By Festus Adedayo

Today’s Gen Z world may not know of “Eddie Kwansa”. It is a famous folk song Owerri, Imo State, donated to the rest of Nigeria. Released shortly after the piercing agony of the Nigerian civil war in 1972 by Dan Orji and his Peacock Band, the song should remind people of my generation of the equally famous NTA soap opera, Village Headmaster. The Orji song became the signature tune of that opera and it runs thus, “Eddie Kwansa oo, bia o, bia o (3ce) Izu ka nma na nneji oo, bia o, bia o…” Translated, the melodious song says, “Come, Eddie Kwansa; It’s good when blood brothers reason together.” Another version translates the lyrics into “Come, Eddie Kwansa, come; quarrels among brothers are best resolved at home.”

The legend behind it makes it an evergreen folk song among Owerri people. The legend, the claim of which has been disputed by those close to the musician who sang it, has it that a handsome young man named John Obik-we entertained Owerri people with his guitar before the civil war. Shortly after the war, he and his three brothers discovered that their late father left land for them in Port Harcourt. They then agreed to sell it and share the proceeds equally. Upon the sale of the land, however, Obik-we’s siblings short-changed him, giving him not even a dime. Downcast and frustrated, Obikwe relocated to Ghana where fate smiled on him. He then totally disconnected from his siblings. His successful life story, especially entreaties from his now repented brothers to him to come back home, became the legend strewn into a song by Orji.

I digress. Yoruba’s world of incantations is built round literary devices of alliteration, similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, etc. When you are assailed from within and without by enemies, necessitating your running helter-skelter for remedy, my people deploy the imagery of the leaf called “àáragbá” to describe your situation. As an incantation, using the homophone in “gbã” which collocates with and is an alliteration to the name of the “aàárà-gbá” leaf, they sew together the poetic incantation of “ilé ò gbá, ònà ò gbàá níí se ewé àáragbá”. Translated, that incantation curses that, as the leaf of “àáragbá” moves hither thither in discomfort, so shall it be for the recipient of the incantation.

Buffeted at home by pellets from terrorists, and abroad by the razor-sharp tongue and gruff of Donald Trump, the American global policeman of democracy — apologies to General Sani Abacha — I suspect that political enemies must have cast the spell of a troublous presidency on my Yoruba kinsman in Aso Rock. In this piece, however, I volunteer to be there for my kinsman. It is at times like this that consanguines, whose blood is reputed to be thicker than water, ought to be there for one another.

Now that our kinsman in Aso Rock is being pummeled by artillery fire from everywhere, we hope his travails will enable him listen to our Eddy Kwansa call on him to let us reason like children of same Oduduwa parent. Didn’t the lines of Eddy Kwansa song say it is good when brothers reason together?

The truth is, when you think you have fooled the rest of the world, unbeknown to you, you are the greatest victim of your contrivance. When you luxuriate in such a fool’s paradise, my people have two very powerful sayings for you. In the first, they say you are Amuda’s concubine. She was a jester who gave birth to a child and named him Yésúfù — “Oníyèyé alè Àmùdá t’ó bímo tó soó ní Yésúfù”. Amuda is a colloquial rendering of “Ahmad” which in Arabic translates to a “thankful person,” while Yesufu is a collocation of the name “Ahmad”. The etymology of the phrase and the plot which gave birth to it are unknown. However, the phrase has widespread appreciation and affiliation with self-delusion and hypocrisy.

There is another saying of my people which explains and disdains self-conceitedness. It rests on the pedestal of the earlier saying’s format and, like it, euphemistically expresses bother about self-deception. It is woven round a woman, whose son is named Jimoh and who walks into a mosque on a Friday and, satisfied by its ambience, claims she had arrived the home of her son. Yoruba express this saying as, “Èèyàn ò tan ara rè bíi Ìyá Jímòh t’ó wo Mósálásí t’ó ní òhun dé ilé omo òhun.” Now, this is the link: “Jimoh” is a nativized rendering of the Arabic word “Jum’ah” or “Mosalasi” (mosque) among Yoruba Muslims. When Iya Jimoh gets so hypocritical and self-delusional as to conflate “Jimoh” the mosque with “Jimoh” her son, then her self-deception is perceived to have landed her in cloud-cuckoo-land.

Nigeria’s national pains knew no bounds as terrorists struck the country two weeks ago. It was one of the country’s most nightmarish weeks ever.

I pitied my kinsman. In my piece of last week, I reckoned that Karma was again shooting its shot. Not to worry. The Builder of Lagos had a response. When it comes to ‘effizy’ (showmanship), no one can surpass Lagos people. It is in their gene. The man who would not stop his flight in September, in spite of huge national clamour, but proceeded to Paris, the nestling home of his buddy and business partner, Gilbert Chagoury, for a “10-day working vacation,” stopped his plane from flying to South-Africa this time around. Pronto, the Minister of Defence, Bello Matawalle, was ordered to relocate to Kebbi State.

Many wondered what the minister, severally accused of being godfather of bandits, would do in Kebbi. Governor Idris of Kebbi was the first to burst our bubble. No single naira was paid in ransom, he said. The president too said he was relieved. Glad that the abductees are back home, Nigerians still wanted to know how the Tinubu wonder came about. On his X handle and on a national television interview, Onanug claimed it was the work of non-kinetics. Whatever that meant! Couldn’t he spare us of bombast? He said the Eruku 38 were released after security agents made direct contact with the kidnappers, maintaining that government always chooses to avoid direct armed assaults due to risk to civilians.

The Nigerian senate continued its grovelling pedigree. Senate spokesman, Yemi Adaramodu, said not only didn’t government pay a dime to the abductors, the “bandits fled when they saw superior power.” It reminds me of that evergreen James Hadley Chase counsel that liars must have a good memory. From Onanuga’s statement above, which clearly contradicts Adaramodu’s, you would imagine that the military team on a rescue mission and the bandits were in a ‘paddy-paddy’ detente while negotiating the abductees’ release. How did an expedition that was said to be ‘negotiation’ morph to become Adaramodu’s “superior power”?

The lead story headline of the Daily Trust newspaper of November 27 — “Released, Rescued or Ransomed?” — speaks directly to the anxiety and apprehension of Nigerians about the Tinubu wonder rescue. Knowing Nigerian governments’ predilection for the untruth and this particular government’s obsession for barefaced lies, interests in the mode of the rescue of the abductees went upswing.

Not long after news of the release of the Kebbi girls, their abductors released a bothersome video where they affirmed that there was indeed negotiation between them and the government. In the video, the gloating abductors said that, in spite of Nigerian fighter jets hovering over the captors, government security agents were helpless until they negotiated with the bandits. Like Amuda’s concubine and the woman who walks into a mosque on a Friday and claims she had arrived the home of her son, this government and its officials are on a roulette of lies. While they think they have made a fool out of us, little did they know that we watch them live in a fool’s paradise.

All over the world, state negotiation with terrorists is not only seen as an anathema, it is a weak alternative. It is also enveloped in dark motives. Most governments that choose to negotiate with terrorists do so in order to find a mediated way out of a conflict. In doing this, they merely postpone an imminent defeat, or a detour out of what is called a mutually hurting stalemate.

Negotiation is frowned at as a means of combating terrorists because, in the long run, it violates states’ domestic and international legitimacy. When a state credited with a monopoly of force goes to terrorists to negotiate, it, by that very fact, loses its regards.

From the other side, negotiations are ego-boosters for terrorists. They often seek it so as to drastically improve their popular standing and legitimacy. In the recent ransomed negotiation with the terrorists in Nigeria, they could be seen doing a video of their victory with the Kebbi girls and flexing their muscles. Negotiations thus legitimize their philosophy, if there is any, and strengthen them.

Moreover, in insurgency and counterinsurgency, the weaker party is perceived to be the one that engages in negotiation. When money is involved in negotiation with terrorists or bandits, it is even worse. The tactlessness of doing this is that it gives more legroom to the bandits. This we could see in the Papiri girls abductors who gloatingly and literally dragged Nigeria’s sovereignty and claim to being a powerful country in the mud in the viral video. Giving bandits money for a detente also affords them access to more resources for purchase of higher-grade weapons with which to launch the next attacks.

Those who argue from the angle of collateral damage fail to reckon with the fact that warfare has gone beyond this. With drones, targets can be taken out without any collateral damage.

While the apparently ransomed rescue of Eruku and Papiri abductees was going on, my kinsman ordered a sweeping nationwide emergency on security. He also ordered massive recruitment in the army and police, as well as a withdrawal of policemen from VIPs, which are very commendable steps. The presidential order that has had Nigerians clapping ever since is the go-ahead he gave the National Assembly to review extant laws disallowing states from establishing their own police forces.

However, shortly after the release of the abductees and after the president ordered a state of emergency on security, bandits again struck a rice farm in Palaita, Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State. They abducted 24 persons, which included pregnant women. In Kano and Kwara States between Monday and Tuesday last week, 20 people were also said to have been abducted by bandits.

Now is the time to urge our own Eddie Kwansa to come home for a truthful discussion. Didn’t a line of that immediate post-civil war song say it is good when brothers reason together? First, let our Eddie Kwansa draw his pillow close to him and have a heart-to-heart talk with it. When all else fails, the pillow is man’s closest associate. A line of Juju music legend Ebenezer Obey’s evergreen song of the 1970s, K’á so’wópò, says even if nobody else knows, one’s undies know the whole gamut of one’s closely guarded secrets. Eddie Kwansa’s pillow would tell him things are not looking up at all under him, at least security-wise.

He and his “Oníyèyé Àlè Amùdá” security chiefs have told themselves lies that terrorists shook hands with them and released the hostages without ransom payment. Two persons cannot suffer a mutual colossal loss from a lie; either the person telling the lie or the person to whom it is being told is richer in the truth of it.

Let Eddie Kwansa ask for the tape of his predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo’s speech at the Plateau State Unity Christmas Carol and Praise Festival held in Jos, Plateau State on Friday. Thereafter, let him ask for a meeting with him. Even if there was a quarrel, quarrels among brothers are best resolved at home, so says the lines of Eddy Kwansa. A breakdown of Obasanjo’s homily is this: Nigeria is burning under the feeble grips of our Lagos brother. Nigerians have the right to ask for assistance from other world leaders if theirs have shown incompetence. He left a capable government that could deal with the Mephistopheles. I agree with Obasanjo absolutely.

We do not hate our brother. We will share the glory if he destroys those who want to destroy Nigeria. God bless Eddie Kwansa.

Reaction from Worgu Boms Ex-AG Rivers State

 No!

Not Village Headmaster. Please, that epic song was the signature tune of the Masquerade of Chief Zebrudaya Okrigwe Wobo alias 430 starring Gringory and Clarus.

Secondly sir, The Village Headmaster was not a Soap Opera. It was Episodic- each subsequent one in the series did not naturally continue the narrative from the previous, like Mirrow in the Sun. remember that one?

Just wanted to contribute.

Understood and loved your piece, though but weighed in only for the purpose of these minor clarifications for purpose of accuracy.

Enjoy!

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Lasisi Olagunju

For ten clean years (November 2015 to 7 October 2025), Mahmood Yakubu was the chairman of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). On 29 November 2025, fifty-three days after he left that impartial office, he became a beneficiary of the election he refereed; he was made an ambassador by the president.

Yakubu is not a stand-alone actor. From July 2017 to December 2021, Nentawe Goshwe Yilwatda was the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Benue State. On 24 October, 2024 he became a minister of the Federal Republic. The man’s blessing blossomed on 24 July, 2025 when he was appointed the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress.

Yakubu and Yilwatda are teachers. They are getting their rewards here and now on earth; not in heaven. There should be many more like them inside and outside INEC. The electoral commission is now well and properly fixed inside the chambers of power.

We wait to see who will match their regiment: INEC and politicians of all hues, gunners and gunmen and the court mass into a mega-camp. Has this happened? Has it not? You still wonder why every governor, every senator, their mistresses and concubines and paramours take their tent into the IDP camp named APC? Samuel Butler was right: Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” It is no longer necessary for the ruling caste to scheme, manoeuvre and listen to the above counsel of Sun Tzu and his ‘The Art of War.’ Resistance is dead, opposition is buried, so why should the president’s battle plans be made again under the cover of darkness?

President Bola Tinubu does not pretend. Piss into the stream if you can; defecate into the pond. It is the lily-livered who asks toad and frog and their cousins to close their eyes before doing so. This is where we are.

But, this piece is not about those defecators. This is about the hollow men in Nigeria’s hallowed chambers. This is on our senatorial children of food; large, privileged boars in our Animal Farm.

Child of food is omo oúnje in Yoruba. When you take your seat at every dining table, when you become uncontrollable or overly excited at the sight of food, you are omo oúnje, and you get the label. And, you do not have to be a child to be so-called. Adults who forget themselves when food appears are children.

Senate president, Godswill Akpabio, read a letter to his colleagues last week, a dinner invitation from the First Lady to the Senate. The ‘overly excited’ Senate President concluded the reading on a note of self-revelation. He said: “This is like an invitation by a mother to her children. I wish you sumptuous meal and fruitful discussion…We all meet there on Friday.”

Our senators are children. Now we know.

I did not hear any of the other 108 senators say their president was wrong; that an arm of government paid and pampered to vet and check the acts and actions of the executive should not be found snoring in the kitchen of the Villa. They all love their status as nurslings; they flaunt it. Shame on the enemy who are jealous of the chummy, yummy relationship between Nigeria’s lawmakers and the president’s kitchen.

It is most likely that the First Lady rejoices at having almighty senators, big men and women of power, as her children. The Villa is a shrine; it exists to be worshipped by big men, small men; sycophantic sucklings. The air that keeps the bees there humming is flattery; its synonym is unctuous praise.

Flattery, my dictionary says, is “excessive and insincere praise, given especially to further one’s own interests.” That is the ‘gold’ coin which Akpabio offered the First Lady.

The author of ‘Maximes’ and ‘Memoirs’, François de la Rochefoucauld (1613 –1680) has a deprecating line: “Flattery is a counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no circulation.” No one should tell anyone that accepting and spending fake, adulatory notes have consequences. “He that loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer” (Timon in Shakespeare’s ‘Timon of Athens’, Act I, Scene 1).

Those who enjoy flattery deserve the consequences of sycophancy. That is what Timon says in the above quote, in bitterness and in regret.

Why would adults we invested with legislative powers look at themselves and say they are children of the president’s wife? And what are the implications for the recipient of the (un)solicited sycophancy?

One morning, a fox was walking through the woods looking for something to eat. He looked up and saw a crow sitting on a tree branch. He had seen many crows before, but this one caught his eye because she was holding a piece of cheese in her beak.

The fox immediately thought, “Perfect! That cheese will make a great breakfast.”

He walked to the base of the tree and looked up at the crow. “Good morning, beautiful bird!” he called out.

The crow looked down at him with suspicion. She didn’t trust him, so she kept her beak tightly closed around the cheese and said nothing.

The fox continued, pretending to admire her. “What a lovely bird you are! Your feathers shine, your body is perfect, and your wings are wonderful. A bird as perfect as you must also have a beautiful voice. If you would just sing one song, I would gladly call you the Queen of all Birds.”

Hearing all these sweet compliments, the crow forgot her doubts, and even forgot the cheese she was holding. Wanting to prove she deserved the praise, she opened her beak to let out her loudest caw.

Of course, the cheese fell straight down—right into the waiting mouth of the fox.

“Thank you,” said the fox, smiling as he walked away. “Your voice is great; if only you added brains and caution to all your other qualifications, you would make a great queen.”

Aesop, ancestral teller of the original of the story above, did not forget to add that its moral is that people who listen to flattery often pay the price for it.

That story and the caution it conveys are for the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, because of whose food Senator Godswill Akpabio pronounced her “mother” and all senators her “children” last week.

English philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon, in ‘The Advancement of Learning’, wrote of a senator who once stood up in a full Roman debate and proposed that Tiberius, their emperor, be declared a god. The philosopher used this incident to illustrate what he called the lowest form of sycophancy. Even in that world of excessive praise, Roman senators never thought of calling themselves the children of the emperor. For a modern democratic legislature to refer to the spouse of the head of the executive as “mother” is worse than the flattery Bacon mocked. What Akpabio blithely said is casual but deep. It collapses the constitutional separation of powers into a family drama where elected lawmakers become puny dependents seeking favour. If ancient Rome saw such gestures as the death of democracy and republican dignity, then the Nigerian Senate’s metaphor is an even clearer sign of institutional self-infantilisation.

Akpabio and his Senate’s excessive fawning inadvertently situate their chamber in the immature stage of infantile thinking, one ruled by deference and emotional dependence.

Yet, an independent legislature is the reason we say democracy is better than all other forms of government, including military rule.

‘The American Mercury’ was an American magazine which was on the newsstand from 1924 to 1981. Its July 1937 edition contains an article with the headline: ‘Crooks in the Legislature.’ The magazine withheld the name of the author of the article “for obvious reasons” but said it published his story “as a factual record, believing it typical of most state legislatures.” From the eight-page article I picked this paragraph in celebration of the legislative content of our democracy: “Putting summary ahead of detail, I may say that ten percent of legislators come perilously close to being racketeers; twenty-five percent are primarily venal in their attitude toward such legislation as is capable of being turned to advantage; another twenty-five percent will accept money for their votes on bills which do not vitally affect the general public and in which they have no personal interest; another twenty-five percent, who do not accept money, are moved often by personal and group relationships, including retainers, business arrangements, political advantage, patronage demands, etc.; and about fifteen percent are, or think they are, above suspicion of judging legislation other than on its merits –although I never have met one who could take an utterly detached viewpoint even when unconscious of personal interest. Unadulterated altruism has yet to come within my purview. Paradoxically, some of the crookedest legislators in my state are among the ablest in their consideration of measures.” That was democracy and the parliament in the United States of 88 years ago. Take a look at what we have in 2025 Nigeria.

Senator Akpabio and other children of food are not alone in the kitchen with the one who holds the yam and the knife of this feast. The press is the fourth estate of the realm; it routinely gets compelled (or it compels itself) to do what Akpabio did. The judiciary is the third leg of the dining table; it stands up for power and privileges and, for their songs of praise.

In ‘How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt want to know if the American democracy is in danger. And, in every word, every sentence and every paragraph of that 2018 book are signs that suggest an affirmative answer to that question. They say: “This is how we tend to think of democracies dying: at the hands of men with guns…But (now) there is another way to break a democracy. It is less dramatic but equally destructive. Democracies may die at the hands, not of generals, but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power.”

Lagbaja, the masked musician, sang at the beginning of this democracy that it must not die. But, if this democracy was a child, it would qualify as a foolish child. And a foolish child is as useless, lifeless as a dead child. There is a Yoruba proverb that explains it deeply: A child lacks wisdom, and they say the child must not die; what else kills faster than lack of wisdom? Dying is not the absence of life; it is the lack of useful existence.

Senators are children of the president. “Are we living in the age of stupid? The era of the idiot? The answer of course is yes, with examples of monstrous moronicism everywhere.” That is the verdict of film critic and Guardian Australia writer, Luke Buckmaster, four years ago. He thinks democracy has become a government of idiots, by idiots for idiots. “If this is already the era of the idiot, what comes next?” He asks, and the answer, according to him, is: “An Idiocracy.” Idiocracy is a pick on the title of Mike Judge’s 2006 dystopian comedy.

Do not hesitate to apply the above to my lot and to your lot. The ways and strays of this democracy remind me of the famous ending of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Hollow Men’, a 1925 poem about a state in paralysis: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Democracy dies where the legislature celebrates its becoming the executive’s puny child, mother hen’s brood. That is what the “children” in our Red Chamber do. The rot is complete when you add to that tragedy the press paying to play with the Villa, and the judiciary upstanding in deference to the president’s personal anthem: ‘On Your Mandate We Shall Stand’.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

When Olusegun Obasanjo returned as the president of Nigeria in May 1999, according to Mohammed Dikko (MD) Yusuf, a former Inspector-General of Police, (IGP) he “inherited a Police Force that was poorly equipped, decimated in numerical strength, deprived of necessary logistics, and lacking, as it were, moral and public support necessary for effective performance and the enhancement of the security of the nation.”

Former IGP, MD Yusuf said these in the report he submitted in 2008 to President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua as the Chair of the second Presidential Commission on Police Reform to report in as many years. Headed by former Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG), Muhammadu Danmadami, the first submitted its report in May 2006 to President Yar’Adua’s predecessor and benefactor, President Olusegun Obasanjo. In August 2012, another retired DIG, Parry Osayande, reported to President Goodluck Jonathan as the chair a third Presidential Commission on Police Reform to report in the six years between 2006-2012. The ritual of these reports achieved one thing: they crystallised a diagnosis of the problems of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and they are many.

When President Obasanjo returned to power as a civilian 1999 after 15 unbroken years of military rule, there were an estimated 137,000 personnel in the NPF, representing a police-to-population ratio of approximately 1:876.5. The UN Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recommends a ratio of 222 per 100,000 or 1:450.

To address what he believed was a serious shortfall in police personnel, President Obasanjo directed the recruitment of 200,000 additional police personnel over five years from 2000 to 2004 at the rate of 40,000 recruits every year. By 2003, the police population was estimated to be 260,000 and by 2005, Human Rights Watch estimated that Nigeria had 325,000 police personnel.

President Obasanjo deserves credit for identifying the situation with the NPF as a priority and giving attention proactively to the need to fix it. In a mere five years straddling his two presidential terms, he had managed to completely redress the deficit of police-to-population ratio in the country. In 2007, the NPF claimed reported that it had achieved a police-to-population ratio of approximately 1:400, based on an estimated force strength of about 360,000 police officers. At the beginning of President Yar’Adua’s tenure in 2008, this had climbed modestly to 370,900.

But this came at a cost. At the time, all the training institutions in the NPF could only accommodate an intake of 14,000 per year. With no additional investments to upgrade police training institutions, it meant that standards of training, doctrine and orientation had to be sacrificed in the expedited recruitment. When he reported in 2008, MD Yusuf pointed out three consequences that have come to haunt the Force since then.

First, the expedited recruitment was “carried out in a very unwholesome manner without adherence to the established rules and guidelines governing the screening and recruitment of candidates”, which led to an influx of “suspected criminals, people with physical deformities, doubtful background, over-aged and educationally unqualified barely literate entrants into the Police Force.” This “grossly compromised standards and resulted in widespread abuse of established procedure”, resulting in “the enlistment of unsuitable candidates…. many of whose suitability to wear the respected uniform of the Force is in doubt.”

Second, it transpired that many politicians had used the opportunity to insinuate elements from their private networks of violence into the force for future political gain. As a result, the expedited recruitment created an internal market in the outsourcing of police assets. In its 2008 report, the MD Yusuf Presidential Commission on Police Reform estimated that 27% percent of police personnel were engaged in personal guard and protective duties for private individuals and VIPs, thereby creating a situation in which “the rich and powerful behave with impunity because of police protection.” When it reported in 2012, the Parry Osayande Presidential Commission on Police Reform put this proportion at over one-third.

Third, the Force was chronically underfunded to the extent that, as IGP Ibrahim Kpotun Idris pointed out in 2017, “budgetary allocations on paper [were] insufficient to meet the financial needs of the Force, [and] the actual releases are far below what is budgeted.” As a result, the outsourcing of police personnel for guard duties became a subsistence and wellbeing supplement for the officers so deployed and a source of revenue for the commanding officers deploying them, who were often privately rewarded for doing so but also got through that to secure the patronage of their rich and politically connected benefactors.

This is the structure that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu did not appear to have taken account of in designing his recent directive to the Inspector-General of Police to withdraw “police officers guarding VIPs for core police duties.” Four days after this directive, on 27 November, the IGP proudly announced that 11,566 of officers and men under his command had been ordered withdrawn in compliance with the directive. He cleverly failed to say how many had complied. Olusegun Adeniyi, who served as presidential spokesperson when MD Yusuf submitted his report in 2008, warned firmly that the police officers “may not obey” the president or their Inspector-General.

In his directive, President Tinubu had, somewhat naively, added that “VIPs who want police protection will now request well-armed personnel from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.” The result will be that officer of the NSCDC across the board will now make more money at the expense of the police personnel whom they will be replacing.

A presidential directive cannot fix this political economy of policing in Nigeria. That requires imaginative and committed commitment of time and leadership. Police personnel depend on the crumbs from the table of VIP benefactors for survival and subsistence. With no functional police training facilities, Many of them have been denied exposure to basic training, formation, and professionalism. They are unlikely to see their uniforms as evidence of a bond to get killed in a gun-fight with Ansaru, Boko Haram, Mahmuda, or any of the number of nihilist groups that now afflict the country.

For many police officers, desertion will be a better alternative than compliance with the order. There will be no capacity to replace the number of officers who could choose to do that. For the leadership of the Force, therefore, discretion is likely to be the better part of valour. Moreover, the Force itself relies on the market that it has created in the commercialization of its human assets for significant informal funding.

For President Tinubu, this is evidence of a failure that he must own. It is not as if the crisis of insecurity in Nigeria is one that he was unaware of before he assumed office. On the contrary, he had weighed in on the matter repeatedly both as an opposition leader and as a senior member of the ruling APC before 2023. Yet, since assuming office over 30 months ago, he has failed to identify the issue as a priority or to address it with the forcefulness and imagination required. Many now believe that he is issuing incomprehensible and untheorized directives under pressure from the fulminations of a foreign leader.

The presidency is not one job. It is many jobs in one. Some of those roles are delegable. But the job of Commander-In-Chief is not. As president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has excelled in the delegable dimensions of the office. But he has been mostly missing in action in relation to the non-delegable aspects of the presidency. In his most recent directives, he has been found out. It is well possible that his presidency will come to be defined by how he re-tools. That could begin with finding his way to coherence on the issue of police reform.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.