29th December, 2010
Majority Leader of the Lagos State House of Assembly and member representing Ajeromi/Ifelodun 1, Hon. Kolawole Taiwo, speaks with EROMOSELE EBHOMELE on the violence that has engulfed his constituency and calls for the establishment of state police
A police officer was recently accused of killing one of your constituents…
There is this gang war going on in our area now and I do not know how to go about it. Some boys would just decide to fight one another. Sometimes one street against another, using dangerous weapons. You know in this kind of situation the police are also at risk. For example, recently, the police were trying to quell one of such crises when an innocent boy was killed while watching a football match. Two others were severely injured. I don’t know why the Policeman had to shoot into a crowd. I am in a terrible dilemma and don’t know how to handle the situation. I have been going around trying to settle the problem and I don’t know whether to blame the police or not. Go to my area now, you would see policemen everywhere. The place is now a police town because the officers are trying to protect the lives and properties of innocent citizens. We should find a way round it. It is either they start using rubber bullets or some other measure.
The major challenge now is how to disarm the youths in the area, most of whom now possess guns. You would even hear them boasting that they have charms and that they can’t be hurt by bullets. We need to find a way around it. It is either we decide to legalise the carrying of guns so that when you know I have a gun, you would respect me, or we enforce the law that prohibits ownership of firearms by just anybody. When the boys in this area start their war, you would see them brandishing cutlasses as if we are in a bush where there is no civilisation. It is unfortunate. You need to witness it to appreciate what I am saying. At a particular point even my security details could not come down from their vehicle. I just told the officers to stay back because the people of the area won’t hurt me, because apart from the fact that I am from Ajegunle, I represent them well. If you hear some of the reasons why they are fighting, you would wonder why a person should even pick a stone to fight for such trivial issues. Sometimes, the issue could have to do with girlfriends. This degenerates into a gang war. Imagine one stupid person fighting another stupid person and people queuing up behind them without considering the causes and effects of the problem. Sincerely, if you know the number of heart problems affecting people of the area now because of the tension in the area, you would marvel.
I was shocked when one of my colleagues kicked against the building of more area commands in Lagos State as shown in the 2011 budget proposal, but I don’t support that. We need them more than ever to be closer to the people. This is another reason why we advocate for local or State police because we would know the officers. I wonder how the police officer who killed that boy would be living if he was born in that area and everybody knows his family. There was one such killings that I mediated in ,and almost got accused of supporting a faction of the warring parties. I had to bring both groups to the House of Assembly before the issue was resolved.
It is unfortunate that these boys are carrying a lot of weapons and this gets me wondering how we can successfully conduct the coming election with the weapons in the hands of these guys.
There has been the recurrent face-off between the police and the people of Ajegunle…
You know, I have repeatedly commented on the life of a Nigerian policeman on the floor of the House. Look at it this way: a man that was born and raised in Sokoto, that cannot be compared to Lagos in terms of advancement and population, decides to join the police and does not have any other place to go other than the police college in Sokoto, and the day he graduated, he was handed a letter of transfer to Ajegunle in Lagos. He gets to Ajegunle and the Divisional Police Officer asks him to join the transport department and he continues from there (you know most of them sleep and work in the office).
When it is evening, they would go and roja, (a local slang for illegal arrests and subsequent bribe taking). This is a bad structure that needs to be corrected. If you are posting someone from Sokoto to Lagos, you must provide some contingency arrangement for him, but in the federal service, it is six months before payment. Therefore the man is already used to the life of roja before his salary is ready. He must get the money daily or there would be problem. In this instance, he would become an angry man and what do you expect? He can decide to kill anybody when he is being prevented from roja, which is now part of his income. So if somebody is disturbing him, it is like stopping you from getting your livelihood. Just as we need to restructure the police, we also need to stand up for the truth. Why should we insist on the federal police instead of state police? Why can’t we give the state police a try since we are losing lives as a result of the carelessness of the federal police?
Why do you think the federal government is shying away from creating state police?
It is unnecessary arrogance. They are too conscious of their powers. Those that drafted our constitution did not even do justice to that. You know the constitution was drafted by the federal government under military rule and it was a reflection of what was going on then. Now that we have democracy, the legislature should be magnanimous in their decision making to reflect the position we have found ourselves, but they too have now become too conscious of power. The federal legislature does not want to let go. Their argument is that now that they have not given the permission for state police, the governors are using the federal police against them. So what would happen when the state is created? But most politicians do not know that power is transient and that when you use it against somebody, it would one day be used against you. We have seen people who have served two terms, and are no longer in government and are suffering now. We should only do those things that would better the lives of the common people so that when we leave, we would enjoy them.
The security situation in the country is very bad and our federal legislators are not doing anything about it. We have amended the constitution twice, yet we have not mentioned anything about the exclusive aspect of the concurrent list of power distribution that is affecting the power situation in Nigeria, they also refused to talk about the police. In the country, they only try to amend the constitution for political reasons. We are amending the constitution because we want to conduct the election and not to correct the imbalances we have noticed in the running of the government.
We need to sit tight just as journalists should always ask questions on why politicians are contesting for positions. I am not leaving myself out of it. Remember I threw a stone at the Commissioner for Establishment asking him to stop all these literature about his functions. He was not happy that day. But he called me some weeks later and told me I had made him a better Commissioner because he is more interested in the core of the office now. These are the things we need to do to correct the ills of government and leadership. The basis for a government is to have good security, peace and tranquillity. Any other function of government comes under this.
The area around the National Stadium is now illuminated and so it is difficult for anyone to hide under the cover of darkness to commit any crime. If you are not blind, you would see him and if it is one-to-one, we would fight there now and die there and go home. That is security. But we are toying with this issue which should be the most important part of any government. If a government cannot provide security for lives and property, what is the essence of that government?
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