By John Amoda
AGITATIONS for reform of the Nigeria Police Force are fuelled by obvious deficiencies in the operations of the Police. Concerns with corruption in the conduct of the Force feed anxieties over the security of persons, place and position.

The average citizen has been able to factor localized unrests into the rhythms of daily life. The Niger Delta crises and for that matter even the painful spate of sectarian mayhem in Plateau State have been defined as problems for which solutions are being devised. But the recent patterns of insecurity has raised questions about the security of society itself.

Making society safe through the reform of the police is now an issue of national security. Less than two hours before the first minute of Christmas Day, bombs exploded in Jos North Local Government Area. As if synchronized, over 400km away in Maiduguri, Borno State, two churches were attacked few days after Christmas. Four days after Christmas Bayelsa, the home state of the President, was the scene of a bomb attack during a political rally.

Sunday 2, January 2011 NEXT on Sunday captioned its coverage of these events of violence “A year of Insecurity and Violence”. The activities of Boko Haram sect were prominently reported. On Wednesday December 29, this group attacked security operatives, killing police officers and innocent residents and setting police patrol vans on fire.

The scene of violence changed on December 30 to Ibadan where clashes between factions of the PDP resulted in high profile killings involving a serving Senator and Senate leader, Teslim Folarin. When these concentrations of violence are placed in the context of the national scourge of criminality and disheartening recurrence of planned killings in the Jos area, images of Chinua Achebe’s of a Nigeria No Longer At Ease are evoked.

Of the many discussions on reform of the Police, the views of Ahmed Ibrahim, who had retired after 24 years in service and served in the Committee set up by General Sani Abacha to review the product of the 1994-1995 Constitutional Conference is worthy of note. In the interview in Vanguard, Wednesday, October 20, 2011, Ibrahim argued for six zone decentralization of the Nigeria Police, in lieu of creation of state police. He stated:

“The current system was adopted when we were 50 million at independence. We have to look critically at the system and fashion out a workable policy that will secure the system and the polity. In UK, they don’t have a central police force. I am not a supporter of state police, we are not yet ripe for state police”.

When asked when decline in the effectiveness of the Police began, Ibrahim answered:
“The military of course crippled the police force. The 1983 coup crippled the police and their performance has since then been on the decline”.

The prevalent security situation in the country seemed to be defined by organised criminality and by political and sectarian insurgency. The approach favoured by Ibrahim assumes that the Police can be more effective if it is better equipped, better paid, and decentralized. Events however suggest that the security situation has become such that the Armed Forces have to be used in conditions where the Police has become ineffective.

The use of Joint Tactical Forces both in the North and the Niger Delta does not however suggest that the Armed Forces will do better in securing the society. The Niger Delta argues for appraisal of the current security orientation of government.

As the security situation has deteriorated, the temptation is to create new layers of security forces better equipped with better monetary incentives to backup the Police and the Armed Forces. There is need to resist the knee-jerk reaction to fresh incidence of explosions that are painful and embarrassing reminder of the October 1, 2010 explosion near Eagle Square.

It is important to appraise the present approach to security sector reform. Is the challenge that of reforming the police or reform of the National Security Regime? As a matter of fact, does Nigeria have a security regime or is our society secured by departmentalized security institutions in their functional areas of responsibility? If the latter is the case what are the implications of such organisation of our national security? If it is a security regime that is to be instituted, then the present assignment of security duties to departments, defence, state security, police ,etc, is a throwback to the colonial era.

The colonial government was embedded in the colonial state. At independence the British Government transferred the running of the colonial government to the national parties. These parties inherited a government not embedded by a state but defended by security agencies established by the colonial state.

The result is that government in these past 50 years has operated in the transition between an order of colonial power and in the anarchy of contestation among rival parties to establish their own order of power. It is the feature of transition for crime and insurgency to coexist, and for insurgency to the criminalized and for crime to mutate into insurgency.

In transition governments can never be neutral and their efforts to professionalize organs of national security are compatible with partisan projects of state creation. The distinct feature of transitions is the multiplicity of contradictory Nigeria projects; Party A’s Nigeria’s Project is polar opposite to Party B’s Nigeria Project. The context of transition is structurally anarchic. Order is still a project. There is therefore multiplicity of perspectives on the reform of the police and for that matter on every item of security sector reform.

Discourse on Police Reform must therefore be specific in context. What is the order that defines the context of discussions on police reform?

Whose order is the context? Since the post-colonial order is yet to be actualized, the context of the present discourse on reform of the police is the transition between orders, between the colonial order and the contestation between parties divided by their projects of power.

The fundamental challenge for security sector reform in Africa in general and for Nigeria in particular is thus one of defining the security context of society in Nigeria.

Is the context the colonial or that of transition where no party or coalition of parties have been strong enough to institute and legitimize their order of society?