By Adagbo Onoja
There would be nothing wrong in calling the week (April 27 – May 2nd, 2025) the Nigeria Police week in Akwa Ibom State, the week having started with a dinner night organised by the state command and then succeeded by a 4-day Induction Programme for board members and heads of departments of the Police Service Commission (PSC). In themselves, these were nothing beyond the routine. This time, we cannot justifiably call them so.
At the empirical level, the two events brought a huge number of members of the national security elite associated with the police to one city for a week. This included one of Nigeria’s most solid sociologists. For instance, it was at the dinner night Pastor Umo Eno, Akwa Ibom State governor, declared that the state is leaving no inch or room for bandits, kidnappers, terrorists and sundry intruders. With a Commissioner of Police rated as a crack counter terrorism expert, he could say that. Mohammed Baba Azare, the Commissioner of Police is said to be a no nonsense operative. The governor’s Riot Act, as it were, is something interesting in the context of insecurity in other places.
Akwa Ibom in the Nigerian space!
At the much more involving level, the events are taking place at a time the police and policing is confronting insecurity nightmare everywhere in the world in the event of the informational turn in crime and criminality. Yes, there is the phenomenon of high tech surveillance and holistic tracking as well as shift from crime investigation (after it has happened) to signature campaigning (tracking lifestyle patterns to anticipate and burst threats), so also have the spaces of crime and threats assumed the complexity of the urban landscape: from walkways to supermarkets, down to city centres, from the open streets to alleys, forests, banks, amongst others. Smart City security projects involving real-time monitoring of plausible sites of action through integrated command and control centres, best exemplified by the one in Rio ahead of the 2016 World Cup in Brazil are being resorted to but such technophilic tendencies have not resulted in relief from permanent pressure for the police in particular across the world.
Unlike the intelligence services and the armed forces, the police is expected to showcase its dexterity or evidence of being on top of safety provisioning. The society expects it to have the operational capacity to burst all criminal threats. Unlike the secret police, the conventional police has no conceptual facilities such as ‘intelligence failure’ or ‘plausible deniability’ with which to manoeuvre out of flipflops or anonymise whichever operations it wants to. The very ordinary citizen has few meeting points with the operatives of the Directorate of State Security (DSS) in Nigeria, for example or of the armed forces as much as s/he encounters the police, one way or the other.
Rethinking the NPF in Ikot Ekpene
All these put the police at the centre of safety provisioning such that, taken together, the question would always be how prepared is the Nigeria Police Force in terms of coming to grips with functional policing? Within which policy and disciplining context is it located vis-à-vis meeting societal expectations at a time of generalised insecurity?
Intervention would argue that, for those who are not part of the police or national security establishment, there are no easy ways of knowing the plausible answers to these questions. But interesting hints come from what is said at events such as the 4-day Induction Programme by the Police Service Commission (PSC). It is the hints that take such events it beyond the routine, particularly for those whose entry point is language and meaning.
For one, the opening ceremony of the induction programme enabled us know that the incumbent Chairman of the commission is a Lord Tennyson quoting retired Deputy Inspector-General of Police. At the opening of the programme on Monday, April 28th, 2025 in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State, he excited the audience by prefacing his opening remarks with these lines from Tennyson: “So many worlds, so much to do, so little time, such things to be… “.
Why should just four lines from a 19th century poem written by a British poet cum legislator be this crucial? Well, the lines suggest that Argungu is personally aware that, security wise, Nigeria is on fire and that the quality of police men and women is crucial to quenching that fire. Awareness of so much to be done and quickly too at his level is a useful piece of information. As he said in the course of his address, it is only if the procedure (of recruitment) and the proceeds are good that we can expect a good police force. Someone who can frame his problem is already half way in solving the problem. That makes Argungu a round peg in a round hole.
Senator Barau Jibrin, Deputy Senate President who stole the show at the PSC event
The second sign is the presences at the event. There was Barau Jibrin, the Deputy Senate President (DSP) who stood in for Senator Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President who was said to have made the holding of the event possible. The Senator from Nigeria’s Kano State also started with a preface to his duty this morning. He was there to read the Senate President’s speech, he said but, even while standing on existing protocol, he demonstrated an imaginative protocol presence of mind in additionally recognising a few, starting with Senator Abdulhamid Ahmed Mallamadori, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs; the governor of Akwa Ibom State who was represented at the occasion; the Secretary to the Government of the Federation who also sent a representative and the Chairman of the Commission. There is a small but important lesson from Senator Jibrin’s move: widening or consolidating the support base for the conveners of the event through leadership by carrying everyone along.
These details are important in themselves because if all these presences do not secure for the police what it needs, then what again would? Interestingly, the Senate President’s speech was very strong. His constant references to Finland and Singapore point at his models of modern policing. Senator Akpabio also stressed the case for adoption of policies that “reposition the Police as protectors, not predators; as community partners not isolated enforcers”.
He argues that Nigeria now stands at a threshold where “our Police Force must no longer be seen merely as an arm of coercion, but as an engine of trust, justice and public service”. While assuring NASS readiness to review outdated laws, approve essential reforms and provide what he called robust oversight towards a people-oriented police system, the Senate President, however, noted that reform in itself does not guarantee performance without the introduction of a reward system that recognises officers who embody the finest ideals of public service. He is looking forward to a board of the Police Service Commission that dared and redefined.
Senator Mallamadori collecting an award for SP Akpabio from Gov Eno at the Police Dinner Night withCompol Baba Azare on his side
When he took his turn, Senator Abdulhamid Ahmed Mallamadori, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs not only commended the leadership of the Commission for convening what he called a timely and strategic session aimed at fostering a shared vision among Board members but equally “recognized the critical role the Police Service Commission plays in ensuring an effective, efficient, and accountable policing system in our country and key stakeholders”. As far as Senator Mallamdori is concerned, the oversight functions of the Commission is pivotal to the professionalism, discipline, and welfare of Nigerian Police Force and by extension, to the security and wellbeing of the nation.
He was happy to inform that the Police training institutions across the country will soon get the laws establishing each of them. The laws would give them the legal backing for budgeting and fiscal empowerment. He also announced securing of Federal Government approval for the establishment of a Police Academy in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State as well as the approval for a Police Service Commission Training Institute at Kabo, Kano State. “These achievements are inspired by the same values that I now urge you to embody: integrity, resilience, and service above self”, added Senator Mallamadori.
We must continue to work collaboratively to deepen institutional capacity, promote transparency, and uphold the highest standards of public service, he charged his listeners.
The Inspector General of Police, IGP Olukayode Egbetokun; the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission; the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, and, lastly, Pastor Umo Eno, the governor of Akwa Ibom State sent well received goodwill messages to the opening ceremony. What is observable though is how the Akwa Ibom governor smartly includes a business touch in his messages to some of these events, inviting all to come to the state. Additional to the reading the Riot Act to gunmen last Sunday at the Police dinner, for instance, was his declaration that it is the ambition of the state to be the first tourist destination of choice in Nigeria. He may have a point.
Even for a first timer like this reporter, Akwa Ibom has an inviting ambience. The starting point must be Ibom Air. It is understood it does not dish out delayed flights. It takes off at the declared take off time, something that other airlines give the impression is impossible.
A pix from the 8th floor of Four Points Hotel, Ikot Ekpene
Planned, clean and green all over!
The road networks are something else and, at the risk of overshooting oneself, not the sort of standards one sees around Nigeria. This is also the case with the hotel facilities. Four – Points Hotel at Ikot Ekpene is certainly at par with Ocean 45, the wonderful hotel in Okinawa, Japan that African foreign Affairs ministers met their G-8 counterparts in 2000.
Regrettably, the trip to the Police function in Akwa Ibom was too rigid to allow one see the facilities in Uyo and Eket that Senator Ahmed Mallamadori told me about in the car. He is taken as a witness of truth in this matter on two grounds. One, he too has pedigree, taking especially his incredible record as an ambassador into consideration. Two, because, much, much earlier, he too had taken to Akwa Ibom after taking a car and gone round incognito to be sure he was not being sold a lie about all round development of the state. What he found is, in his words, relatively stunning and far beyond Nigerian standards.
This is whether one starts from the stadium, the airport, the international hospital, the quality of the roads, the Overhead bridges in Uyo, the Four Points Hotel at Ikot Ekpene and similar facilities said to exist at Eket, the cleanliness of the markets, and, above all, the free education at the primary and post-primary education level. There is also a State Farm which is still functional. Free education and a functional state farm by any governor at all in Nigeria are enough to make the governor in question a hero of development politics.
The mystery is how it is possible that Senator Godswill Akpabio is not a national hero across Nigeria. He is the one named by all those I asked regarding who built the facilities One quickly concluded that there is a paradox on the ground. Obong Victor Attah, the first democractically elected governor of Akwa Ibom State planned Akwa Ibom but it was Akpabio who delivered the plan. Nobody argues against this.
It is either that Nigeria itself has no criteria for detecting and recognising exceptionalism of this type OR Akpabio suffers from a serious poverty of representational practice of power OR, worse still, he is another Okonkwo in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Okonkwo is the ultimate tragic hero, record-breaking or solid personal achievements but too essentialist to carry people along.
Whichever of the three questions, there is a paradox on the ground, worsened by neither the Nigerian Left nor the larger civil society which is an automatic monitor of democratic performance not to have made any statement on Akpabio as governor of Akwa Ibom State. Such a statement is a requirement for descending on his indiscretions. In a country where so many people who became governors remained completely overwhelmed throughout eight years, nobody is doing Akpabio or Akwa Ibom any favour in recognising what developments have been delivered there. No one else has delivered as much as Akpabio has delivered since 1999. And his should be the example on which the Left in particular should have built its immanent criticism of the system since 1999.
Obong Victor Attah, Akpabio’s predecessor and chief planner of the state
SP Godswill Akpabio, Attah’s successor and plan deliverer
That should not have been a problem for the Left because Akpabio reminds one of Bala Usman’s argument against homogenizing the power elite. Ake agreed with that, given his sharp distinction between the elements in Chief Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and those in the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic. There is, of course, Eskor Toyo’s statement that the People’s Redemption Party (PRP) also of the Second Republic was where any Leftist who knew what s/he was doing should be. Yet, each of these Second Republic Nigerian political parties was an expression of one fraction of the power elite or another.
The elite cannot be homogenized. There are cultural, spatial and psychodynamic differences between them, especially when it comes to confronting development. While it is true that it is not all the states which received/receives what states such as Akwa Ibom did and do, the issue is that we have seen too many governors who have done absolutely nothing with the little they got. So, Akpabio is the instrument for disciplining the laggards. Show casing Akpabio is not necessarily a favour to Akpabio in that context.
As things are now, it seems only Senator Akpabio can correct this anomaly whereby a hero is not a hero. His starting point must be to make peace with the people of Nigeria, starting with course correction in his handling of the clash with Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. The Natasha revolt is dear to the people of Nigeria because it is the single most successful critique of the establishment from within the establishment, transforming quickly into a radical revolt with devastating and near irreversible hits on the system. Specifically, it presented Senator Akpabio with a golden opportunity to showcase his capacity for hegemony (in a discourse sense) as an approach to power but only for him to take a counter-productive route. There is nothing lost in apologising to Senator Natasha NOW because the gains in doing that outweighs the cost free character of that approach. That matter is no longer a Natasha affair, given that every discourse can be productive in an unpredictable manner.
Like every other politician, an Akpabio must have his own indiscretions. But if the same Akpabio has the elevated record of service delivery he has as governor of home state of Akwa Ibom, then it is an imperative that he begins to be choosier in the fights he picks. Turning adversity to advantage is, we are told, every politician’s first lesson.
In the meantime, it is a democratic duty for everyone who goes to Akwa Ibom to shout the quality of facilities in the state at the rooftops, thereby compelling all those who pocketed Nigeria as governors, ministers and so on to be ashamed of themselves.
Lastly, given the voices being heard on the police and the quarters the voices came from, it should not be surprising if a brand new, more cultured police force begins to emerge sooner than later. After all, any object at all, including an institution such as the police, is a reflection of how it is talked about!
