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By Godwin Etakibuebu
-Facts about the Nigeria Police that all of us should know.
-The sole reason of creating it is to brutalize the people to submission.
-It was never designed to protect the people.
-Most; if not all, of police leadership are ignorant of how the force was formed.
-Unless we move beyond ‘cosmetic window dressing’, both the police and us are doomed.
-A fundamentally foundational restructuring is needed to build a peoples’ police.
And until this foundational restructuring is totally achieved, we shall continue to have a “killers’ squad” as a police force in our hands.
In my narration of last week in this column about the formation and establishment of the Nigeria Police Force in April of 1861, by the authority the British Home Office granted to Stanhope Freeman; then Governor of British Africa Territories, a 30-man Consular Guard was recruited and trained in a thorough military faction, “for the assignment ahead”.
That “assignment ahead” was “subduing of the natives that are agitating against the authority of the British agents, mostly in payment of tax”, was what the request Stanhope Freeman sent to his Principals revealed.
The newly recruited 30-man Consular Guard, having being thoroughly trained in purely military style, with the aim of invading the enemy territory, was deployed into action against the people of Epe Division and the result of that deployment remained one monumental tragedy and holocaust of uncommon proportion in the history of developing British Africa Territories.
The scars of that invasion and torture in subduing the people to payment of taxes are properly documented by historians for all generations. Epe was in fact invaded two times within a year and resistance to British authority in this part of Africa vanished from the people.
I did promise last week to elongate or escalate the rendition of the police’s formation today, by publishing a letter sent to the British Home Office by Captain John Glover R.N; Lieutenant Governor of Lagos, demanding for increase of the 30-man police force, from 30 to 100. In the letter dated June 18, 1863, and reproduced unedited below, Glover highlighted the achievement of the 30-man Consular Guard, which he described as faithful fighting soldiers in their recent outing at Epe. Readers should please take note of this particular eulogy of the 30 Consular Guard, and make deduction about the type of Police given to us by the British Colonialist.
“I will suggest to your Grace that this armed police force be increased to a hundred men; they are adept in learning their drill and l am proud of these soldiers and they have shown on two recent occasions at Epe that they can fight faithfully and well . . . they would form the nucleus of a future permanent force”.
His request was hurriedly evaluated by the Home Office, approved and the approval remitted back to him for full implementation and this he; Captain John Glover R.N; Lieutenant Governor of Lagos, implemented in 1863. With the implementation came a very devastative twist in the tale. Yes, Captain Glover increased, as was approved for him by his Principal, from 30 to 100 men, but with a twist that we need to understand.
He recruited the whole lots of 70 men from one tribe and that is the Hausa tribe of the Northern part of the geographical zone of the British West Africa Territory [don’t forget that Nigeria was not in existence then]. And if that bizarre action of travelling that far to recruit “these essential workers” which would have their base in Lagos was not enough, mother of all complications was introduced into the matter as the British Captain John Glover changed the name of the Force from Consular Guard to “Hausa Guard”.
Why would the British Authority take that decision of recruiting each and all of the Force’s members from only one tribe in the North? Most importantly, why did it change the name from Consular [which properly represented the Colony] to Hausa Guard? Do you really want to know these hard facts? Are we willing to open up those doors that will lead us into the rooms where reasons for why these changes had to take place are kept? Can we really go into that stage without opening up a box or boxes of Pandora?
We may have to go there but not without first of all evaluating the tense narration that have be going on within the past few years about the Nigeria Police Force’s action in turning against the Nigerian people, brutalizing and killing them for no just reason. It is most unfortunate that things have gone so bad for the Police within the last three weeks when too many Nigerians youths have fallen by police bullets – bullets purchased for them by the Nigerian people to secure them.
I know that these past few days must have been of great tormenting agony for the Police leadership, mostly the newly appointed Acting Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, because if the truth must be told, what is happening is never a record any sane person would want to create and pass on as a legacy.
This much was agreed upon in a short discussion that I had with the Spokesperson of the Nigeria Police Force; Deputy Commissioner Frank Mba, few days ago, because the irony of today’s police disaster is that the more the Police tried in calming fraying nerves with promises of stemming the wrong, the more volley of police bullets hit and kill innocent citizens. It looks as if the Police is jinxed, at least, for now.
We surely shall not be drawing the curtain over this exercise today because of its complexities. In addition, the Nigerian Senate completed an assignment on the Police Reformation Bill that was sent to the National Assembly by the Executive some months ago last week. In the amendment, the Senate dealt more with the tenure of the Inspector General of the Police and did some overhauling of the 1943 amendment of the Police Law.
Having done “a good job of reformation”, so it [the Senate] must have told itself, it has passed the bulk to the House of Representative for “concurring”, probably. But let the truth be told here, and now, that what the National Assembly looked at, and worked upon, has nothing, with all due respects, doing in transforming the “killer-Police-Squad” we have in our hands now to the Nigerian-Peoples-Police-Force of our dream.
The National Assembly failed in reforming the Police during its recent exercise for one reason, to wit: it did not understand the complexities of foundational flaws which brought the Nigeria Police Force into being in 1861; which I tried to discuss last week and this week.
And as such, having not understanding the catastrophe of formation established in the beginning by the British Colonialist of the Police Force, and without any attempt of finding out from those who know the dilemma, the National Assembly embarked in exercise of “cosmetic window dressing” [in the words of that great late politician; Earnest Ikokwu], in total futility.
We shall continue this narration next week, by the grace of God.
Godwin Etakibuebu; a veteran Journalist, wrote from Lagos.
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You can also listen to this author [Godwin Etakibuebu] every Monday; 9:30 – 11am on Lagos Talk 91.3 FM live, in a weekly review of topical issues, presented by The News Guru [TNG].