THERE is no better way to describe Nigeria’s secret police and leading anti-graft agency; they are insecure, lawless agencies. As a Nigerian who experienced the horrors of military rule, I must confess that I feel let down by these agencies which have consistently turned our hard-won democracy into ashes in our mouths. In conduct and deportment, they give the impression that they are not only above the law but far above the civil populace whom they hold in utter contempt. More often than not, they are unable to define the boundaries of loyalty to the constitution and loyalty to the government of the day. They trample on the law to be in the good graces of whoever is president.
In a chilling instance, the EFCC, Nigeria’s leading anti-graft agency, wrote a letter that a British court relied on to deny ex-Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, bail, yet it approached a Nigerian court seeking an order to seize his properties, knowing that he would be unable to defend himself. This is the same agency that broke down the ceiling of ex-Governor Rochas Okorocha’s home in a commando operation that has led nowhere, the agency that told a sitting governor, Ayodele Fayose, that “the parry is over” shortly after his party lost an election. Our security agencies publish cant as if by compulsion. They create a war situation while arresting petty thieves, huffing and puffing like the proverbial one-eyed man hosting a party, yet our immediate past police boss, Alkali Baba, was convicted of contempt of court on numerous occasions, and ditto the immediate past EFCC boss, Abdulrasheed Bawa, himself now under false imprisonment after superintending over an agency that effectively runs its own prison system in defiance of the law.
The Metropolitan Police spent five years investigating Delta treasury looter James Ibori; he went in and out of the UK, unaware of his status as a suspect. Here at home everyone knows who the EFCC is investigating at any point: the agency hugs the limelight in its absolute lack of circumspection. Now, before our very eyes, the Department of State Services (DSS) is re-enacting the same game it played with ex-National Security Adviser (NSA), Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retd), for the better part of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari’s eight years. Huffing and puffing, the DSS charged Dasuki with sundry crimes, but, per Chinua Achebe, we all know “the cold, impotent ash” that has now emerged from its “living fire.” This week, in yet another assault on the law, the judiciary and the court system, DSS operatives beat up officials of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) right at the premises of the Federal High Court, Lagos. The Justice Nicholas Oweibo-led court had granted Godwin Emefiele, ex-CBN Governor, bail in the sum of N20 million after six weeks in the custody of the secret police, ordering him to be remanded in prison pending the perfecting of his bail conditions. However, DSS operatives overruled the court and assaulted the prison officers who were trying to enforce the order.
Strangely, because of our habitual disease, this blatant attack on a law-abiding organization was twisted in some media reports as a “clash” between two security agencies, the same way the relentless attacks by nomadic herdsmen on farmers are termed “farmers/herders clashes”. And in probably one of the worst statements ever issued in the name of a professional association, the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), speaking through its president, Yakubu Maikyau, called on the two agencies to take immediate disciplinary measures against the officers involved in the “disgraceful conduct”. The altercation between the officers, the statement said, is a recipe for anarchy and chaos, a “brazen disrespect for the sanctity of the court premises”. This statement is mindless.
Pray, which official of the Nigeria Correctional Service engaged in disgraceful conduct? Why would the NBA, of all organizations, leave leprosy unattended to and treat ringworm? The prison officials not only demonstrated a high level of responsibility by refusing to defend themselves against the mindless attack by the DSS, they in fact avoided bloodshed by letting the lawless operatives take Emefiele away, against the express orders of the court! If they had fought back, there would have been bloodshed. Of course, I have read the statement issued by certain persons claiming that the prison officials were only after filthy lucre, and that the DSS did not trust them, etc, etc. To those who purvey this view, I must ask: What was the order of the court? And, by the way, if the DSS does not trust other agencies, just why should it be trusted?
Folks, these so-called security agencies cannot and will not protect us. If they did half their jobs, Nigeria would not occupy such a prominent spot on the Global Terrorism Index. Politicians are in charge of our intelligence agencies, playing ping pong with our lives. That is why persecuting an errant ex-CBN Governor has become more important than securing the vast majority of Nigerians who continue to be cut down by terrorists on a daily basis. In Bauchi and Zamfara, terrorists just cut down 28 farmers and seven soldiers. They continue to rape, abduct and kill people all over the country. There was no secret police to protect us when Fulani herdsmen committed genocide in Ishieke (Ebonyi) and Igangan (Oyo), but there were many during the bid to arrest Yoruba Nation agitator, Sunday Igboho, a man who had not been reported to have killed anyone. Niger Delta warlord, Asari Dokubo, is busy brandishing arms, threatening state governors and raising a private army to “protect” President Bola Tinubu, but it is Emefiele with an alleged, unlicensed old gun that has drawn the attention of our protectors!
The DSS invaded the National Assembly twice while Dr Bukola Saraki held sway as Senate President, but till today, we have not been told what the lawmakers’ crime was. Now, we are being treated to yet another farce, the Dasukization of Emefiele. Before his arrangement, the secret police told the nation that he was a terror financier. Afterwards, salacious stories surfaced detailing the bags of hard currency discovered in his Lagos lair but alas, the charges when court time came were farcical. The men who invaded the residences of Supreme Court justices sometime ago are at their accustomed, garrulous game. Gross!
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