Egbetokun lo’kan, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

In 1982, on the foothills of the street to Nigeria’s 1983 common elections, it was fairly clear that the ruling Nationwide Celebration of Nigeria (NPN) had no plans to declare a emptiness in any important political workplace across the nation. As a substitute, they appeared bent on consolidating energy with the intention to keep away from a remake of the judicial nail-biter that yielded the presidency to Shehu Shagari in 1979.

The important social gathering positions featured a stellar solid. Adisa Akinloye, the social gathering chairman, was a veteran lawyer with political expertise predating Nigeria’s independence. The energetic Suleiman Takuma ran the social gathering secretariat and Commerce Minister, Umaru Dikko, was the ruthless marketing campaign strategist. The job of guaranteeing the result that the social gathering sought to engineer, nevertheless, fell on Sunday Adewusi, the then Inspector-Normal of Police (IGP). The son of oldsters from Ogbomoso, Adewusi grew up round Keffi in what later grew to become Nasarawa State. He graduated on the high of his cadet set in 1958 and, at 45 in 1981, he was appointed Nigeria’s youngest ever IGP.

As Inspector-Normal, Sunday Adewusi headed the armed and uniformed wing of the NPN. For the elections, his genius lay in his capacity to depute simply the correct of officers to the locations the place the social gathering wanted to fabricate outcomes. Then, as now, the ruling social gathering felt referred to as upon to say the politically prodigal south-east of Nigeria as a part of its realm, no matter the need of its individuals. For this goal in 1983, the NPN desired to seize outdated Anambra State which occurred additionally to be the house state of Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first post-colonial Head of State and on the time chief of the NPN’s estranged political companions, the Nigerian Peoples’ Celebration (NPP).

For the job of softening up Anambra State, Adewusi discovered simply the precise man in Bishop Eyitene. The “Bishop” in Eyitene’s identify was not an ecclesiastical workplace nor was it a Pentecostal title. Bishop’s tenure because the Commissioner of Police in Anambra State was an prolonged bout of political Jiu Jitsu with then state governor, Jim Nwobodo. Their politically irreconcilable co-habitation grew to become the topic of bitter litigation, all designed, it appeared, to open the political flanks of the governor and his social gathering. It labored a deal with.

On behalf of Adewusi, Eyitene received litigation earlier than the Court docket of Enchantment asserting the autonomy of the police on questions of personnel postings. For engaging in his political activity with aplomb, Adewusi rewarded Bishop with redeployment to Lagos forward of the 1983 election. The brand new group he despatched to Anambra State routed Jim Nwobodo and his NPP within the governorship election. It was left to the Supreme Court docket to certify the great thing about Adewusi’s handiwork and so they duly obliged in December 1983 earlier than the navy sacked the lot of them.

37 years later, the Supreme Court docket relied on numbers confectioned by a rogue Commissioner of Police to declare in January 2020 that the person who got here fourth within the governorship election in Imo State the earlier yr was the truth is the winner. At present, the decide who rendered that judgment leads Nigeria’s judiciary.

This previous week has supplied up a wealthy commercial of the handy partnership between judges, the police, and politicians.

In Rivers State, the Inspector-Normal of Police clearly took sides within the political contest between incumbent governor and his fast predecessor, who’s now the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and who additionally wishes to be referred to as the godfather-general of Rivers State. First, he sought to arrest scheduled Native Authorities elections within the state on the artifice of obeying a courtroom order. The issue is that there have been two courtroom orders not one, from what legal professionals would name courts of co-ordinate jurisdiction. The Excessive Court docket of Rivers State in Port Harcourt had mandated that elections happen on 5 October. In requiring the police to withdraw from offering safety cowl for the vote, the Federal Excessive Court docket in Abuja successfully ordered that they need to not.

Thwarted by what seemed to be a spontaneous civic revolt, election day witnessed uniformed cops beneath the command of the IGP going from station to polling unit to cart away poll packing containers and tear down the displayed rolls of voters. The day after voting, supposed winners having been sworn in, the IGP introduced the withdrawal of his officers and males from the state. As if on cue, practiced arsonists descended on Native Authorities secretariats, burning and destroying them one after the opposite.

In neighbouring Edo State, in the meantime, the IGP’s situational dedication to obeying courtroom orders failed him. Legal professionals for the governorship candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Celebration, (PDP), Asue Ighodalo, armed with the duly served order of a reliable courtroom to examine election supplies discovered their manner into the state headquarters of INEC in Benin first blocked by a wall of uniformed cops. When the police requested for reinforcement, they had been joined not by items of extra police property however by thugs of the ruling social gathering.

The Nigeria Police Drive is the oldest establishment within the nation and in addition the biggest single employer of labour. Its personnel simply occur additionally to be each uniformed and armed. Beneath the Structure, the president appoints the person who heads the Police and that appointee can be obliged to take operational orders from the president. Traditionally, due to this fact, the place of the IGP has all the time been fraught and successive incumbents have principally been ready – with just a few exceptions – to handle this delicate relationship with ability and professionalism acquired by means of publicity to their predecessors and to high-level management coaching.

A lot of this coaching was missed by the present incumbent, Kayode Egbetokun, whereas he spent a lot of his time within the Drive as long-term Aide-de-camp (ADC) to the present president. His declare to the job due to this fact lies in private fealty his benefactor. For this, he has been handsomely rewarded, first with expedited preferment to a task for which his preparation falls quick and, second, with a focused modification of the legislation to increase his tenure so that he might be round to pre-determine the 2027 elections.

In November 2009, Kayode Fayemi, then an opposition candidate, took momentary depart from the protracted authorized tussle over the result of the governorship election in Ekiti State in South-West Nigeria two years earlier through which he was concerned to journey to New Orleans in Louisiana, in america of America, to handle the annual convention of the African Research Affiliation on “Electoral Politics and the Way forward for Electoral Reform in Nigeria.”

In a deeply considerate supply, Dr Fayemi feared that “the search for consolidating our democracy is now in retreat and dangers encountering outright reversals.” He defined that there are “5 ‘minigods’ that one should pay important consideration to in any try to grasp the character of electoral politics in Nigeria”. These embody the Impartial Nationwide Electoral Fee (INEC), “which frequently acts like a Siamese twin of the ruling social gathering….”; the safety businesses – significantly Nigerian Police Drive; “thugs and bandits”; the judiciary; the cash god.

20 years in the past, the late Harmless Chukwuma and I met with Tafa Balogun contained in the workplace now occupied by Dr Egbetokun to debate a doc he had commissioned from us. After reviewing our suggestions, Tafa checked out us with the complete majesty of his corpulent authority and informed us that he was inclined to not proceed with our ideas. Nearly wistfully, he added that when it was another person’s flip, the particular person may do what they wished. It’s now Dr Egbetokun’s flip and, as Inspector-Normal, he has turned Dr Fayemi’s predictions of electoral dystopia supervised by the troika of the police, bandits, and crooked judges right into a handbook of policing. It simply stays for cops to be required to sing: “In your mandate we will stand….!”

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a lawyer, teaches on the Fletcher College of Legislation and Diplomacy and may be reached by means of chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu.