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April 8, 2022

No Bullshiting!!! (By Harry Agina)

SOME NONSENSICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST DECENTRALIZATION OF POLICING

 Greetings!

This is “No Bullshitting,” by Harry Agina. It is time once again for my series on “Tall-Na-Talk” versus “Talk-Na-Do” among Nigeria’s political rulers. This time I want to zero-in on decentralization of policing in Nigeria, and the talk-na-talk, rather some than talk-na-do. I will respond to some Nigerians who come up with nonsensical excuses against decentralization. If you missed parts 2 of this series a couple of days ago, you may want to catch-up. I do have the link here for ya. And the link to part 1 is in part 2 for ya. Then, you will have the entire gamut of my discourse on this matter:

https://afro-scope.com/2024/03/18/nigeria-the-talk-na-talk-and-talk-and-talk-country-part-2/

Folks, I am totally pissed-off that Nigerian politicians are dilly-dallying on the matter of decentralizing policing in Nigeria. And, I have always been even more pissed-off that Nigerian people who own the country are allowing this to continue. According to Nigeria’s constitution, “We, The People,” own the fucking. But we have allowed few self-serving politicians to continue to rule, instead of lead us. I emphasize ‘rule’ and ‘lead,’ because if the politicians were leading us, they would do what we want them to do, every rime! “We The People” have virtually been a conquered people to those motherfuckers since the inception of the “Fourth Republic,” meeeeeeeen!!!

Just check this out, will you! “We The People” fought and conquered the Brits for Nigeria’s independence in 1960. Then, “We The People” fought and conquered Nigerian military juntas to institute democracy in the land in 1999. We are now in what we call the “Fourth Republic” Nigeria. This means that we have jump-started democratic governance four times. We failed the previous three times. Now the question is whether we are going to fail this fourth time, too. The third republic was truncated in 1993 by General Sani Abacha. He mysteriously died in office as military Head of State in 1998, and his death made way for this Fourth Republic.

Each time that the military juntas truncated Nigeria’s democracy, they cited politicians’ misrule as their excuse/reason. Yes, I say ‘excuse/reason,’ because the juntas did have good point about misrule, which kind-of gave their intervention a good reason. However, misrule was still not quite a good reason to overthrow the people’s democratic governments, three fucking times. So, it was an excuse for the juntas to grab power. In any case, the point here is that democracy should not fail again in Nigeria. And the only way to ensure this is if “We The People” of Nigeria conquer some crooks that call themselves politicians. Having conquered the military juntas in the past, there is no fucking reason for political crooks to beat us. We must fight, resist, and reject the terrible rulers in governance. We’ve got to do this peacefully and legally. But, it must be done fervently, persistently, consistently, insistently, and any other-ently form that we can fucking think about. We must install good leaders who must recognize that we are their bosses, and obey our will, meeeeeeeen!!!

If we should conduct a poll in Nigeria today, overwhelming majority would vote that it is our will to decentralize policing in Nigeria. There is no question about that! I must add, however, that we have to first enlighten the masses on what it is all about. Otherwise, some self-serving politicians would confuse our ignorant masses. They propagate their self-serving excuses to reject true federalism. Decentralizing policing belongs in the larger picture of what Nigerians call “restructuring.” Majority of Nigerians want the country’s entire political system restructured for true federalism and good governance.

Call it restructuring, or decentralizing, the important thing is to practice the federal system of governance, in its true form. That’s what our constitution subscribes us to. And, even if the constitution didn’t, then we must change the fucking constitution to give us true federalism! The federal government in the present bastardized federalism has too much powers, period! And, it is the mother of most of the problems presently bedeviling Nigeria. We are going through some now, with President Buhari’s governance. First, he has destroyed the unity of the country with his extreme brand of ethno-religious bigotry-cum-nepotism. And then this matter of control of the police and the terrible crime-fighting by his central police. A president would not be able to do such damages without so much power in the center, meeeeeeeeeen!!!

With decentralization, there will be State Police under the state government, as well as the Federal Police. And, there will be Local Government Administration (LGA) Police system under the Local Government administration, too. The important thing is that the state and LGA police will be independent of the federal police. This can be broken further down to semi-independent police systems for major institutions such as universities. The politicians who kick against this, come up with a bunch of bullshit as their excuses. I will talk about just a couple of them here.

I have heard the bullshit that authorities of state and LGA governments will abuse the power when they have control of state and LGA police. And, I’m like…How stupid can an argument get! How about the fact that presidents abuse the power all this time that it has been in their hands, huh? What can a governor or LGA chairperson do with the police, that presidents and their cabinets have not been doing one million times worse, huh, huh? President Obasanjo committed his “do-or-die” election-rigging atrocities, and persecution of “enemies” with the police in his days, to mention just those two.

President Buhari (or his boys) has been doing his own thing with the police and other armed forces, too. For one, his armed forces were prominent in his 2019 election-rigging to continue in power for his second tenure. And, yes, with President Buhari’s central control of the police system, his kin Fulani herdsmen have terrorized Nigerians all over the country. I always cite my own personal example-incident on this subject. Uum huh, once upon a time within this Buhari’s government, one little Fulani boy blocked a major road with his cattle, and told me to go to hell (not in exact words). Before I could say Jack, he boasted to me that, “Baba na president.” “Baba” is what they call Buhari, meaning “father.” So, the motherfucker told me that, since his baba Buhari is president, I couldn’t do shit to him. And, he was right! I was to learn later how right he was, meeeeeeeeen!

I’m talking about deep in my interior village in southern Nigeria. And a little brat from the north looked me in the face and told me that he could break the gadamn law at will. His impunity was that his ethno-religious kin, the president, owns the entire Nigeria police. The motherfucker was criminally confident that he’s being protected and supported by Nigeria police to break the law. He’s just one example among millions of such incidents since Buhari became president. My JJC incident was minor. Some people encountered killer jihadists on rampage in the guise of herdsmen. The abuse is most often not even directly by Buhari. His religious and ethnic kindred who are aware of his ethno-religious bigotry and nepotism abuse his power using his influence.

And people are talking about abuse by governors, as excuse not to reform our police for effective policing. My little herdsmen incident would not happen if my state had independent police. Buhari would not even dare to try to control my state police. And, the brat would know it, so he wouldn’t criminally dare me as he did. That’s true federalism, meeeeeeeeeen!!!

 My point, once again, is that the argument about abuse of power by state governors is so fucked-up, it ain’t even funny at all! Presidents have been doing worse with the central police system, meeeeeeeeeeen!!!

Besides, why the fuck are we even talking about abuse of power by anybody, huh? We should be talking about putting laws in place, to ensure that nobody abuses the police power at any level. In fact, we do already have laws in place to prevent abuses. Our problem is “The Nigerian Factor,” like in everything else. We shamelessly allow few politicians to flagrantly disrespect and trample on our laws. Rather than challenge them, we nickname them the untouchables.” So, we should be talking about how to ensure that our laws are obeyed by every citizen—president, governor, or Local Government administrator, meeeeeeeeen!!!

America and the other countries with decentralized police systems must think that we are all stupid. They can’t understand why we reject efficient and effective systems based on excuses. They expect us to institute a good policing system and force our leaders to obey the laws guiding the system, meeeeeeeeen!!!

I heard another nonsensical argument against decentralization on TV last weekend. One Dr. Ferdinand Ekwang brought it up. Dr. Ekwang argued that, “We don’t need to get into the responsibility of having state police now. Instead, we need to get the society working well to provide jobs.” He expounded that bankers and doctors and other Nigerians who have jobs don’t join terrorist gangs, or criminal activities.

And, here we go again with some of my usual barrage of thematic questions: I was like…Oh yeah? What world does this dude live in? How many people can be gainfully employed even in the best economy? Is it ever possibly to achieve 100 percent employment rate, even in the best economies of the world? Besides, here is the mother of all questions; even if a Utopian 100 percent employment rate ever happens, can crime ever be eradicated in any human society?

America is among the best, with less than 5 percent unemployment rate in 2022. But, are there no criminals in America today? Nigeria’s unemployment rate is over 35 percent. How many years will it take Nigeria to improve from this rate to catch up with America’s low unemployment? It does not occur to the likes of Dr. Ekwang that as we wait all those years to improve employment rate and employ all the criminals, terrorists would have annihilated us all. Besides, is Dr. Ekwang unaware of the fact that some employed persons get into criminality, too?

When you answer all the above questions objectively and sincerely, you may agree that the argument by the likes of Dr. Ekwang is truly nonsensical. Job creation or better employment rate will never, ever substitute efficient and effective crime fighting system. Crimes must always be around, even in a utopian employment rate society. Mind you, I am not saying that better employment rate does not help to cut down crime. Of course, jobs are required to cut down crimes, but never to eradicate them. My point is that some people pursue the argument so nonsensically.

Uum huh, it is stupid to say that we don’t need to decentralize Nigeria’s police system for efficiency and effectiveness, if our employment rate improves. An efficient and effective policing system is inevitable, regardless how great the economy and employment are.  My final edition of this series is still coming up in a couple of days. I will say what I think should be done, like yesterday already, about the decentralization of policing. I ain’t bullshitting ya, meeeeeeeeeeen!!!

LINK TO PART 4: