The man died – Solomon Arase and Polycying of the community, of Prince Charles Dickson – Thage

Prince Charles Dickson Ph.d

“One day a dog came to the lion and challenged him to fight …” – The lion refused, because a lion knows that sparring with a dog decreases his pride.

This is the moral dilemma of the Nigeria police system today. A lion reduced to chasing the notes N20 to checkpoint, while the real criminals came across billions. The police forces of Nigeria – expressed the majestic law enforcement lion – has been reduced to a stray dog ​​who goes out to the heels of market women, bus conductors and unfortunate citizens.

Yet, in the middle of this gloomy reality, there was a man named Salomone Arase: a gentleman, a professional, a thinker in uniform. His recent death has reopened conversations on what the police in Nigeria could have been and what has yet to become if we want to avoid the abyss of social chaos.

This essay is not a praise, but a provocation. Because if the man is dead, the idea must not die with him.

Let me declare clearly: the Nigerian police are broken. Not injured. Not sick. Broken.

The infrastructures of humiliation since the police barracks often seem to be dilapidated orphanages, but these are the houses from which the police emerge to request respect. When the family of a man wets the open gutters, not to be surprised when he eliminates his frustration for the innocent.

Stations such as banks: each division police office is less a command post than a branch of an without a license. The DPO is the manager, the junior ranks are “marketing managers” and citizens are atm. Your collection for withdrawal? A Buscarella.

What do you say of what I am referring to the comedy of firearms: thieves with Ak-47s wander precisely, while the policemen will brand rusty rifles without bullets, or worse, loaded with anger instead of ammunition. Statistics, bitter as they play, suggest you to have more possibilities to survive a meeting of a police of a police “stop and search”.

How could I not mention the recruitment and literacy? Where, once the police were a profession of pride, today it is the last resource. Young people and women who have not been able to find a path elsewhere put on that black. Many cannot write their names, but they can write extortion.

The deceased Chinua Achebe wrote: “The problem with Nigeria is simply and exactly a failure of leadership”. The police are a microcosm of that national tragedy. The change of uniforms, new mottos and imaginative mottos such as “the deposit is free” to the amount of Schlimbesserung, Germans for “improvements that worsen things”.

In this madness, a step forward has taken ahead of Solomon Ehigiator Arase, police inspector between 2015 and 2016. His mandate was short, but his imprint was delicate and deliberate. Unlike many before him, Arase understood that the police did not only concern the gun, but trust.

The police led by intelligence underlined, the need for adequate training and, above all, a partnership of the community. He believed that the uniform should not be a barrier between police and citizens but a bridge. In many of his speeches, he reminded his officers that legitimacy does not come from fear, but from service.

Arase also pushed for better well -being for officers, making silent pressure for the reforms of housing and retirement performance. He knew that a hungry policeman is dangerous and that a man who does not retire will collect his tip to the road block.

Above all, it was a gentleman. He is not the perfect man, but one who knew that the police concerns human dignity. And only for this, it deserves to be remembered differently from the long fashion show of people looking for Black rental who preceded and succeeded him.

Nigeria today has to face a simple question: should the police remain a centralized federal dinosaur or should it evolve into state units and reactive community units?

Consider this: a policeman in Sokoto receives orders from Abuja on the crime in Bayelsa. A DPO in Jos has to wait for the “signal” from the headquarters of the force before mobilizing against a local threat. When the “signal” arrives, the city was burned in ashes.

Community police don’t just concern decentralization; These are legitimacy, trust and closeness. When the man in your neighborhood wears the uniform, you know his mother’s shop, you know his children, you can consider him responsible. On the contrary, you know your culture, your language, your market square.

The State Police is controversial, with fears of abuse by governors who can transform them into private armies. But are we honest: isn’t abuse already here? Is the Federal Police for guys commissions for those who are in power? The current system has failed; Clarifying it for fear of abuse is like refusing to treat a disease for fear of side effects.

The community police, if built on transparency, training and constitutional guarantees, can restore some dignity to the profession. Arase saw this. He spoke it. He worked for this. That’s why his death seems the silent of a crucial voice. Many could ask, what did he do? He did a lot, I met him once and I know he did a lot!

Sometimes, humor is the only way to survive absurdity. Because I can imagine my gaze on the face when I said I met it once.

Take the story of a policeman who once stopped his commissioner at night and asked for N20 for the “night movement”. The commissioner, bewildered, asked: “Do you know who I am?” The officer replied: “Na you are Sabi. If you don’t let something fall, nation of navigation tonight.”

Or the madman who, when he was asked by a DPO if he wanted to join the police, replied: “I Dey Mad”. The tragedy is that today madness is no longer a disqualifier, it is practically a qualification.

When the audience does not challenge its protectors so deeply that the sight of a checkpoint inspires fear rather than relief, what we have is not to monitor but parody.

We are captured in a dilemma. On the one hand, an infinite hope that perhaps a reform, a leader, a uniform change will save the police. On the other hand, the endless end of looking at the force sinking deeper into corruption, inefficiency and public hatred

But perhaps hope is found in voices such as that of Arase, who refuses to make the idea of ​​the community of the community die. Hope lies in civil society, media and citizens who refuse to normalize extortion as “how things are”. Hope lies in asking the government not only more police, but best police.

As Franon Fanon warned, “each generation must discover his mission, realize or betray it”. For Nigeria, the mission is clear: we must reinvent the police or perish in illegality.

Solomon Arase joined the ancestors. But in his memory, let’s discuss honestly: do we need the state police? Do we need community police? The answer is yes: if we are seriously survival.

We stop pretending that a central force in Abuja can protect every village of Zamfara, every road of Lagos, every farm in Benue. We stop deceiving ourselves that uniforms, sirens and equal fashion shows.

The man died, but the question he left us remains: can Nigeria build a police force that is respected, not feared?

As I write these words, I feel my refrain again: that Nigeria win.

And he wins, he must not – not by bullets fired by mistake, but as a community insured in confidence.

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