11th July, 2013
By Kanayo Esinulo
We begin with these obvious facts: many Inspectors-General who reigned at Sir Louis Edet House, Nigeria Police Headquarters, before the current police boss, Mohammed Abubakar, simply did not have the courage or the moral credentials to disband or outlaw the extortion points that we usually call Police Check-Points. These were the criminal points where innocent citizens driving to their offices or places of business were routinely and daily harassed and often forcefully dispossessed of their hard-earned monies and valuables. It became so disturbing in the 1980s and ‘90s, that members of the public complained aloud, asking a succession of military regimes of that period to, please, curb the excesses of security men on our roads and highways. I recall that in response one former Inspector-General tried to impress Nigerians with the good news that ‘all police-check-points nationwide are hereby abolished’. Later, it became known that his officers and men chose to ignore and frustrate the order because the boss was said not to be too clean to stop their source of ‘extra cash’. But IGP Abubakar has proven, if any proof was still needed, that an order remains an order and must be obeyed. This may have been possible because equity and clean hands go together.
The case of the new behaviour among elements of the Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, is a sad story to tell. For those of us who remember the evolution of Road Safety experiment in Nigeria, the new odour of the FRSC is patently offensive. The experiment started in Oyo State under the administration of late Bola Ige. It was Professor Wole Soyinka who headed it, gave it life, prominence and respectability. Its general success in Oyo State encouraged the federal government to adopt and widen its scope nationwide. When it became a federal agency, it was one government organ to envy and emulate – disciplined, focused, with men and officers that were decent and polite to members of the public. I appreciated the FRSC members during the Abacha days in power when some of us would submit stories and disappear from Lagos in night buses. My editor then, Mr. Tunji Bello, of the Sunday Concord, now Lagos State Commissioner for Environment, hardly knew that as I handed in my stories and depending on the topic and the temperament of the regime at the particular time, I would relocate either to Owerri or Port-Harcourt before the story appeared on Sunday. For some of us in the hide-and-seek game with the brutal regime, night luxury buses were our preferred mode of transport because of the cover we believed they offered. You needed to see FRSC men flag these buses to a stop by that time of the night, enter and ask us if the man behind the steering was driving well or dangerously, and then a few pep talks and advice, and we were again on our journey. Now, FRSC officers and men no longer do that. They now check vehicle documents, and asking bribe-attracting questions that only result in their men being compromised.
It is easy to assume, therefore, that while IGP Abubakar was busy with the dismantling of the notorious police-checkpoints across the country, the department of the FRSC was replacing policemen with its own men, who started doing exactly those things and exhibiting that ugly behaviour that brought so much odium and disrepute to the Nigeria Police which IGP Abubakar was waging fierce a battle against. And there is no way that Corps Marshal, Osita Chidoka, would claim that his office is unaware of the checkpoints that his men mount, nationwide, along our roads and major highways. He should know by now that his men on patrol no longer give advice or pep talks to drivers and passengers or ask to be shown fire extinguishers and caution signs, and thereafter signal drivers to proceed on their trip, but to drive carefully. No, all these are now history. Chidoka’s men are now more interested in asking for ‘your vehicle documents’ and once they get hold of the documents, the style is to ask the driver, especially commercial drivers, to follow them to their official car – usually parked at a distance. I am told that that is an invitation to something too shameful to discuss here. Otherwise, why are his men fond of luring drivers away from the prying eyes of their passengers or inquisitive men like this reporter? Yet, commercial vehicles that load their boots with so much luggage that protrude so dangerously behind to the point of possibly dis-balancing the vehicle when in motion, are stopped and after some minutes are allowed to continue their journey. Yet again, the vehicles that are clearly not roadworthy are allowed on our roads and you begin to wonder.
I now return to the new face of police checkpoints that IGP Abubakar may not know about or has not been fully briefed on what is going on. New police checkpoints have emerged, totally different from the conventional ones where disused motor tyres are deployed to block roads for the usual harassment and extortion. In three major cities surveyed – Lagos, Owerri and Port-Harcourt – traffic light junctions have become cash points for corrupt policemen. At four locations, Allen Avenue junction in Ikeja, Lagos, Okigwe Road Roundabout (Modetel junction) in Owerri, Aba road intersection along old GRA, Port-Harcourt and beside Otedola Estate along the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway (FRSC monopoly), one could count more than 12 ‘security officers’ at any of these junctions or intersections. And they are usually made up of regular policemen, traffic wardens (Yellow Fever), and LATSMA officers in the case of Lagos State. What would ten or 12 officers be doing at just one point, even when the traffic lights are working well, you may ask?
They are there in their numbers to extort, not to see to smooth flow of traffic, as they usually claim. ‘Yellow does not mean STOP,’ I told one of them one day. ‘You ought to know this more than I do!’ I insisted. He allowed me to go where I was going. And God help you if you are caught making a call. Their weekend is made that day.
The decay in the FRSC and the new tactic of corrupt policemen to change style and location and continue their game really show how resilient and resistant corruption in the system has become. It is painful. An FRSC that was our pride and symbol of hope in a country addicted to official corruption betrayed our hope. A police force that we all thought IGP Abubakar was rescuing from its self-inflicted notoriety still accommodates DPOs that send their men out to traffic light junctions to ‘catch offenders’. These are obvious signs that a lot more work still needs to be done by the IGP, if what has been achieved so far must be consolidated.
In my view, Abubakar has done well. Before he became the boss, the known blackmail was that bad and corrupt policemen would unleash criminals on Nigerians if any IGP tried to dismantle police check-points. Well, Ababakar has done it, and we are still waiting for the so-called criminals in the Force to fight back. They cannot, and they dare not because the IGP’s ‘No Police Check-point Order’ was so well thought-out. It is working. And it is popular, and it has thoroughly distinguished IGP Mohammed Abubakar from some of his very notorious predecessors.