Mr. Suleiman Abba, former Inspector General of Police, speaks with Demola Abimboye on the role of security agencies in Nigeria’s democratic journey between 1999 and 2023.
Newswatchplus: How will you assess democracy in Nigeria since 1999? Has it guaranteed freedom, security of life and property as well as economic development?
Abba: I have always believed that democracy is a blessing and that it has existed in most Nigerian societies before the advent of colonialism and our attainment of independence until the first republic was terminated by the military interventions and the return in 1999. I’m happy it is being sustained. Most stakeholders responsible for that have really tried. I wish them well.
Whether the return to democracy since 1999 has brought about the advantages or values recognised with democratic governance is a different thing, not because it is peculiar to some developing countries. Twenty-four years is enough to assess whether the child has arrived. I say the values are good as there has been improvement in human rights. You don’t just hate someone and eliminate people from the world now. You have to follow the law. For a change of government, you have to form parties, campaign and have elections and the winner takes over. There are many other values but I think these two are relevant even to the job I did for over 30 years, rising to the top rank of IGP and having to shoulder the security responsibility in conducting elections nationwide.
Newswatchplus: What about democracy’s impact on economic development?
Abba: A lot of advancement has been made in this regard; that’s why our development has reached, perhaps, an unimaginable level in terms of infrastructure – roads, airports – and personal development – properties, businesses, etc. Even if we have to give credit to democratic governance for these developments, unfortunately, in terms of security, we’ve faced very serious challenges. You might even wish we were at the level we were before the advent of the current democratic experiment. One single area where it is difficult to give kudos without bringing down the hands you are hailing are the politicians who have delegated the responsibility. If you say you can’t blame politicians, then you can say why it was better under the military. The politicians contributed a lot to bring us to this level of insecurity.
Newswatchplus: What could have been done better in terms of security to make this democracy more enjoyable?
Abba: If I blame the politicians, we should look at what they did to bring us to this level or didn’t do what brought us here or refused to do. One, they eroded the system that took care of our security; they monopolized every power that was responsible for security and put them under their tight control. Nothing wrong in doing that but with misusing the power. For example, if as a local government chairman, you take over the power of village heads and you use the power absolutely and yet, you are the originator of what brings about crimes – thugs – or protect them because your business can only prosper that way, that undermines security. If politicians are responsible for what we have at hand now – terrorism, robbery, pipeline vandalism, kidnapping, etc., and investigations showed that most of it originated from the thugs of politicians, it means that as originators of the problems, they have not helped in controlling security.
If security agencies are not given enough requirements to fight crimes, then the politicians are to blame. Everybody knows of inadequate manpower and equipment in the Nigeria Police Force. Even the Trust Fund which should have helped police budget, welfare, etc., got into the hands of the politicians. It meant that a lot was wrong. If you are executing any project and a politician says his contractor must handle it, the project does not get delivered properly. My point is that even when you made efforts to find solutions, the politicians still didn’t meet the efforts and didn’t allow them to succeed in the last 24 years.
Newswatchplus: Despite manpower inadequacy, the Police still allocate as many officers as six or eight to protect VIPs – Senators, Reps and other top politicians. Why?
Abba: I’m not sure if a Senator, except the Senate President and his Deputy, gets more than two policemen attached to him. The fact is there are wastages in deployment but that is not the problem of manpower in the Police Force. The main problem is that we have refused to face the issue. If the Police need to increase manpower from 300,000 to 600,000 and we can recruit 100,000 at a go, it means that we can solve the problem in three years.
Again, there is the problem of duplication of responsibilities of security personnel. If the police deploy eight men to a VIP, there are other agencies that will deploy four to the same person. Recently, Oronsanye led a panel and advised the Federal Government to merge some of the agencies where duplication was visible for efficiency. But the appeals have not been well received. The Civil Defence does the same job with the Police during the day time but not at night. Similar agencies duplicate Police duties. The panel said merge them. But the politicians didn’t appreciate that and overlooked duplication of police duties.
Newswatchplus: Over the years, security men were compromised in the performance of their duties. With the benefit of hindsight, how will you react to this?
Abba: In 2009, I became Commissioner of Police, CP, in Rivers State. Two years later, we had the 2011 elections. I arranged security for the elections. Two weeks before the elections, I was redeployed to Lagos and Lagos CP to Rivers. After the elections, the information I got from all stakeholders was that it was the first time they had real elections in that state. Previously, the politicians would hide in places, fill the result forms and get announced as winners. The police, leading, should have been protecting those results right from arrival of election personnel and materials to the end of it.
I agree that the Police might have been compromised but it is the politicians that made the arrangement, executed it and made INEC, Police, etc., to compromise. It is not enough to accept to be compromised. But it was the effort we made that brought about that success in Rivers.
By 2015, the story changed, and has continued to change. Maybe the difference now is that they’ve devised better ways of doing it; but there is a semblance of getting back to pre-2011. Now, the person with the highest number of thugs will drive everybody away, write the results and INEC and some security agents get compromised and allow it to happen. The blame should go to the originators and executors – the politicians.
Sometimes, you must exonerate the Police because the law says only Electoral Officers will detect and point out offences committed and that gives the police the power to arrest. But how do you feel if the Police gets reported by INEC officials and politicians that it was the policeman who disrupted election by thwarting what they were trying to do? They will change the equation.
Again, how do you feel if the policeman protects the election and gets punched as a good officer? I give myself as an example. When politicians who believed they were losing, met secretly to disrupt the process in 2015 at the International Conference Centre, ICC, Abuja, venue of the collation of that year’s presidential election, a policeman who attended the meeting leaked it to me. I made efforts to protect the exercise. The plan was to disrupt the process, cause mayhem and take away the results. I ensured we blocked those thugs from getting near ICC. The Minister believed the place was for him. He expected the people would rise up in defence and support, not knowing they had been blocked. When he stood up, he was alone. That eroded at least 70 percent of his confidence. He was left to fight a lost battle.
I didn’t inform the INEC chairman of what I was doing because if I did, perhaps he might say he won’t continue. When he saw what was happening, he called me and asked if I saw what was going on? I explained to him that I knew ahead and had taken every action I should take to prevent them from succeeding.
Newswatchplus: Couldn’t the police have prosecuted that minister when he left office?
Abba: What happened to me who tried to stop the situation? Few days later, I was sacked from the office. So, who would want to take such action and suffer the same fate? In any case, it was the politicians who prevented him from being prosecuted because I never heard any senior man in government who condemned that minister’s action.
Newswatchplus: Are you saying the fear of being punished informed compromise by security agents?
Abba: That is part of it. We can’t run away from it. Everybody takes the career that he chose with the hope that he will succeed, not only getting to the top but at least taking care of his needs through it. If that is being threatened, even if you don’t connive, you might think of running away from the scene.
Newswatchplus: How do you see the kidnap of Governor Chris Ngige of Anambra State by AIG Raphael Ige and co?
Abba: I was a senior officer by then and should be able to assess the propriety or otherwise of that action. As a CP, there is no way I can compromise to the extent of anybody using me to get the governor of a state without a court order; someone who has immunity from prosecution. For me who had worked with the military, I know that immediately, the action will be termed a coup d’état. I think something went wrong. Here, the politicians were at it. They will go to any length to get what they want. Unfortunately, that’s the way we play politics.
Newswatchplus: Election violence has been rampant over the years. In Bauchi, members of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, were killed in 2011. What is your take on this?
Abba: I can’t recollect vividly what happened. But if you say Youth Corps members, I imagined it happened at polling stations because they were deployed there. Again, I blame the politicians. Once a politician realises he is losing a polling unit and wants to win it at all cost, he sets his thugs loose. Whoever resists gets beaten. Perhaps, the Corpers lost their lives in their efforts to protect the assignments they were given.
What we witnessed in Kaduna in 2011 was worse. Thousands of lives were lost. It got close to a religious war. Someone was so reckless in his actions. It was the police and security agencies that bore the brunt.
Newswatchplus: A presidential candidate who was a retired security agent threatened that blood would flow if he lost and it did. Why couldn’t the security agencies do anything about him?
Abba: There is a limit to which you can take action over a crime because your action will aggravate the situation. Imagine the man you talked about was arrested that time, the problem wouldn’t have remained in Bauchi and Kaduna. It would have spread to Kano, the melting pot of Talakawa politics, and maybe Lagos. As CP in Lagos, I went to Idi Araba, Agege and Alaba Rago, the major Hausa communities. I assured them that if they didn’t take the law into their hands and react to what was happening in Kaduna and Bauchi, they were safe. But if they allowed those sentiments and came out to demonstrate, they were trying to commit suicide. It worked.
Sometimes, the application of the law can cause more serious problems. So, you have to weigh the options. But most importantly, imagine taking actions and for whatever reasons, he became number one citizen, what happens to you whether in or out of service? You suffer. In any case there were people who loved him so much that they could even take the law into their hands and deal with you. It’s a complicated matter. I am happy we’ve allowed democracy to thrive in Nigeria but I think the game players are not keeping it right.
Newswatchplus: Nigeria has recorded too many unsolved murders in the last 24 years – Bola Ige, Funsho Williams, Harry Marshall, etc. What prevented successful prosecution?
Abba: Some of these cases have got to the courts. Unresolved doesn’t mean there were no suspects. In the Bola Ige matter, some people were charged to court. At the end of the day, some of them became political leaders in the country. Even when you have done the needful, the fault still gets hanging around the neck of the Police and other security agencies because we don’t want to put our searchlight on other people – the politicians. It is the politicians who will pardon those convicted for murder. The constitutional process will be followed and they pardon them.
Newswatchplus: We’ve had insecurity problems during off cycle elections in some states. In Kogi, for example, there were reports of gunshots fired at voters from helicopters. How did we get this brazen?
Abba: Why won’t they do it when some of them have legal protection even from being investigated. If from the top, some officers get compromised and they commit, the men at the top of the Police, for example, will find it difficult to solve the problem. Who will he report to since he cannot say no to the law?
Newswatchplus: Given your experience, why have you not joined one of the peace committees like the one headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar?
Abba: It is a noble committee. If I am called upon, I would do it. It has achieved very highly. At the end of the election, that committee came out forcefully to congratulate the NPF under my regime for a job well done. Even before the elections, some of them gave me personally the strength to ensure that the right things were done. I’m happy to say that when it mattered most, we stopped those who wanted to disrupt the elections. If they had succeeded, perhaps what you are doing now (assessment of democracy) would have been disrupted permanently.
