Democracy which thrives on the will of the greater collective resulting in a government of the people by the people and for the people is virtually non existent in every state of the Nigerian federation

State Police will be abused by crooked governors – just as the federal regime has done with insanely corrupt Nigeria Police “Force”

by Chin Ce

ABUJA: The call for devolution of powers to states is getting loud and strident. A nation where every leader is notorious for playing emperor with citizens now witnesses another wave of dancing to the gallery of cult tyrannies.

Already a clueless, reactionary and despotic presidency led by tribal champion of Fulani herdsmen, Muhammadu Buhari, is dangling the olive branch to bullish state governors intent upon appropriating more powers of the federation unto their offices. In a sum they want State Police. But by sleight of hand what they want is more power to run their political thuggery squads exactly as the federal government is doing with the motley gangs of state coercion called Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria Army, Civil Defence, DSS, NIA, et hoc genus omne.

Nigeria’s Senate and House of Representatives are led by corrupt and mutually corruptible members of “Peoples Democratic” (PDP) and “All Progressive” (APC) political parties whose visionless membership composition is evident from their incompetence and incapacity for a people’s constitution. In their lack of preparation for future generations of the country, save their own future of squandering the collective wealth, they have opted in on the process of self appeasement by joining the list of propositions for state police.

The failure of leadership persists in a country as heterogenous, divisive and fanatically inebriated in religiosity as Nigeria. It is against this drop that the perpective to set the stage straight must be made for posterity. It is important to lend a warning voice against this fevered choir rousing to empower a bunch of psychopaths and murderous cult leaders called state governors of Nigeria.

Isn’t it obvious to the first tourist on the streets that there is no democracy operating within the constituent states of Nigeria? Democracy which thrives on the will of the greater collective resulting in a government of the people by the people and for the people is virtually non existent in any state of the Nigerian federation, thanks to its military-draft constitution.

Historically the political process that enables the election and swearing-in of a governor is strewn with manipulation at state electioneering. The governorship aspirants emerge from political imposition at primary party elections. The actual elections are a charade of violence, rigging, fraud, manipulation and intimidation of electoral officers. Usually the gubernatorial representative who stole the voters’ mandate gets his endorsement by bribing the way through the judicial systems always up to the Supreme Court. Abia State under Orji Kalu, Theodore Orji and Okezie Ikpeazu, Imo state under Hope Uzodinma, and Akwa-Ibom state under Godswill Akpabio and Emmanuel Uduaghan have all witnessed the perfidy of Nigeria’s justice systems in the politics of gubernatorial “elections.”

As soon the sitting governor in Nigeria takes charge of affairs all the tiers of government are herded into impotent appendages of the executive personage. The legislative arm is atrophied to the nadre of a robotic stamp for one autocrat. The autonomy of local government administration is completely abolished.

State judiciary lacks the fearless and incorruptible independence under Nigeria’s governors. Salaries and allowances of judicial officers are either withheld or never paid for several months. The state coffers is the personal bank account of the governor and his wife to dispense with in accord with their whims and caprices. Imo State of Rochas Okorocha, Ebonyi State of Sam Egwu, Martin Elechi and recently, and most criminally, David Umahi; not excluding Ekiti state of Ayodele Fayose and Kano state of Ganduje (Gan-dollars) have since become living testaments to this mockery of accountability and democracy in millennial Nigeria.

Security in the hands of sitting Nigerian governors is riddled with abuse. Already the emerging state militia has seen the escalation of reprisal violence from the so called government agents being political thugs of the governors, hounding citizens, killing political opponents and eliminating voices of dissent. Currently in 2018 the Nigerian states of Ebonyi, Imo and Abia in the South East, as aforementioned, Rivers state under Rotimi Amaech and Nyesom Wike in the South South, plus the North Central states of Kaduna under a midget governor El Rufai and Kogi under Yahaya Bello typify the abuse of office by state-armed killer touts paraded as executive state governors operating within a single African nation.

It is the position of several voices that such a system that empowers demonic entities and petty tyrants must not be allowed to turn them to absolute overlords of the state structure they routinely desecrate by their impunity with the so-called laws of the federation. A faulty, un-African constitutional provision called immunity from prosecution written in by military kleptocrats empowers these deplorable humans to loot state treasury and violate citizen rights for as long as they reign – and the nation’s courts are powerless to rein them in. The addition of state police onto their arsenal will be doing exactly more of the monstrosity that bedevils the country by its short-sighted constitution-makers built upon a mimicry of America and the Deep state.

It perplexes many analysts of the polity why the federal government and national assembly are adamant against the reformation of Nigeria Police with the urgency deserving of civil society. The constitution writers in their kleptocratic mindset had it enshrined as “Police Force” – a coercive instrument only subservient to the Army, Navy and Air force, all scions of the West African Frontier Force, which the colonial British, through Major Lugard of damnable memory, used to subjugate the large part of Southern Nigeria. Ever since, the venal reputation of the police and military of Nigeria as the most corrupt and brutal edifices of their colonial heritage has been acknowledged the world over.

So why does every sitting president of Nigeria along with the national assembly refuse to see to the dismantling of police mediocrity commanded by chronically debauched rank-and-file products of the system called Inspectors general?

By way of restating the point, why are the so-called representatives of the people unwilling to unbundle the police and remove its control from the office of corrupted inspectors-general and a corrupt presidency who appoints him, and who couldn’t care less as long as the command rests under the beck and call of himself, his family and friends?

Knowing that the Nigerian Legislature is designed to be bloated, expensive, inefficient and incapable of effective or significant changes to a constitution deliberately skewed toward unitarianism, what is urgently needed for national cohesion is a constitutional confab to reinagurate federalism for Nigeria. The agreements from such previous confabs should have seen a coexistence of nationalities consisting of six equal geopolitical regions coordinating their own economic, judicial, security structures with little interference from the centre.

Any options within the unitary constitution that concedes more to state governors in the name of devolution of powers will further spell disaster for the  tyrannised and emasculated masses. It will be an invitation to anarchy as the country fevers freely to all sorts of self help and cult diabolism to disentangle from the clutches of power mongers in every conclave of the artificial states of Nigeria.

Nigerian governors all through North and South have only one ambition, which is to empty public resources into private pockets and run their own fiefdom. This is what has obtained in Ebonyi state, Imo state, Abia state, Kaduna state, Rivers state, Kano state and Cross river state to name the worst examples of organised brigandage by governors under the full glare of disempowered populations?

Until restructure of the polity, which goes with restructure of the police system, Nigerians must not replicate the despicable corrupton of federal police in state police. Such security experiment is guaranteed to return that part of Africa to a Rwanda–Somalia–Congo cesspool precipitated by a devolving cycle of African barbarians going by the tag of executive governors.

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