.By Okechukwu Nwanguma
The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) is composed, basically, of two types of Police Officers.
On the one hand, the NPF has quite a good number of excellent police officers who are inclined to carrying out their duties with the highest levels of integrity, professionalism, fairness and humaneness. It has a surfeit of well educated, well trained, well brought up and cultured officers who strive against the odds to rise above the system, refusing to allow the system corrupt them; officers determined to resist and overcome the institutional constraints and strive to do good at all times. Officers who, although have a choice to do the work ‘the usual way’, but rather choose to always do the right thing. I have encountered and know many of the like.
The Nigeria Police Force is a legacy of British colonialism, still retaining the culture and institutions of the colonial Police. The inherited culture of violence, force focus, repression and corruption were cemented by the nearly 16 unbroken years of military rule which terminated in 1999.
21 years after Nigeria returned to democratic experimentation, the colonial philosophy, mission and operations of the NPF remain significantly unchanged. Democratic policing is yet to take root as expected. Regime policing and protection of the powerful still prevail over service and protection of the population.
The mission and operations of the NPF are still governed and regulated by an obsolete colonial law engendering a faulty and inhibiting system. Only the strong-willed endeavour to live and act above the system.
It is easier for good men and women in the police to be co-opted, conform and corrupted by the system than to change it from within. The system makes it easier to do the wrong things than the right. In fact, the system protects officers who choose to be bad than those who choose to be good. Many good officers are victimised for daring to do the right things or just for pointing the right way to doing things – the professional way.
While there are many officers who acknowledge that the system is bad and predisposes those inclined to doing things right to resort to doing things the usual system way, yet they can’t stand the way the system operates. These ones become the victims of the bad system.
These are officers who, when they see their colleagues, especially, their senior colleagues, who ought to be role models, doing despicable things, such as perverting justice, oppressing the poor and the helpless to please the rich and powerful for personal aggrandizement, discretely alert some ‘outsiders’ such as human rights defenders, who are in a position to intervene to save the situation.
The recruitment process is circumvented leaving room, as former President Obasanjo said, for ‘criminals and misfits to find their way into the police’. There are some senior officers who are good role models to the junior cadre. Yet, their are other senior officers who are terribly bad examples reinforcing and perpetuating evil in the system.
It is such terribly bad officers, who take advantage of the system, and without any qualms of conscience, abuse their police powers and authority to sell justice to the highest bidder. They revel in bribery and corruption, unscrupulously interfere in every case, take sides with the rich and powerful, compromise investigations and subvert justice. They transfer officers under them who speak or act contrary to their whims and caprices. They are terror, subjecting officers under them under intense fear, forcing them to acquiesce and act contrary to their conscience for fear of being victimised. Under them, corruption is glorified as the fundamental objective, and injustice and oppression the directive principles.
Those in this later type are in their great numbers, both at the lower cadre levels and at upper echelon of the police hierarchy. Corruption at the highest levels makes it difficult to achieve change at the lower levels.
A typical example of a bad police officer is the DIG in charge of the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) at the Force Headquarters, DIG Michael Ogbizi.
Since he was promoted DIG and posted to head the SCID, he has turned that important and sensitive department into a bribe-taking criminal syndicate. He is available for any hatchet job: ordering the release of arrested suspects and causing transfer and taking over of cases from anywhere and compromising investigations; subverting justice and ‘killing’ high profile cases, and providing police cover for electoral violence and manipulation.
Typically, when an aggrieved person addresses a petition to any state command, or any other unit, or department in the NPF, all the accused person, especially when you’re rich and powerful needs to do is run to Ogbizi, ‘discuss’ with him and he promptly orders a transfer of the case to his office where the case is twisted and the complainant becomes the accused, arrested and detained. Most times this happens before investigation commences at the original station where the petition is addressed, or mid way into the investigation.
There are many reports in the media concerning DIG Ogbizi’s perverse, unprofessional and discreditable activities. At his level as a DIG, Ogbizi can easily become an IGP. Imagine what will become of the NPF if a man of such perverse and perverted character becomes IGP!!
Ogbizi’s activities have dire consequences for the Police. It brings the image of the police to utter disrepute. It negatively affects public perception of the police and undermines public trust and respect.
Ogbizi is a malignant cancer that must be extracted from the police system to save the NPF. The Police Service Commission must act fast to stop Ogbizi before he causes further and irredeemable damage to the image of the NPF.
