities and streets do not.
Though it is a Nigerian phenomenon for anyone in a uniform of whatever shade to be a tyrant, the police officer must be educated to know that the personal safety and well-being of every Nigerian is his primary duty, not the opposite, as has been the case most times. His loyalty is foremost to the Nigerian constitution, not to any individual. He must be humane, law-abiding, conscientious and people-friendly. But their bosses (of course there are excellent ones) must be fair to the institution and subordinates by jettisoning the mantra, ‘Wait for your time.”
READ ALSO: The Rule of Law, Nigeria’s only hope for survival (2), by Hassan Gimba
Again, it is not just about salary. A poor mind will still lust for more, no matter how much his take-home pay is. Along with education, police officers’ welfare must also be considered. What obtains now, right from training school, can only produce frustrated individuals. He should not be allowed to put his life on the line for us while the state treats him with disdain.
Then we must enhance our intelligence-gathering methods. There was a time when the Crime Investigation Department of our police was famed for its many successful exploits. Likewise, the Department of State Services is still doing a wonderful job. I know this because the DSS played a major role in decimating Boko Haram members living in towns.
Perhaps what remains is to resuscitate our information-gathering abilities because, apart from technology, human intelligence (HUMINT) gathering through stool pigeons, etc., cannot be overemphasised.
Our judiciary, and its capacity to deliver timely and fair judgment on cases involving the weak and the strong, must be improved. Timely judgment delivery helps reduce case backlogs. Cases that have been begging for attention overwhelm the courts because of their plodding nature. Some cases can take years, even decades, to conclude.
There must also be minimal interference in the dispensation of justice. Where the executive stops a case through nolle prosequi, outright tells the judge to stand down, or even deliberately refuses to attend proceedings, it must stop. The rule of law must take precedence.
We have seen criminals who break the laws of the land given a soft landing. In some cases, governments “pardon” those who have taken up arms against the state. These are insurgents who have slaughtered, maimed, and burned public and private property. To pardon them while nothing is done to mitigate the pain of those they harmed, or their families in both the civilian and uniformed populations, sends the wrong signal.
Next, and perhaps last, we will look at the role of leadership in entrenching the rule of law in a country. We shall also attempt to suggest the type of leadership that suits us as a diverse nation, and a leader who may be capable.
Hassan Gimba, ANIPR, is the Publisher and CEO of Neptune Prime.
