Very few Nigerians might recognize the faces in the above cove picture. But it is a historically significant picture. One of the faces is today a Professor of Political Science in Lagos. One is a big time lawyer and one is a lawyer cum chronicler of crisis. So, at individual levels, the picture has a genealogical message.
Decolonising the ideology of policing in Nigeria
But embodied in the picture is an even more potent message for the larger Nigerian society. And the message is the difficulty of struggling with democracy in the morning of the night of dictatorship. Nigeria has been a long night of dictatorship and suppression of the Other from being heard. It is operationalised in the picture by the policeman insisting that the leaders of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) in the picture could not address a press conference.
The reader who sent the picture to Intervention named the policeman as Solomon Arase who later became the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) or something like that. But, it is not Arase as a person who is in the dock. It is the system in which policing is anchored on the negation of pluralism of voices as the foundation of social order. The tragedy conveyed by the picture is that, 63 years after independence, Nigeria has not reformed the ideology of policing. That is a thorough-going reforming of the ideology of policing beyond changing the uniform, building a multiple storey headquarters, importing hundreds of new vehicles and similar cosmetics. For, a thorough going reform can only mean decolonizing the policing ideology that acts as a fetter on policing a complex novelty like Nigeria. Might a thorough-going reforming of the ideology of policing be part of an Asiwaju Tinubu presidency? Surely, he can because there is nothing complex about that.
Now, the last significance (and insignificance) of the picture is the language of the sender about “…when NANS was NANS”. The implication is that it is not only the ideology of policing that is in need of reforming but the ideology of everything.
Uhm!
1 Comments
Abdullah Musa
I have not seen the picture, but I can comment all the same.
The colonial origin of modern power gave the police Force the orientation to see every dissent as rebellion, potential insurrection. Thus it must always be quashed.
The fear is always lurking in the background that given free reins, members of the opposition have the tendency to want to make societies ungovernable.
Seemingly innocent, students, through their Unions are tools in the power game.
We, collectively, are unable to back away from the precipice.
The for power never stops. But as long as those who capture power are not allowed the basic freedom to keep society stable, then anarchy looms.
And to the members of the Left, that anarchy is their lifetime goal.
They want to come to power through revolution, but certainly not through the ballot box.
Majority of members of society must be educated enough before Police cold be expected to be more civil.