The Police Service Commission (PSC) in Nigeria has been in the news of late, locked in a mysterious but historical loggerhead with the Nigeria Police Force (NPF). That background gave newsworthiness to the screening Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024 of the recent presidential nominees for the position of the Chairman, Secretary and member of the commission.
Members of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs performing the screening of the nominees started arriving at the screening room first. Senator Babangida Husseini from Jigawa was the earliest to arrive to take his seat. A few minutes after 3pm, Abdulhamid Ahmed Mallamadori, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs arrived at the head of a number of ranking senators. About eight of them could be counted, minus those who joined later.
It was such a pleasant surprise listening to Mallamadori opening the session with what he calls the Senate’s standard Opening Prayer. The text escapes trapping the Senate into any of Animist, Christian, Muslim or any other religious orthodoxy. If evidence were ever needed to show that the Nigerian power elite can be imaginative and forward looking when it wants to, that prayer is the ultimate. It is surprising that the National Assembly’s media machine does not play up the masterstroke in the management of heterogeneity in that context. Such a prayer is, of course, a masterstroke in a country where inter-group violence of religious sparks is commonplace, showing that while culturally homogenous countries are sad about that, a relatively heterogenous country such as Nigeria is not cracking its brains on how to derive the advantages of ethno-cultural and religious diversity. The more reason there should have been interviews with the masterminds with the imaginativeness in thinking of and crafting the NASS Opening/Closing Prayers which called on God directly but without offending any religions.
The opening prayers led to a quick summoning to the screening proper. Mallamadori invited his colleagues in a short opening statement to how anything to do with the Police has to be taken seriously in the light of what he sees as the grave insecurity challenge Nigeria is passing through today. He said the PSC is a vital structure in the national security architecture and it is therefore a great opportunity for them to be the ones to screen the president’s nominees for the positions. The Chairman drew attention to how positive the comments from ranking Senators, former governors and other players about many of the nominees have been, statements he said they would take seriously in conducting this exercise and writing their report to the larger Senate for its consideration.
Each member of the Committee was asked to introduce himself, followed by the nominees who were told they could make use of the opportunity of introducing themselves to stress any aspects of their curriculum vitae they think needed to be so stressed for the benefit of senators. Introductions over, the floor would be opened for distinguished senators to ask any questions they considered crucial to the exercise. He was done.
Senator Abdullahi Gumel who lubricates relations between the president and the Senate formally presented the nominees to the committee, each of whom took the time available to stress whichever segment of his CV already with the Committee he felt was most essential. Common to all of them is a minimum of a Master’s Degree. Argungu arrived at an LLM through the then Grade Two route, then a NCE, a first degree in Education and an LLB. He was among the first batch to serve in the NYSC which he did in the old Kwara State. Chief Onyemuche Nnamani, the Secretary nominee also holds an LLM in addition to a Banking and Finance degree. He was Secretary to the Government of Enugu State some years back. He will not be a first timer as Secretary of the PSC. Taiwo Lakanu, a retired Deputy-Inspector General of Police, is both a Philosopher and an LLM holder from the University of Leeds in the UK. The CMS Grammar School, Lagos Old Boy was Head of Operations and Force Secretary before he retired.
Senator Gbenga Daniel took the first shot. He called it a privilege which he seemed determined to reciprocate with a masterful presentation. The former governor of Ogun State said, amongst others, that chance brought him and Argungu together before: Argungu was one of the 14 or so commissioners of Police in the eight years that Daniel was governor of Ogun State. And from that vantage point, he categorically pronounced Argungu to be able and capable, scoring him as a super cop. He knew the job and he did it well, he said. He implied that Argungu was one of the best if not the best of the many commissioners of Police he worked with as governor. He put in a word too for Taiwo Lakanu, the member nominee even though Daniel is not from Lagos State, Lakanu’s state of origin. But as he argued, Ogun State is the only neighbour Lagos State has, its other neighbour being the Atlantic Ocean. Amidst the laughter this generated, he considered him a good fit material for the job.
Senator Ezenwa Onyewuchi from Imo State rated Chief Onyemuche Nnamani a well-educated technocrat whose tenure as one-time Secretary to the Enugu State is, in his opinion, the best ever. He equally endorsed Taiwo Lakanu who once served as a Commissioner of Police in his state. Though confessing no deep knowledge of Argungu, he associated himself with Gbenga Daniel’s assessment of him.
Senator Babangida Hussein from Jigawa State intervened to say that a greater percentage of the insecurity in Nigeria will be gone if the country had a great police force. In other words, he wants Nigeria to strive for a great police force which he thinks the promotion technique could be a demotivating factor against. ‘Let’s get the best hands, recruit them and Nigeria will have a great police force’, he said.
In all, there was no fundamental departure from the tone set by Senator Gbenga Daniel although the senators had a number of issue they wanted the nominees to speak on. Predictably, one of these is how the in-coming team will address the constant altercation between it and the NPF. The second main question is how they would address the problem of indiscipline as well as promotion in the force.
DIG Hashimu Argungu did respond to the questions, the summary of which is his belief that no disagreements will ever arise if all doubts and suspicions are cleared as soon as they arise. In summary, the in-coming PSC helmsmen told the Senate Committee and, by implication, the entire Nigeria that they constitute a collective vicar of the knowledge-based paradigm and that the approach will guarantee them a tension free tenure. That’s certainly a bold statement to make if we take note of the speech-act credo that speaking is doing.
Within one short hour, similar interesting statements and scenarios emerged in just one of the many halls in the NASS: Senator Mallamadori’s punditry that anything to do with the Police has assumed centrality in the light of the security nightmare the country has experienced; the level of integration among the elite as evidenced in Senator Gbenga Daniel and DIG Argungu having worked together before and Senator Onyewuchi knowing DIG Lakanu previously from his (Lakanu) being the Commissioner of Police in his neighbouring state and, lastly, Babangida Husseini’s blast that a greater percentage of the insecurity in Nigeria will be gone if the country had a great police force and that it is time to do that.
For a one-day visitor to the NASS, these are indicators that there seems to be a lot going on in the Senate, for example, that are not out in the media. For instance, there is a high degree of symbolic interactions that go on there, such as the protocol and decorum among the Senators towards each other that one came across. It goes against the inflammatory articulation of ethnic and religious agenda in the newspapers, all of which emanate from the elite since the language the media uses are not generated in the media but, mostly, outside of it.
Symbolic gestures may have nothing to do with law making itself but law making is not possible in an atmosphere without subtlety and protocol. In any case, nobody expected some over 100 senators to gather in one assembly hall without intense meeting and mixing across diverse spheres. Most political sociologists would be very interested in the informal networking between and among senators, given the degree of elite fragmentation in Nigeria. The fact that much of informal interactions elude capture does not mean that their consequences/outcomes are lower in implications for national unity than the business of law making.
For now, it is a waiting game what the Senate does with the report from its Committee on Police Affairs. There is no knowing what the Committee decided since non-Senators and the media were cleared out of the screening room for the Committee to go into a closed session. Nothing can be more interesting than the paradox playing out: it took a nasty insecurity experience of Boko Haram, banditry and kidnapping for the society to realise that civilisation is not possible without the police. But as Senator Mallamadori said in a recent BBC interview, not the kind of police trained in police colleges that Nigeria has now. If a PSC with well educated ex-police operatives cannot be an oasis in the desert, then what else can?