Ahmed Yahaya – Joe
I have recently followed the EndSARS protests in some state capitals with keen interest and I still stand with the Nigeria Police. The alternative is chaos and anarchy. This is not to say that crucial national institution does not have its bad eggs which the protests are seeking to address.
Truth is our police in particular cannot be fully reformed without an overall reorientation of Nigerians in general. That crucial institution is an extension of our national life. It therefore encompasses the good, bad and ugly of each and every one of us. Every society gets what it deserves. Change must start from the inherent nature of our political leadership.
Are serving and retired police personnel not from among us and also victims of the Nigerian system as presently constituted? The real enemies of Nigeria are the rapacious political class that callously use the police as a buffer to obscure pertinent national challenges and pawns to perpetrate themselves over the rest of us. In that regard the excesses of the Nigeria Police on the masses is arguably transfer of aggression. For instance, why is the Nigerian political class still shielding those that wantonly gunned the IRT officers on legitimate duty that had arrested Wadume?
Every prominent member of the Nigerian political class is fully guarded and always escorted by the police or other security agencies. Meanwhile the generality of the nation is grossly under policed. That massive disconnect sustains structural injustice in Nigeria.
There is hardly any Nigerian including this writer that has neither directly nor indirectly had issues with the Nigeria Police. That notwithstanding we must balance our anger and frustration with the supreme rationality of looking at the big picture instead of concentrating on its small scenes.
Excessively letting off steam over the excesses of the Nigeria Police is like treating the symptoms of an ailment while neglecting the virus causing the disease in the first place!
To paraphrase Woodrow Wilson we are our own saviors, and when we have come to the determination to save ourselves, we will aspire for a political system that is our sort and purpose. Only then we can get the Nigeria Police we truly deserve!
