I watched with dismay, recently, as human rights lawyer and activist, Femi Falana, SAN, threw jabs at the Police at the 1st Oluwarotimi Akeredolu Memorial lecture in Akure, Ondo State.
He seized the platform to lampoon the Nigeria Police for failing to protect lives at three food-sharing events in Nigeria. We recall that the tail end of 2024 saw Nigerians bleeding and dying in Ibadan, Abuja, and Okija. Some persons - good citizens with generosity running in their veins - had packaged some food items and cash for some of their hungry compatriots. That's philanthropy at work.
They meant well, but many Nigerians died in the process. Reports say about a hundred hungry souls died in the stampede to collect food rations. What an irony. There was pain in the gain, and death in the life-saving salvo.
That people were scavenging for food in Nigeria in 2024 was, and is, shameful. Truly so.That they were dying in the process was not only a scandal, but even criminal.
And the Police have to be blamed for this calamity. For what? one may ask. Are we blaming the Police for the hunger and perceived bad governance that is ravaging the land, and for which there were protests in August 2024? Is the blame for poverty and rapacious impoverishment of the people? Is the Police to be blamed on behalf of the privileged few pocketing the national wealth, thus escalating the Nigerian paradox of a rich nation with poor people?
What was Femi Falana blaming the police for? He said many things on that podium, but the few words against the Police took center stage. They caught national attention, because police news has over the years been bad news, and (I don't know why) bad news is always good news. Something evil happened and, whodunnit if not the Police? That is self-fulfilling prophecy in action.
Somebody should be blamed for the above factors that dehumanized Nigerians and pushed them to stampede to their needless deaths. The ugly situation in the country is both a predisposing and precipitating factor to those deaths. But certainly not the Police.
Obviously but deviously, the Police has been a whipping boy for many years. The institution has severally been treated as a dustbin and a footmat by all and sundry. Even ministers of the gospel who have no word to share with their congregants draw dagger and spill bile on the police. Film actors of Nollywood genre portray the Police in horrible colours as dirty, illiterate, poor, and beggarly. .Their colleagues in Hollywood would never do such to American police..I have heard somebody say all police men and women must go to hell, as if God is not a discerning judge that sees beyond sentiments.
We must situate the stampede and the resultant harvest of deaths..In proper problem solving dynamics, one looks beneath the surface to identify and isolate the source of a problem. What fire is emitting the smoke, and what ailment is fuelling the symptoms?
Nigerians in their large numbers besieged the three events earlier mentioned, looking for something to eat. If they had food, would they troop to the venue? I heard of some women throwing their babies into the Ibadan arena for such babies to be beneficiaries. And I pray it is not true. What would make a mother treat her baby with such reckless (even wicked) abandon, if not hunger and desperation? What would make uninvited guests attend a wedding and insist on gaining entry, if not hunger? What would make a crowd of one hundred thousand persons attend an event planned for just five thousand? Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction, and some people know how to manipulate the trigger to gain selfish ends.
A scan of the disaster would also reveal the signature of the psychology of scarcity. When scarce things like food are likely to appear anywhere in the horizon, hungry people sense it with their antennae. They get desperate.They may defy all odds. They assemble very early. They throw caution to the wind to get even a handful. This is even worsened by the trust deficit in our national psyche, no thanks to disappointments experienced by the people in the hands of leaders who never walk their talk. Added to this is the tendency over the years for the privileged few to hoard such commodities, only to be used later to canvass for votes, or to win favours from selected persons. These scenario worsen the desperation, moreso where the greedy emphasize the zero-sum debacle. How did the
Police cause this ugly and provocative environment of scarcity?
Ironically, the Police itself is a scarce commodity. We understand this when we appreciate the police-population ratio of 1:630. This scandalous ratio is not the fault of the police, neither should one blame her that some highly placed persons, out of prebendalist crave, manipulate and arm twist the system to have some hundreds of police personnel attached to them and their cronies.Or are we not seeing them?
The Police Act (2020) in its Section 4, mandates the Police to secure lives and property, and above all promote and protect human rights. The law says that the Police shall maintain public safety.
But where does the Police stand when the contact between her and event managers is ephemeral and oftentimes late? Where an organiser asks for Police presence at his event, the request may be for 5 or 10 personnel, which understandably is moderated by cost implications. They may choose not to involve the Police who understand the dynamics of crowd management. How would the Police determine the number of participants expected at an event, if the details were not revealed by the organisers? How would the Police determine other parameters if it was not invited ahead of time. Major events need some six months of planning to be fairly foolproof.
Can the Police impose itself on the organisers? Would critics and activists not berate the Police for interfering in a private matter? Would they not remind the Police of constitutional provisions of freedom of association, movement etc? Would they not remind the Police of limitations imposed on her as regards the implementation of the Public Order Act?
Now the chickens have come home to roost. Human parts are everywhere. Body bags are everywhere. Parts of the nation are mourning. Police must be blamed everywhere.
And should the Police be expected to accept the blame, turning the other cheek to be slapped many times over? The Police must take the butt of submission. The whipping boy must turn the other cheek for the dirty slap, whenever the society fails in its responsibilities. Persons and groups that manifested negligence should be hosted at Hilton while the Police should roast in Kirikiri. What a lie!
It is obvious that the Police did not create the ugly environment that pushed people to struggle for survival. The Police has no hand in that. The Police is also a major victim of monumental and scandalous neglect over the years. The body language of our leaders has not significantly changed in that regard. The Police has been crippled and amputated in many ways, yet she is expected to perform effectively and to be held accountable. I wonder the hypocrisy in someone who has not provided the wherewithal, but expects the Police to account for what was not given to her.
Therefore I submit that any search for whodunit should be realistic. Police operations and their success or otherwise are determined by the environment in which they operate. Professor Ikenna Nzimiro, my lecturer in the 70s, used to insist that egg is egg whether boiled in Auchi or Bauchi. But I have come to realise that there is a 'B' factor that separates the two cities. The policing of Bauchi is markedly different from that of Auchi.The operating environment says it all.
'In sum, the Police does not have to be blamed for the failures and negligence of government and public-spirited Nigerians who wish to practice charity. The Nigeria Police is a victim. It is wounded. In normal warfare, we do not shoot the wounded. And let's note: we neglect and bastardise OUR Police to OUR own peril.