GOV TINUBU AND OPC: MATTERS ARISING

By

Mike Ikhariale

The widely reported contemplation of the Governor of Lagos, Senator Bola Tinubu about the possibility of enlisting the dreaded Odua Peoples’ Congress, popularly known as OPC, a Yoruba ethnic militia, into the seemly impossible task of policing the state must be a sad reflection on the desperate condition of general insecurity of life and property mercilessly brought to bear on the good people of the state by deadly men of the underworld.

The last straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back was the sacrilegious attack by armed robbers on the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, retired Justice Atanda Fatai-Williams at his Victoria Island home recently. That those robbers spared no respect nor mercy for such an illustrious senior citizen of Nigeria is an indication that a Hobbesian scepter, characterized by the trilogy of the nastiness, brutishness and shortness of life has since been inaugurated in the country.

It is the tragic reality of life in Nigeria today that the gains of democracy, officially being retailed as the ‘democracy dividends’ have been rubbished by the massive decline in the level of physical security in the country. It is very painful that robbers who have parted ways with the values of the new order are indiscriminately cutting down the lives of innocent citizens who had managed to survive military dictatorship with the ease of chopping banana. It is true that robbery as a social phenomenon, be it the pen type or the armed type, has been with us for a while, so much so that the society never asks its members how they came about their stupendous wealth even without ever been seen working for it. The only different now is that practitioners of the nefarious trade are becoming more and more brutal and daring as if they are taunting the society to the fact that we habitually do not bother about those amongst us who use their official positions to loot the country in the billions, but cry hypocritically about those who use their AK47 to demand for their daily bread.

As things are today, one is reminded of the old Zik’s thesis of a diarchy as the way forward for the nation. The only difference is that this new diarchy is made up of politicians who govern mainly during the day and armed robbers who govern mainly during the night. But contrary to the thinking of the late Owelle of Onitsha, this diarchy does not take the nation any forward but only promote bloodletting and undeserved anguish among the people. It is this grim reality that obviously made the affable Governor Tinubu to cry out that things have gone out of hands, and in the absence of any better alternative, is thinking seriously of inviting the OPC to help him out in the battle against the well equipped and highly motivated men of the underworld that have made life virtually uninhabitable and investments totally unwelcome in the community. What an irony that the same OPC whose lethal ambush the Governor precariously strayed into some months ago are now his only hope for the situation in Lagos. And as the BBC reported recently, Lagos must be one of the most insecure places on earth, more than Gaza and Mogadishu combined. In fact, the international news agency was actually echoing the frustration of the inhabitants of the city, including the Governor, who have thrown his gubernatorial hands into the air in apparent frustration over the intractability of the problem.

For the records, the OPC is one of the ethnic militia groups currently under the ban of the federal government. Why the ban came in the first place is certainly not a matter for speculation as these groups have manifested the potentials to degenerate into anarchic armies spreading death and misery along their paths in the process of dispensing their trademark jungle justice. Well, as the cases in Lagos and Aba and other places have shown, jungle justice may be preferable to no justice at all. What the hard-working governor was saying in effect is that if the official police cannot no longer perform its constitutional duty of protecting lives and properties, then those groups that have ably demonstrated the use of organized force, good or bad, could be called in by way of open tender. As a matter of fact, people are already asking what manner of crimes that the OPC is likely to commit, anyway, that the Nigerian Police had not recorded amongst it rank and file? Is it summary execution, instant justice, extortion, intimidation, harassment, outright murder of innocent citizens, corruption, and incompetence? You name it.

For some time now the Governor has been shouting himself hoarse that he should be allowed to create a police force for his troubled state. Unfortunately, the calls have fallen on deaf ears. Resistance to state police has been hinged largely on the nebulous claim that they could be misused by the governors and on the stupid argument that we are not mature enough to operate local police or community policing, citing the abuses to which Local Government police were put in the sixties. From a constitutional point of view, it sounds preposterous that we pretend to run a federal system of government while at the same time denying the constituent parts of the Union the means to effectuate this federal order. Needless to say that the lawfulness of the establishment of an institution is not the same thing with the use to which the institution is put. It is both unduly patronizing and presumptuous to say that state governments would mismanage their police forces. Is the federal government not mismanaging the NPF now? Does that obviate the need for the federal police force?

The NPF is constitutionally a force of national jurisdiction. It can never succeed in meeting the localized and specialized community security needs of the various parts of the country. There are three tiers of government in Nigeria as prescribed by the constitution and every level of government ought to have the institutional means to carry out it magisterial responsibilities of providing order and security to the people within its jurisdiction. All over the modern world, the police are a part of these instrumentalities. Every government that is duly elected under the constitution has the implied and incidental powers to operate a police force with which to fulfill its enormous security obligations. The occasional frantic deployment of police contingents to troubled spots, as is the case in Nigeria, is at best a hangover of the military haphazard ‘attack’ mentality and at worst, merely chasing the shadow of crime rather than the substance. What the nation needs is a systematic territorial response to the problems of crimes and general deviancy under a supportive social order.

As a matter of fact, chartered bodies like municipal authorities do have their own police force. I was intrigued to find that even universities and colleges operate their own autonomous police forces in the US the same country where our estacodes-chasing leaders routinely go ‘to learn about democracy’. I can say with certainty that Harvard University, for example, has its own police force, fully kited and mandated to perform all police duties. Same for MIT, Cambridge College and countless other institutions clustered Cambridge; all these institutions are located within a distance of about three kilometers of each other and along a single street, Massachusetts Avenue! These are in addition to the state and county police forces and, of course, the centrally operated FBI at the federal level. What space then exists for criminals in such a system?

Governor Tinubu does not need the reinforcement of OPC militia to bring peace to Lagos State. OPC, Bakassi Boys and other similar groups now unconstitutionally performing police functions are recording the ‘successes’ they have being credited with simply because they are local organizations with perfect mastery of their localities, inhabitants and even passers-by. What these bodies are doing illegally right now is what state and local government police forces ought to be doing lawfully and decently too.

Nigeria as a federation must be organized in such a way that every political unit is endowed with the means to promote law and order within its domain. This is the security counterpart of the current call for ‘true federalism’. Properly construed, no governor needs the approval of the federal government to run a police force. After all, the Sharia states of the north already have specialized State owned Sharia police force that have been working hand in hand with the NPF in enforcing the controversial religious laws/injunctions in those states. OPC, by analogy, could easily be deployed to enforce some ‘cultural rituals’ and also combat the robbery and mayhem in Lagos. It is well known that one of the Governors of one of the eastern states rely more on the personal security which Bakkasi Boys provide him than that by the officially assigned NPF. The Lagos State Governor must therefore be understood as being merely in gratuitous deference of the federal authorities when he asked for permission to call up the OPC force.

No one doubts that the OPC has the ability to march into town and ‘show force’ for a while. But the ultimate answer must be found in an orderly state managed constabulary. That does not in any way vitiate the crucial roles of the national police force. Our suggestion however is that the Nigerian Police Force must eventually make itself available for the training of such state security apparati. That way, there will be ethical standards and operational guidelines and procedures within a hierarchical federated policing order. The National Assembly should consider putting in place appropriate legislation for the regulation of police services across the nation whether at the federal, state, local or municipal levels.

Those who are arguing, for selfish and ulterior reasons, against the formation of state and local police forces will soon find out that the centralized police system has not only gone out-dated, otiose and irrelevant in the modern world, it also unwittingly promote criminality and general insecurity as responsibilities and duties become too remote for the average constable. If truly Nigeria is a functioning federation, there ought not to be any need for Gov. Tinubu to be seen to be begging for what really is his constitutional obligation. Considering the reality of the nation today, the operation of state police forces within the federation has become a tactical imperative well beyond the parameters of self-aggrandizement or partisan political filibustering.

OPC may be handy for Tinubu as a temporary measure. The move may even be ‘popular’ with the people. I still think that the governor should be careful about the rooting public in this one case because clamors like that is like the proverbial public policy, which we are told, is like and unruly horse. Once you get astride it, you can never tell where it will take you. The truth however is that such is certainly incompatible with all rational considerations in the context of modern governance properly formulated under the rule of law and constitutionalism. More importantly, such would distort the constitutional arrangement for the orderly deployment of State power for securing the security and safety of the citizens. Next stop, anarchy.

This militia, for all one can recall, was never anticipated in the constitution. Same with its counterparts elsewhere. The frequent open invitation to them to assist in performing police duties can only be rationalized on the basis of a lingering national ‘emergency’, the same route the military and enemies of democracy have always taken into the politics of Nigeria—another way of saying that the constitution, the Grundnorm of the legal order, has lost its efficacy. I submit therefore that we weigh seriously the overall implications of this new national love for organized banditry, be it as manifested by Bakkasi Boys, OPC, or Arewa Boys, because there is the wise African saying that a Chief should never make a decree when he is angry.

The uphill challenged posed by robbers (armed or through paperwork) in Nigeria is a part of the larger question of good governance and social justice which has been with us for a long time. I am unable to separate it from such phenomena like the perpetual closure of our schools, the collapse of social infrastructures, a free falling economy, petty crimes, official arrogance, corruption in high places, grass materialism, etc., etc., none of which is being seriously addressed even now. Drafting in the OPC militia into the daunting campaign against the men of the underworld is, in my humble opinion, a circuitous return to the old diarchy question but this time at another level, namely, who is in charge in Nigeria: robbers or politicians, or both?

Professor Mike Ikhariale

Visiting Fellow, Harvard Law School.