By Sunny Awhefeada
Nigeria’s uniformed men are many. From riffle wielding military men in green, blue and white uniforms, depending on the service arm, to bribe eating policemen in black uniforms, to conniving prison warders, potbellied customs and immigrations officials, devious road safety men, overzealous hunters and vigilantes, unruly road transport workers and multifarious traffic control organizations, our uniformed men are legion! They are many and they are let loose on the length and breadth of our besieged country. They confront us everywhere and anywhere we turn, at home, on the streets, in the markets, on the roads and just everywhere. Yet, we live in gross deficit of security, law and order which are the responsibilities the laws of the land entrusted to them. Once upon a time, the uniform was dignified and it commanded respect. It was a symbol of discipline and those who wore it were seen as the defenders of the nation. In Nigeria’s first two decades as an independent nation, only a few organizations wore uniforms. The three service arms of the military, customs and the police. I remember that the much derided sanitary inspectors, mockingly called wole wole, also wore uniforms. With the exception of the police that was always notorious for its duplicity, the presence of military men in uniform elicited confidence that one was safe. Despite the military’s bloody incursion into politics, it managed to carry itself with some measure of dignity until around the 1990s when the institution was hijacked by soldiers of fortune. The military denigrated its integrity by its long stay in power and it lost whatever vestige of honour it once enjoyed. A retiring Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Salihu Ibrahim, described the military as “an army of anything goes” in his valedictory speech in 1993. That “army of anything goes” has today metamorphosed into an institution without the least iota of discipline.
Nigeria happened to today’s uniformed men. When Nigeria happens to you or to an institution, the worst of the worst of scenarios often plays out. This is the reason why our beloved country has turned out to be one of the most horrible places on planet earth. Those who rule us are perpetually apt at proclaiming the lie that things are improving, but the reality on ground contradicts such claims. That is why the uniform which should be a symbol of discipline has mutated into an emblem of shame. The last two weeks have come to represent the plural oddities that now characterize our uniformed services. First was the story that prison warders allowed inmates in a correctional facility to go out to rob and kidnap. The story is being investigated and nothing is likely going to come out of it as this is Nigeria. As the story was dying down, a video surfaced of airmen pummeling a group of policemen. The accompanying story had it that the policemen were taking a drug suspect to the station when the airmen intercepted them and requested that they should release the man. The police refused and then the beating followed. Yet, another video surfaced this time of policemen beating up an official of the National Security and Civil Defence Commission (NSCDC). Airmen beat policemen and policemen beat NSCDC men. This is how we roll here.
There has been an established pattern of superiority and oppression syndrome among uniformed men. The military usually see the police as inferior and hold them in derision. The policemen are usually soft targets for soldiers. The police in turn try their strength on road safety officials and sometimes on the NSCDC men. What should be inter-agency respect and collaboration is absolutely lacking in Nigeria. While the senior officers of these agencies laugh and drink tea and champagne in conferences and parties, the rank and file are coming to blows and aiming riffles at one another. Just a week after the airmen beat up the police, another video of a policeman shooting a road safety officer made the rounds. Road safety men do not carry arms and even if they do, why should a policeman shoot any of them? Thankfully, the video showed that the trigger-happy policeman was apprehended by the road safety officials who beat him to pulp. What a shame!
Nigeria’s uniformed men act with impunity as if the uniform conferred the destructive right of unregulated actions on them. Uniformed men will tell you that the law was not meant for them and they break rules and regulations in broad daylight and get away with it. They drive against traffic, they do not pay transportation fare, they owe rent, they shunt, seize people’s properties and do any other unimaginable thing. This is because they are in Nigeria. The menace of customs and immigration officials at our airports and seaports is also disheartening. These two organizations rank among the nation’s most corrupt institutions. They impose illegal levies and make passengers go through harrowing experience just to extort them. When Kemi Badenoch spoke about policemen stealing from her brother, she was merely talking about one out of millions of such cases. Moyo Okediji, a Nigerian professor based in the United States, once narrated his ordeal in the hands of police-robbers in Lagos. These things happen every day if not every hour, but most people do not talk about their experience because the process of seeking redress in Nigeria is long, arduous and unnerving. So people just pick up their pieces after each humiliation and move on.
Many are the sins of our uniformed men. Besides, disrupting democratic order and foisting years of the locusts on us, they became “mad dogs”, apologies to M. K. O. Abiola who so described them in 1987, who rabidly tormented the nation on end. Their sins are many. At the height of the oil theft menace in the Niger Delta, uniformed men were fingered as the major culprits in stealing our national patrimony. Only a few weeks ago, Senator Adams Oshiomhole told the nation that uniformed men are behind the illegal mining of gold and other mineral resources in the North. Was a military captain not on the payroll of a notorious kidnapper in Taraba State some years ago? How many more of such uniformed men monthly get paid by hoodlums at the moment? We do not know! A robbery suspect involved in the killing of policemen at a bank in Lekki some years ago hired policemen to escort him to a party in another town where officials of the Department of State Services (DSS) tracked and gunned him down. Many Yahoo boys pay policemen and soldiers to escort them to cinemas or to buy popcorn and ice cream.
Nigeria’s uniformed men are a terrifying menace on our roads. Gun wielding, hostile and bribe-seeking, they sometime outnumber road users. Once it was unheard of that soldiers demanded and received bribes from motorists. That was an exclusive pastime of the police. Not anymore. Soldiers also now collect bribes even in higher denominations. Hunters and vigilantes also demand to check vehicle and motor-cycle papers and demand for their share of bribes. One hunter was heard saying “na de same work we dey do with police”. This is impunity. The kind of impunity that made a retired policeman to put on his old uniform and went on to mount roadblock to extort motorists until he was caught. That same impunity made policemen in hood to break into people’s home for no justifiable reason. Nigeria’s uniformed men indulge in these acts because they are in Nigeria, a nation where sanctions are never implemented. So, impunity reigns supreme among her uniformed men. Today, the sight of uniformed men provokes revulsion. That was what happened during the ENDSARS protests. This should not be so. The uniformed services must do something to reinvent themselves. They should not wait for the people to do it for them.
