Policing and Politics in Nigeria: A Comprehensive History 9781955055185

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Policing AND Politics IN

NIGERIA

Policing AND Politics IN

NIGERIA A Comprehensive History

Akali Omeni

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2022 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Suite 314, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com

and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB www.eurospanbookstore.com/rienner

© 2022 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Omeni, Akali, author. Title: Policing and politics in Nigeria : a comprehensive history / Akali Omeni. Description: Boulder : Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Traces the checkered record of Nigeria’s police force, dissecting the political and internal intricacies of its evolution, structures, and missions from the colonial era to the present”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021036842 (print) | LCCN 2021036843 (ebook) | ISBN 9781955055048 (hardback) | ISBN 9781955055185 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Nigeria Police Force—History. | Police—Political aspects—Nigeria—History. | Law enforcement—Political aspects—Nigeria—History. Classification: LCC HV8278.A2 O63 2022 (print) | LCC HV8278.A2 (ebook) | DDC 353.3609669—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021036842 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021036843

British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

To Piglet and Bones, my French Bulldogs And to mere Sharan,

ଏ ୂ ଻୉ ଳେଵୂ ଺ୂଫୄ, ଳେଵୂ ୃଯ଒ଵ, ଢୋ ଓ଺ ଺ଲ ମ୆ଡ଼ ୃ଱଻ପଵ ଱଩ୂକବ

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

1 The Nigeria Police Force

1

2 British Imperialism and the Imperial Police

13

4 Fighting the Great War

43

3 The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision 5 Postwar Amalgamation

6 The “Nigerianization” Question

7 Police Practices and Institutional Issues 8 The Independence Era

9 Intrigue and Politics in the New Republic

25 59 71 89

101

119

10 Coups, Pogroms, and the Spiral into Civil War

131

12 Cops, Robbers, and Firing Squads During Military Rule

171

11 The Biafra Police Force During the Civil War

vii

143

viii

Contents

13 Legacies of Military Rule

201

15 The NPF as a Broken Institution

249

14 The #EndSARS Movement Bibliography Index About the Book

229 285 301 323

Illustrations

Tables 3.1 5.1 6.1 6.2

Periods of Colonial Rule in West Africa Heads of the Amalgamated Police in Nigeria Personnel in the NPF, 1934 Officer Rank Personnel, British and African, in the NPF, 1931 6.3 Nigerian Police Force Pay Scales, 1950s 10.1 Changes to Senior NPF Postings After the 15 January 1966 Events

26 67 72 73 78

134

Figures

12.1 Armed Robberies and Murders Reported to Police During Military Rule, 1967–2000 13.1 Nigeria’s Comparative Incarceration Rate, 2019 13.2 Nigeria’s Prison Occupancy Level, 2019 15.1 Annual Allocations for Police Colleges and Training Institutions, 2009–2013 15.2 Drivers of Police Corruption in Nigeria Maps 1.1

Nigeria and Its Location in Africa

ix

173 208 208 262 268 2

1 The Nigeria Police Force

The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) is one of Nigeria’s four critical state apparatuses, along with the judiciary, the civil service, and the military. Today, the NPF has grown to be the largest police force in Africa, interacting with the world’s largest Black population. Its origins go as far back into Nigeria’s colonial past as 1861. In this book, I explore policing and the police institution in Nigeria from 1861 to the present. Crucially, I present a corrective to the notion that, unlike the military, the police have remained on the margins of Nigerian political history. My findings and analyses indicate that the NPF has played the most persistent role of any government organ, going back to the earliest period of Nigeria’s colonial administration. These colonial origins critically shaped both policy and academic discourse on the enduring challenge of policing and the police institution in Nigeria. What did the police institution originally represent? From the start, where did police constabularies fit in relation to the Nigerian citizenry and the colonial state? How was the police institution in Nigeria historically perceived? To what extent have both representation and perceptions changed over time? These are questions worth addressing, and to do so, an unsentimental journey to British rule in colonial Nigeria is vital. A Brief Historiography of Colonial Policing The idea of a small constabulary in Lagos was floated around before the end of the slave trade in the lower Niger areas and in the colony of Lagos, as Philip Ahire explains in Imperial Policing, and by the 1880s, trading

1

2

Policing and Politics in Nigeria

Map 1.1 Nigeria and Its Location in Africa Map of Nigeria

company constabularies had unsystematically emerged. These outfits, military forces in all but name, were used to protect imperialist trade interests. Delving deeper into why police forces in West Africa were formed, Michael Crowder’s West Africa Under Colonial Rule reveals their similarities and differences along with what they were meant to achieve: protecting colonial interests. By the 1940s, the NPF had shown little inclination to move away from that task. After all, serving the people and serving the colonial state often meant two different things, and the colonial police always came down on the side of the state, as shown by W. R. Shirley, again and again, in A History of the Nigeria Police and by C. R. Niven in How Nigeria Is Governed. This tendency of the police to support the colonial state at the citizenry’s expense—a feature explored in detail by Tekena Tamuno in The Police in Modern Nigeria—was not the only setback to the police-civilian interface. As Moses Ochonu shows in Colonialism by Proxy, the colonial police also had institutional pathologies wherein different constabularies,

The Nigeria Police Force

3

such as the Hausa Constabulary, developed their own subcultures with a “charged atmosphere of religious difference” toward people of different ethnicities they policed. The British administration would “outsource” this subculture in the deployment of Hausa policemen (Dogarai) to dominate the Tiv and Idoma areas of the Middle-Belt Region. Ochonu calls this practice “colonialism by proxy.” This use of the colonial police to subjugate large populations could also be scaled down to small-community and even individual cases of socalled corporal punishment. The use of such punishment in the by colonial police in northern Nigeria exposed the double standard of colonialism and colonial policing as noted by Steven Pierce and Anupama Rao in Discipline and the Other Body: If colonialism was about the management of difference—the “civilized” ruling the “uncivilized”—the allegedly necessary violence of colonial government threatened to undermine the very distinction that justified it. Disciplining “uncivilized” people through the use of force could often seem the . . . way to correct their behaviour, but there was a problem: Violence also appeared to be the antithesis of civilized government. (4)

As Toyin Falola shows in Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria, the British government in Nigeria struggled with this dilemma: on the one hand appearing and acting civilized and yet on the other hand mandating its colonial police to employ force—and sometimes an extreme amount of it, including the use of Maxim guns—to pacify the angry “uncivilized” Nigerians. Such institutional and moral concerns aside, the colonial police in Nigeria were nevertheless quite effective at their job of policing and security. These professional competencies were a notable positive in an institution otherwise fraught. As an example, detective work and investigation were particularly impressive within the NPF by the mid-1940s. Indeed, in Man-Leopard Murders, David Pratten shows just how well the colonial police could on occasion work with local populations to solve cases, and how adaptable colonial policing could be under pressure and amid uncertainty. The colonial police had to deal with some esoteric crimes, including cultist murders in southeastern Nigeria. As Paul Osifodunrin details in Violent Crimes in Lagos, 1861–2000, the colonial police for decades had its hands full dealing with the Lagos underbelly, where crime, opportunity, and a large population tested them and made them arguably the country’s most competent police force. Even so, police work was far from the only function of the colonial police in Nigeria. Colonial policemen were, on occasion, deployed or conscripted to fight colonial wars for the British administration. The role of Nigerian police regiments during World War I, otherwise known as the

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria

Great War (explored later in this volume), is important to examine because most of the classic works on the Great War in Africa, such as Byron Farwell’s The Great War, and Hew Strachan’s The First World, mostly interrogate the role of the military. Some texts do focus more specifically on Nigeria and on the role of colonial Nigerian police units during World War I. Akinjide Osuntokun’s Nigeria in the First World War is one such work; Ahire’s Imperial Policing is another. For that matter, the broad mandate of the police institution that emerged in Nigeria was hardly unique in Africa. As Brigadier General Edmund Howard Gorges observes in The Great War in West Africa, to the British colonialists, African states were defined largely in territorial terms that often came into dispute during both World War I and, to a lesser extent, World War II. Moreover, as Charles Joseph Jeffries points out in The Colonial Police, military force—often also employed by so-called constabularies— was quite necessary to protect territory and deter local aggression, from within and without, against colonialist interests. Indeed, in Khaki and Blue, Anthony Clayton and David Killingray show that through two world wars, policemen from the Gold Coast (Ghana), Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Uganda, and Kenya came to train, fight, and die alongside military personnel in protection of the Crown’s interests on the African continent and beyond. Those policemen who returned from both world wars, but even many who stayed back in colonial Africa, were often equipped, trained in military drill, and indoctrinated in the tradition of using armed force to protect the colonialist interests. This militarized posture would be deemphasized by the 1950s. As colonial government records indicate, by the late 1950s in Nigeria, the police institution leaned even closer toward professionalization with a focus on police work.1 Yet, this is not to say that the population was ever at the heart of colonial policing. On the contrary, an examination of the police discourses from the late 1950s and 1960s suggests that the mandate and attitudes of the police in Nigeria have stayed true to their colonialist traditions even after independence. Along these lines, Tamuno, in The Police in Modern Nigeria, charts the history of the NPF and how, going into the 1960s, it held—but never quite fulfilled—the promise of becoming fully professionalized. Tamuno’s work remains a definitive study on the police and policing in Nigeria. My book would not be possible without it and the other important works highlighted in this brief historiography. From the Colonial Era to #EndSARS Despite this rich history of studies on police in Nigeria, academic studies on internal security in Nigeria have positioned the army as the security

The Nigeria Police Force

5

principal. This was reflected in the diminished role of the police during Nigeria’s military interregnum and endured long after.2 To some degree, the #EndSARS social movement of October 2020 placed police action under the spotlight. However, Nigeria’s police story is not just a debate around a disgraced antirobbery squad’s excesses. The narrative on police failure in Nigeria is far more nuanced when the institution in question is more than a century and a half old and, from inception, did not place the average Nigerian’s interests and well-being at the core of its culture. By the time Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999, the military interregnum had exposed the worst of policing and the flaws of the police institution. Already tainted by its colonial origins, exploited by First Republic politics, and sidelined by successive military juntas, the NPF was hastily given a democratic veil without the requisite institutional reform. This was a hollow force: it had no substance and, at a strength of less than 100,000 operational personnel, was unprepared to serve the interest of hundreds of millions of Nigerians.3 Consequently, the modern NPF is a broken institution. Present tense, not past or future. Moreover, the flaws of the police institution can be interpreted as a microcosm of the failure of the composition and function of the Nigerian state, more broadly, as Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare posit in Encountering the Nigerian State. Like the interests of the Nigerian state, those of the NPF were not, ab initio, aligned with the citizenry’s interests. This misalignment of the police and public interests can again be traced back in Nigeria’s history. For decades, imperial policing helped both mercantilist companies and the British Crown to further their commercial and political interests within the Niger River area. Noteworthy police-related developments during the colonial era included the emergence of early constabularies after the annexation of the Colony of Lagos in 1861; the militaristic and naval role of the powerful Royal Niger Company Constabulary (RNCC) in the late nineteenth century; the deployment of NPF detachments as part of the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) during World War I, and the political struggle for accelerated “Nigerianization” of the police force by the 1930s and until independence in 1960. Whereas in this period the police institution enjoyed a warm relationship with the state political institutions it enabled, it grew even more distant from the citizenry. The decade between 1960, when Nigeria gained independence, and 1970, when the civil war of Nigeria ended, was a pivotal period in the country’s political history. In the early 1960s, the colonialists departed and, shortly after, the three major political parties emerged within Nigeria’s early First Republic polity: the Yoruba-led Action Group (AG) in the Western Region, the Igbo-led National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC),

6

Policing and Politics in Nigeria

and the Northern People’s Congress (NPC). The period also brought critical incidents, including the political crisis from 1962 to 1965, two coups d’état in 1966, anti-Igbo pogroms in northern Nigeria in the same year, and the outbreak of civil war in 1967. The conviction and incarceration of statesman Obafemi Awolowo, the emergence of Akintola’s Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), the state of emergency in western Nigeria in 1962, and the contentious elections of 1964 and 1965 also shaped the decade. However, much of the existing literature on this period of Nigerian history focuses mainly on politics, the politicians and political parties, and the Nigerian Army. In this work, I present a corrective, arguing that the NPF was not just an important actor between the 1950s and 1960s but played a vital role in the political events that unfolded from 1962 forward. Indeed, both the NPF Special Branch and the Police Mobile Force (MOPOL), in the early 1960s, changed Nigeria’s political history. The intrigue within the NPF did not end with the departure of the colonialists. Instead, shortly after independence and only three years after the first Nigerian became the head of the police force, the civil war broke out. The civil war (1967–1970) is a widely researched part of Nigeria’s history. Quite surprisingly, however, there is next to no academic research and writing on policing and the Biafran Police Force during the conflict. I offer a study on policing in Biafra that will appeal to historians and scholars who wish to learn more about the police, not just the Biafran Army, in eastern Nigeria during the war. Moving on from the traumatic experience of the civil war, I also examine how the police served under military dictatorships for most of the subsequent four decades. There was a lot of violent crime, and many infamous armed robbers and gangs emerged. Furthermore, public firing squads first introduced in 1970 in response made for macabre time indeed. Checkpoints and, by the 1980s, anti-robbery squads, were introduced to curb the spread of violent crime. In addition to the rise in violent crime, working under authoritarian rule was a significant challenge for the NPF. Police forces in such regimes are not apolitical. On the contrary, they tend to be coercive instruments that invariably support the state, often stifling free will and abusing the police’s constitutional monopoly on excessive force. This proved the case in Nigeria for most of the period between 1970 and 1998. An examination of policing and the NPF during this period demonstrates how military rule further damaged the police-civilian interface and further enabled the culture of coercion within the NPF. This organizational culture came with consequences for police legitimacy in the postmilitary era. There is a rebuttal worth highlighting here. Military rule ended in 1998, and colonial rule ended even earlier, in 1960. Why, then, are these eras so instrumental to understanding the modern police and policing in

The Nigeria Police Force

7

Nigeria? After all, since 1999, the NPF has existed under uninterrupted democratic rule. In theory, the actions, perceptions, and organizational culture of the modern NPF should be markedly different than they were in the two preceding eras. There are no more imperialistic colonial masters to manipulate the force and contort its purpose. there are no more military heads or governors to unconstitutionally distort policing and damage its function as part of a power-preservation process. Nevertheless, as I argue here, decades of organizational culture and historical experience cannot be easily set aside. The likelihood and pace of substantive reform are often contingent on both, and organizations—large ones especially—are often relatively slow to shake traditionalist behaviors and implement change. This is no different for police forces. For such reasons, despite much rhetoric about modernization and reform, the NPF has retained the colonial and military-era traditions that underpinned an uneasy relationship with the population. At the heart of this tradition is a culture of coercion in its darkest manifestations: torture, extortion, extrajudicial killings, and impunity. Indeed, by October 2020, police brutality and heavy-handedness in Nigeria seemed to have reached a peak. The #EndSARS social movement initially started as a protest movement in response to the NPF’s notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The movement quickly escalated to mass protests against a Nigerian government that, in many ways, had mirrored police indifference to human rights, the rule of law, and public trust. #EndSARS gained traction in part because of social media and new media, and in part as a result of the impunity with which the NPF had acted throughout Nigerian history. Structure of the Book In Chapter 2, I aim to demystify the narrative on British imperialism and colonialism in Nigeria. It provides a background of how imperial policing emerged to protect both. The Royal Niger Company (RNC), the West African Frontier Force (WAFF), and the Armed Hausa Police were deliberate creations as representations of British colonial interests. These institutions demonstrate why an imperial police force had been required since the earliest days of Nigeria’s colonial administration. The chapter links imperialism, mercantilism, and colonialist administrations’ arrival in the lower Niger area to the emergence of imperial policing and the NPF. The chapter employs case studies and theory to interrogate history from the end of the slave trade in Britain in 1807 up to 1899. The emergence of the RNC and the formation and role of its constabulary are critical themes within the chapter.

8

Policing and Politics in Nigeria

In Chapter 3, I examine the Lagos Police, the oldest police force in Nigeria’s history. I discuss the formation of the force during the annexation of Lagos (1861), the emergence of the Armed Hausa Police (1863), and the Glover Hausas later that year. The twentieth century brought a range of police-related changes in Nigeria. The RNC was no more, and with it went its constabulary. At the same time, on 1 January 1900, Lord Frederick Lugard became high commissioner of Northern Nigeria. Lugard had an atypical view of what policing should look like and had the resources and the drive to implement that vision. In a sense, his vision was more like Glover’s, within the Armed Hausa Police establishment in Lagos. In Chapter 3, I also interrogate the concept and practice of policing and the constabulary according to Lugard. As an example, in the latter part of the chapter I look at Lugard’s reforms implemented within the Northern Nigeria Protectorate Police Force and examine the implications of these reforms for the Northern Police Force by 1914. The year 1914, to many Nigerians, is readily recognizable as when Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates to become Nigeria. However, for many Europeans, that year bears a different meaning: 1914 was when hostilities began in World War I. For Britain as one of the principal actors in that war, the conflict profoundly affected its imperialism, including the African colonies. The conflict also had specific consequences for colonial policing in Nigeria between 1914 and 1918. In Chapter 4, I investigate the colonial period that coincided with that war. Some of the themes I discuss include police involvement in both the Kamerun and German East Africa military campaigns; the insecurity in Nigeria that came about because of troop reallocation to the war effort, and police challenges caused directly or indirectly by the war. In Chapter 5, I begin with the impact of World War I on the state and nature of policing, from 1918, when military and police units returned to Nigeria after four long years of war, to the police amalgamation of 1930. In Chapter 5, I also discuss the intrigue within the police institution and the issues that delayed both the amalgamation of the police force and the upward mobility of Nigerian mid- and senior-level personnel within the force. In Chapter 6, I examine the Nigerianization question in more detail. By the 1930s, it was increasingly likely that Britain might eventually relinquish its rule in some of its colonies. Furthermore, the workforce required to administer and effectively control colonial institutions, such as the police in the case of Nigeria, meant that local staffing, administration, and eventually control would have to shift in phases. The mostly Britishadministered model would need to accommodate a shared model with African police officers. Ultimately, however, an African-only model would have to be in place when, or soon after, the British left Nigeria. In practice, this Nigerianization of the NPF was not nearly as straightforward as it

The Nigeria Police Force

9

sounds. For decades, the colonial administration demonstrated little to no progress. Indeed, even the most talented African policemen and officers were not being promoted. By the 1950s, the urgency of the Nigerianization issue came to a head. By this time, the NPF was rapidly Nigerianized to such a degree that by 1955, no new expatriate police officers were being brought into it. During this period, the first Nigerians were sent to Britain for police training; the Women Police was formed; and robust police training courses were established in Enugu, Lagos, and Kaduna. Building on these opportunities, Nigerians for the first time entered senior police ranks. Using Blue Books, archival material, and third-party historical literature, in Chapter 6 I unpack the nuances of the Nigerianization question from the 1920s to the 1950s. Insofar as Nigerianization was the salient point between the 1930s and 1950s, it is nevertheless crucial to acknowledge and discuss the positives of having a police force in areas such as Lagos, where crime statistics began to grow as the colony became more commercialized and more populated. Moreover, other areas of Nigeria also had notable incidents involving police intervention that are worth examining. In Chapter 7, I shift from the Nigerianization debate ongoing during the same period and focus on policing practice and institutional issues within the NPF through these formative years. In Chapter 8, I look at the most salient police and policing issues to emerge in the independence era. As an example, if the Nigerianization debate was a pressing concern for state lawmakers and indeed members of the NPF between the 1930s and the 1950s, by the late 1950s the debate fulcrum had shifted. The main discussion point to emerge was the issue of centralization of the police. This was a contentious issue that showed the politics of police control and partisanship in Nigeria’s First Republic. Some of the other issues I examine in Chapter 8 include the formation of the MOPOL and the relationship between the now-dominant NPF and the Native Authority (NAP), the influence of which had waned considerably in many areas. One of the key features of this chapter is my detailed examination of the NPF Special Branch: its emergence in March 1958, its key actors, its role in the politics of the era, and its eventual decline in the mid-1970s. I end Chapter 8 with an analysis of the health and structure of the NPF by the end of J. E. Hodge’s tenure as the last British inspector-general in 1964. In Chapter 9, I examine the role the NPF played under the New Republic. I look at why the partisanship debate about the police was particularly important in the fragile political climate from 1962 to 1964. I also explain how the police force was structured, the role of each department, and why the Special Branch of the NPF Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was so crucial to the period’s polity and political intrigue. I furthermore address the police centralization debate, its outcome, and its impact on the force.

10

Policing and Politics in Nigeria

It is no overstatement to say that the period between January 1966 and May 1967 was a pivotal time in an already tense political dispensation. I dedicate Chapter 10 entirely to these eighteen months, providing a detailed discussion of the police role in the military and political intrigue of the period. Additionally, I examine the Special Branch’s role and its report on the first military coup d’état in Nigeria’s history. I analyze from a police-centric lens the consequences of the first coup, which eventually led to civil war in 1967. In Chapter 11, I offer a corrective to the narrative that military operations in Biafra defined the spectrum of political governance and indeed society in the region. I begin with the outbreak of civil war in 1967 and discuss the role of the police during the war (1967–1970). Employing original field sources, historical court and police records, declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) material, and input from a range of then-serving and retired NPF personnel, in Chapter 11 I critically examine the role of the NPF inside the rebel-held territory of Biafra, where a separate policing arrangement was made by the rebels, who had a different police command structure, and a separate inspector-general, to the NPF. In Chapter 11, I also examine the Biafra Police Force’s regular duties, aside from supporting the war-front army. In the chapter I argue that this war effort was fraught because it compromised policing, the courts, and the criminal justice system in Biafra. I examine a range of court cases, the challenge of criminality, the negative impact of firearms, and the blurring of the lines between military and police functions. All of this would have significant implications for policing in post–civil war Nigeria. In Chapter 12, I look at the police since the end of the civil war, through the tumultuous decades of military rule, and into the democratic Fourth Republic, which commenced in 1999 and remains today. I investigate six broad themes: first, the controversial firing squad decrees promulgated during military rule and whether these decrees were effective. Second, I look at the historical attitudes toward murder and armed robbery in Nigerian culture and how that held up in the climate of fear during the reign of armed robbery gangs from the 1970s through the 1990s era of military rule. Third, I examine the police restructuring under the Babangida era and its implications, if any, for effective antirobbery efforts by the police. Fourth, I outline violent crime and robbery during the Abacha era. Fifth, I look at detailed case studies of armed robbers and discuss robbery gangs and the police response, including the infamous trio of Oyenusi, Mighty Joe, and Anini. In the case of Anini, I examine Deputy Superintendent George Iyamu’s role as a collaborator and how the police in Bendel enabled, suffered at the hands of, and eventually helped stop Anini. In Chapter 12’s final section, I briefly discuss hired killings and assassinations as another violent crime category with which the police of the era had to contend.

The Nigeria Police Force

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In Chapter 13, I examine how military rule further undermined the police institution in Nigeria. In the chapter I do not just show that the NPF declined in this period but also explain why. Several police failures during the era endured into the contemporary debate on police reform. Moreover, at the heart of this debate remains police brutality; extrajudicial killings; and the deep-seated coercion culture, which arguably feeds its other pathologies. Indeed, despite much rhetoric around modernization and reform over the decades, the modern NPF failed to change this culture. However, the notion that Nigerians had somehow learned to live with police brutality proved misplaced. By October 2020, police failure in Nigeria seemed to have reached a head, triggering collective action and mass protests. Framing #EndSARS within social movement theory (SMT), in Chapter 14 I focus on the Special Anti-Robbery Squads (SARS) and the #EndSARS riots. #EndSARSS gained traction partly because of widespread social media access and the impunity with which the NPF had acted for decades. In this regard, #EndSARS stands as another indicator of police failure. It is a manifestation of how the institution emphatically and enthusiastically dismantled the trust between the citizenry and the police. In Chapter 15, my conclusion, I follow up on the #EndSARS discussion and argue that the NPF is a failed institution. Examining a range of issues—mental health, police welfare, workforce, equipment, salaries, and the Police Act, in the chapter I aim to demonstrate that, despite how seemingly controversial it might seem to declare the NPF a failed institution, this description is not only accurate but altogether necessary if the relevance of reform is to be recognized and implemented. I conclude the chapter with a range of reflections of possible steps by which the police institution in Nigeria might be able to reverse its current course. Notes 1. Federal Republic of Nigeria, General Report and Survey 1958. 2. Arase, “Security in Post-Military Nigeria.” 3. Ibid.

2 British Imperialism and the Imperial Police

One of Africa’s foremost political economists, Claude Ake, observed in 1981 that “to date, the experience of Western imperialism, particularly colonization, remains the most decisive event in the history of Africa.”1 Four decades later, these histories remain relevant to police studies. The End of the Slave Trade and the Rise of Mercantilism Before 1807, British merchants had played an active role in the slave trade. In 1618, King James I granted a royal charter to the Company of Adventurers of London Trading to the Ports of Africa, more commonly known as the Guinea Company. The Crown’s royal charter provided the Guinea Company a thirty-one-year monopoly of slave trading on the West African coast and commercial privileges, according to Hugh Thomas in The Slave Trade. The Guinea Company owned and operated fifteen cargo ships at its peak in the 1600s. This association between the Crown and commercial slave trade meant that “the pre-colonial mercantile plunder proceeded with the British Crown’s support, and this support gave British merchants an edge over their European rivals.”2 This royal support for mercantile companies and issuance of charters to operate around the lower Niger area of West Africa aligned the British government’s fortunes with those of the companies. This meant that mercantile companies acted on behalf of the British government in colonies not just in Africa but elsewhere, such as in Asia.

13

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria

On 25 March 1807, the British Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act (Slave Trade Act for short). The Slave Trade Act made buying and selling slaves (the slave trade) illegal throughout the British Empire. The act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. Overall, the passage of the Slave Trade Act “set in motion a chain of events that would hasten the demise of slavery throughout the transatlantic world.”3 When Britain ended its slave trade, mercantile companies shifted to other forms of trade, again on behalf of and supported by that government.4 For these companies to succeed, they often had to go deeper into the hinterland, as opposed to when they waited at the coast for hundreds of potential slaves to be brought there by slavers and complicit rulers of African states. European merchant traders, especially British merchant companies, often became economically powerful. As Ahire puts it, “Despite initial obstacles in the way of the legitimate trade—reluctance by both indigenous and European merchants to abandon the slave trade, resistance by African middlemen against European penetration into the hinterland, topography and natural hazards—that trade eventually developed into a lucrative venture, especially for European merchants” (2). This economic power in western African commerce brought “accumulation of capital in Britain,” and translated to political power and status for the biggest mercantile companies. At the same time, imperialist mercantilism “disrupted and reduced the existing levels of economic activity in Nigeria.”5 Kingdoms and empires weakened even as the colonialists established first a foothold, then partial and ultimately total control of many West African territories they first approached for commerce. Commerce as the first step toward colonial ingress was observable across Africa, not just in West Africa and not just in Nigeria.6 Across the African continent, mercantile companies such as the British government-chartered Royal Niger Company (RNC) in Nigeria amassed a vast amount of wealth, territory, and political power at local authorities’ expense.7 By the second half of the nineteenth century, British merchants such as William McCoskry, backed by the British military, could even annex entire Nigerian territories, such as Lagos in 1861.8 Administration of such territories followed. Initially, it was staffed by British officials, with increasing delegation to indigenous people over time in the protectorates and annexed colonies.9 In Nigeria, these territories included the Lagos Colony (annexed 6 August 1861), the Oil Rivers Protectorate (1884–1893), the Niger Coast Protectorate (1893–1900), the Northern Protectorate (created 1900) and Southern Nigerian Protectorate (created 1900).10 Over time, such colonial administrations, often run by mercantile companies, brought considerable investments and infrastructure from the British government because they had to be protected and policed.11 Imperial

British Imperialism and the Imperial Police

15

policing in Nigeria first emerged to protect British colonialist and mercantile company interests in annexed lower Niger territories from the 1880s.12 In Nigeria’s case, the most influential mercantile company to emerge around the period was the RNC. The Royal Niger Company For more than twenty years, Sir George Dashwood Taubman Goldie, a British administrator who had once visited the lower and middle Niger in Africa, had a plan to integrate these regions with the British Empire. A chief instrument of this plan was the United African Company, formed in 1879 and renamed the National African Company in 1881 after Goldie managed to secure significant investments for the company’s operations in the lower Niger area.13 The use of a mercantile trade company to gradually take over the affairs of a vast uncolonized area had precedent on the Indian subcontinent.14 Consequently, this was Goldie’s chosen approach: government by chartered companies across the British Empire. Whereas the British East India company pioneered this approach to great success, that it was now defunct did not seem to deter Goldie. Some steps were required for the success of Goldie’s plan. First, British mercantile and commercial interests in the Niger area had to be combined. By the late 1870s, there was too much mercantilist competition in the area from four firms: the West African Company (with James Crowther as its principal agent), the Central African Company (with David Macintosh as its agent), the Williams Brothers (with James A. Croft as its agent), and James Pinnock. All four firms were brought together under the United African Company shortly before it became the National African Company.15 By 1884, the National African Company was the leading mercantile firm on the Niger, with thirty factories, one of them on the River Benue. However, the conglomerate still had rivals. The three competing firms were the Société française de l’Afrique équatoriale, the Compagnie du Sénégal, and the Liverpool and Manchester Trading Company. All three firms were promptly bought out in the same year “by the astute and energetic Mr. Taubman Goldie. The way was thus open for the RNC, and in default of the direct rule of the Crown, their claim to a charter was indisputable.”16 Based on acquisition of this competition, by the 1880s the RNC had made more than 400 political treaties with the indigenous chiefs of the lower Niger and the emirs and minor rulers of the Hausa states. 17 However, just because a treaty was drawn up does not mean that the parties shared mutual interests and equal benefits or that there was no force involved. It is also worth pointing out that although Goldie was a keen businessman with a single-minded vision of a West Africa integrated into

16

Policing and Politics in Nigeria

the British Empire, he had only visited the Niger area for the first time in his life in 1877.18 Despite his limited exposure to the Niger area of West Africa, Goldie’s economic and commercial decisionmaking and formation of the RNC are widely viewed as instrumental to the creation of Nigeria.19 Furthermore, within less than a decade of Goldie’s first visit, the RNC was administering vast territories in the area now known as Nigeria. The role an individual who had visited Nigeria only once before 1879 would play, in creating the country by 1914, speaks to how limited cultural understanding and catastrophic economic profiteering contributed to colonialism and its discontents. The Berlin Conference of 1884

At the Berlin conference of 1884, the European powers divided the continent’s territory in Africa among themselves. Goldie and other British government and Crown representatives showed about 200 treaties, most of which Goldie had helped secure (via acquisitions of rival firms), as part of the Crown’s claim that Britain controlled the territories of the lower Niger.20 The lower Niger is where Nigeria is located today. The British government, to discharge its Berlin obligations and save money, granted a royal charter in July 1886 to the United Africa Company to administer its West Africa and lower Niger territories on behalf of Queen Victoria.21 Shortly afterward in 1886, the company was renamed the RNC. The royal charter given to Goldie for his newly minted RNC, on the one hand, had increased the company’s territorial reach and powers. On the other hand, many of the company’s operations were now controlled by Britain’s secretary of state for the colonies. This was further proof that, rather than just a private mercantile company, the RNC was now not only a political force but one of the most powerful ones representing British imperialism in West Africa. The RNC chair in 1886 was Lord Aberdare; Goldie was the deputy-governor and political administrator.22 After Lord Aberdare died in 1895, Goldie became the governor of the chartered RNC. A private citizen and head of a private company was now, with little contest, the most powerful man in colonial Nigeria’s history at the time. Indeed, in colonial Nigeria’s history, Goldie’s influence and relevance is second only to that of Lord Frederick Lugard, who joined the RNC in 1894 and became governor-general of Nigeria in 1914.23 By the late 1880s, the RNC was the de facto representative of the British imperialist state in the lower Niger areas.24 The RNC had assumed “enormous political and administrative responsibilities in addition to its commercial operations, with overt support from the British Foreign Office.”25

British Imperialism and the Imperial Police

17

Exploiting the terms of its royal charter, the RNC imposed “free trade” as it grew in power. This oxymoron of the “imposition of free trade” ensured that native Nigeria industries could not thrive, then could barely exist, and then could not exist at all.26 With the deluge of cheap, imported, manufactured goods from Britain, local economies and therefore cultures were systematically wiped out.27 The Royal Niger Company Constabulary Whereas British imperialism took a major blow in the Indian subcontinent with the dissolution of the British East India Company in 1874, not ten years later mercantilism as a tool for statecraft in Africa was alive and well in the form of the RNC.28 The company’s interests were promptly securitized. As soon as the RNC was issued its royal charter in 1886, it “established an administrative service, a judicial service and a constabulary.”29 Despite its official designation of “constabulary” by the RNC, however, the force was too militarized, politically motivated, and uninterested in police work and helping communities to fit the traditional description of a constabulary. Instead, the RNC Constabulary (RNCC) was closer to “an army and a navy rather than a police force” per se.30 Indeed, as Falola further writes, It was the best-trained and best-equipped force in the Niger Delta area, with soldiers drawn from Britain’s Nigerians and officers. The constabulary became Nigeria’s first professional army and operated for many years, paying Nigerians to work as soldiers and introducing new armaments and tactics to win its wars. From 1886 to 1900, the constabulary was involved in over 100 military expeditions, using large armaments to force groups and leaders to surrender and sign treaties. (6)

According to Michael Crowder in West Africa Under Colonial Rule, this constabulary consisted initially of 3 European officers and 150 African rank and file. “[The Royal Niger] Company had a sizeable military establishment” of 5 officers, 2 African noncommissioned officers and 413 privates in 1886, and by 1898, a year before the RNC lost its charter, these numbers had increased to “18 officers and NCOs and 1,000 privates.”31 There is either a significant discrepancy in these accounts or, more likely, some RNCC units were a subset of the total RNC police force. W. R. Shirley also argues this point.32 Unlike the corresponding military forces of the time, such as the 2nd West Indian Regiment of the West African Frontier Force stationed at Lagos, an imperial force sanctioned by the War Office, the RNC forces were controlled by the company’s private directors in London.33 Without

18

Policing and Politics in Nigeria

these directors’ express approval, the RNC forces were not permitted to feature in British government plans until 1899, when the company lost its royal charter. Zero Tolerance

Backed by its constabulary, the RNC effectively created a constitution based on what it called its “exclusive jurisdiction” in British territories over which it now had a mandate.34 The Conference of Berlin’s outcomes, the fact that the RNC now had a royal charter, the home office’s backing, and the vital point that local native authorities did not have the military opposition led to significant administrative changes. One of the most audacious of these changes was that indigenous people who lived outside the British “sphere of influence” in the lower Niger area were now required to pay tariffs to allow them trade within it.35 There were local opponents to such economic policies. As the RNC (and the various companies it acquired) gained a foothold in the Niger area, not all indigenous people accepted its practices or wanted this trade imbalance.36 Many outright refused to accept the RNC’s monopolistic tendencies. However, there were consequences for local insubordination and refusal to follow the company’s rules as the RNCC took a decidedly militaristic approach to protect its interests. The constabulary units were professionally trained, “constantly drilled and prepared for war. Their machine guns could quickly destroy the thatched roofs of houses. The company’s goal was clear: it would use force and violence to dominate commerce and establish political control” (7). Even as this goal was realized in the late 1880s, attacks on the company ensued. Employing perhaps the only form of resistance available to them against this expanding power, in 1883, communities in Idah, Aboh, and Brass in the Niger Delta launched attacks against the RNC.37 Three British navy frigates, the Stirling, Alecto, and Flirt, bombarded the towns in response, according to Geary, leaving “several hundred killed” and “the streets strewn with corpses” (175). It is unclear what precisely the “natives” did, except that they “came down to the beach and resisted stoutly, thus coming under great gun-and-rifle fire” (175). These acts of resistance happened even prior to the formation of the constabulary; for example, in October 1879, locals were said to have attacked a United African Company (the precursor to the RNC) factory, which resulted in the “beach town and inland town of Onitsha [being] destroyed as a punishment.”38 Nevertheless, after the formation of the RNCC in 1886, attacks by locals became fiercer. In 1888, the RNCC destroyed almost half of Asaba, where the RNC had its political headquarters. A year later in 1889, the RNC also attacked Obosi,

British Imperialism and the Imperial Police

19

a commercial town bordering Onitsha and Nkpor, in retaliation against local resistance. Obosi served as the RNC’s commercial headquarters.39 The RNC took this approach to indigenous resistance again decades later when the company was chartered. Ahire writes in Imperial Policing, “In 1897, the RNC Constabulary attacked and defeated the Emirs of Nupe and Ilorin, who had resisted its monopolistic policies. In 1898, the constabulary attacked, defeated, and expelled the Emir of Bida, enabling the company to install a puppet” (11). The ongoing indigenous resistance and opposition to RNC trade policies seemed to justify its constabulary’s presence and function. As Geary puts it, “The obvious moral . . . was that if trade was to be carried on up the Niger with safety for life and property, some organized form of government, with a force of armed steamers and permanent constabulary in occupation on land, was indispensable to enforce and maintain law and order” (175). In a sense, the RNCC filled the role posited by Geary. However, the force was not created as a politically neutral one for fair law enforcement. The welfare of locals was never the objective of policing at any point in Nigeria’s colonial history. Policing was first and foremost an instrument of mercantilist oppression and profiteering before that. In the words of a former Pakistani inspector-general of police, M. S. Suddle, a colonial constabulary was “a public-frightening organization, not a public-friendly agency.”40 Moreover, the RNCC appeared more professional on paper than it was in practice. In the final sections of this chapter, I take a close look at the constabulary’s constitution and function. Appearance and Equipment

James Willcocks, appointed by Lugard as his second in command in 1897, had just been promoted to substantive lieutenant-colonel before he arrived in Nigeria. Willcocks was unimpressed by the RNCC. Writing later in his memoirs, From Kabul to Kumassi, Willcocks observes that the constabulary rank and file were so poorly trained that internal security, rather than expeditionary duty, was the best expectation for their deployment. He describes the constabulary’s appearance as “unsoldierly” and the forces themselves as ragtag (177). Furthermore, the RNCC was a basic infantry unit setup, with limited artillery capability for some units.41 The primary firearm was the British .577 Snider-Enfield breech-loading rifle. However, the rifles issued within the RNCC were worn out, like many of the units’ accoutrements (military equipment other than uniforms and weapons). Clothing was likewise in poor shape—“scandalously deficient,” according to Willcocks.42 Ukpabi blames at least part of the unkempt state of the constabulary rank and file on “negligence on the part of those officers charged with their

20

Policing and Politics in Nigeria

welfare.”43 No sidearms were issued, and it is unlikely the units had any hand-to-hand combat training. This is in sharp contrast with the police of the later colonial period, who were not issued rifles and rarely issued sidearms but who were taught to wield the baton with crude force.44 A Militaristic Police Force

The line between this RNCC “police” force and regular military units appears to have been blurred indeed.45 The same can be said of both the Oil Rivers (later the Niger Coast) Protectorate and the territories of the RNC where “the line between soldiers and civil police . . . as law enforcement agents was very thin.”46 In describing the constabulary’s function in more detail, J. E. Flint reports, “This constabulary was an effective fighting force. It was not used for police work proper. Its real function was to undertake punitive expeditions against towns and villages that disobeyed the company’s regulations, giving the company a monopoly of trade” (228). The warrant of 30 July 1886 for the RNC stipulated the presence of a chief police officer who within his district(s) would have “full powers” over the “armed forces of the company.”47 Ukpabi argues that the militaristic history of the constabulary is inextricable from the history of northern Nigeria.48 On the surface, comparison of the WAFF, a relatively hardened military force in terms of expeditionary assignment, with the RNCC in terms of function and approach seems strange. However, as Ukpabi explains, Britain had local armed forces in its West African territories since the 1890s. These forces, like that raised by the RNC in northern Nigeria, were called constabularies. Ukpabi says constabulary, however, was something of a misnomer: Except in name, there was in practice little distinction between a Constabulary and a regular Army unit. The Constabulary was originally raised, organized, and trained as a military unit. It was raised and commanded by the officers of the regular army and possessed artillery. However, it was called a constabulary to reassure those objectors who would have accused the government of naked aggression in the Colonies. (492)

The End of the Royal Niger Company On 1 January 1900, the Niger Coast Protectorate merged with the RNC’s chartered territories to form the Southern Nigeria Protectorate. In 1906, the Colony of Lagos merged with the Southern Nigeria Protectorate, with their police forces combining as the Southern Police Force. On 1 January 1900, the RNC territory passed on the mandate of the British Crown, becoming the Northern Nigeria Protectorate. This marked the end of the

British Imperialism and the Imperial Police

21

company’s tenure as a British government political actor. Its involvement with all policing matters also ended then. As Charles Lindsay Temple, then lieutenant-governor of northern Nigeria writes, After many years of magnificent pioneer work, different in degree, perhaps, but not in kind from that of the East India Co., the Charter of the Royal Niger Co. was revoked, and the Government assumed the administration of the Niger Company’s territories on January 1, 1900. The amount paid to this company from Imperial funds was approximately one million pounds. The company reserved the right of receiving one half of any revenue obtained from mining companies by the Government over an area of about one-half of the territory for the space of ninety-nine years. Sir Frederick Lugard was appointed High Commissioner. The headquarters of the [northern Nigerian] Protectorate was established at Zungeru in 1902. (150)

Following all these changes, the RNCC was redesignated the Northern Police Force.49 Likewise, much of the Niger Coast Constabulary came to be known as the Southern Police. Both the northern and southern constabularies would not merge when Nigeria was amalgamated in 1914 and would remain separate until 1930. Other Regional Police Forces, 1861–1900

This narrative about developing colonial policing in Nigeria from the late 1880s is consistent within the literature. As an example, Geary observes that as of 1869, there were no British officials and no police force in the Niger. Even by the later part of 1887, Consul Hewett of the Oil Rivers Protectorate complained about the lack of “a proper staff with a local Force” and that he did not have “even one constable.”50 Hewett subsequently requested that the British Foreign Office provide support to establish “a local Force of Constabulary.”51 These complaints came more than a decade after Hewett’s predecessor, Consul Hartley, was told by Foreign Secretary Granville LevesonGower, in August 1873, “to maintain peace among the native tribes.”52 However, the Foreign Office also advised Hartley and his successors to act “with tact and prudence”53 because the Oil Rivers Protectorate had no military or police forces to support the colonial administration.54 Consequently, by March 1890, Acting Consul Annesley described his formation of “a small police force,” armed with shotguns, who had undergone military-type drills and training “as well as possible in such a short time.”55 Aiming to become the nucleus of a “Consular Constabulary” over the long term, the force referenced by Annesley was quite task-oriented.56 This unit was rapidly assembled to challenge the troublemaking of King Andemeno of Enyong, who refused to recognize Annesley’s authority.57

22

Policing and Politics in Nigeria

Later that year, Annesley again expressed his willingness to establish a “Consular Constabulary” of 200 troops, although he conceded that an initial force of 20 Hausas was more feasible given his resources.58 Despite these delays, by 1894, under the newly proclaimed Niger Coast Protectorate (created on 12 May 1893), a force based on the Lagos police template had been established.59 This force was named the Niger Coast Constabulary, and, according to Sir Ralph Moor, the first high commissioner of the British Southern Nigeria Protectorate (6 January 1900–1 October 1903), it was bolstered by an additional forty men who formed part of the Nigeria District Police in 1899.60 This requisition of forty policemen from the RNCC to the Niger Coast Constabulary came after the former lost its charter in 1899.61 In sum, by the start of the twentieth century, in addition to smaller police forces across the colonized area today known as Nigeria, at least three distinct regional police forces existed. The Colony of Lagos had its own police force, and both the Northern and Southern Protectorates had their own police forces.62 I discuss each of these forces, starting with the Lagos Police Force, in Chapter 3, to demonstrate that the RNCC was merely one representation of Nigeria’s colonial police institution. It was not the only one, nor was it even the first. This distinction lay with the police force within the Colony of Lagos. Notes 1. Ake, A Political Economy of Africa, 19. 2. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 2. 3. Rodriguez, Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World, 6. 4. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 2–3. 5. Ibid., 3. 6. Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule; Crowder, Colonial West Africa; Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria. 7. Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule; Crowder, Colonial West Africa. 8. Smith, The Lagos Consulate. 9. Niven, How Nigeria Is Governed. 10. Niven, How Nigeria Is Governed; Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria. 11. Ahire, Imperial Policing; Killingray, “The Maintenance of Law and Order in British Colonial Africa”; Jeffries, The Colonial Police. 12. Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria; Ahire, Imperial Policing. 13. Akyeampong and Gates, Dictionary of African Biography. 14. For more information on the colonization approach and history of the British East India Company, see Krishna, “How Does Colonialism Work?”; Lawson, The East India Company; Bryant, “Officers of the Last East India Company’s Army in the Days of Clive and Hastings”; Dalrymple, The Anarchy. 15. Geary, Nigeria Under British Rule, 174. 16. Ibid., 176. 17. Orr, The Making of Northern Nigeria. 18. Geary, Nigeria Under British Rule; McPhee, The Economic Revolution in British West Africa.

British Imperialism and the Imperial Police

23

19. Geary, Nigeria Under British Rule, 177–178; Ahire, Imperial Policing; McPhee, Economic Revolution in British West Africa. 20. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 10. 21. Orr, The Making of Northern Nigeria. 22. Geary, Nigeria Under British Rule, 178. 23. Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria. 24. McPhee, The Economic Revolution in British West Africa. 25. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 11. 26. Ahire, Imperial Policing; Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. 27. McPhee, Economic Revolution in British West Africa; Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. 28. For more on the British East India Company, see Krishna, “How Does Colonialism Work?”; Lawson, The East India Company; Bryant, “Officers of the Last East India Company’s Army in the Days of Clive and Hastings”; Dalrymple, The Anarchy. 29. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 10. 30. Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria, 6. The acronym used throughout this work will be RNCC to distinguish the constabulary from its parent outfit, the RNC. Other texts might refer to the constabulary as the Royal Niger Constabulary (RNC). 31. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 9. 32. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria; Shirley, A History of the Nigeria Police. 33. Ukpabi, “The Origins of the West African Frontier Force,” 497. 34. Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule, 127–128. 35. Geary, Nigeria Under British Rule, 96–97; Ahire, Imperial Policing, 11. 36. Geary, Nigeria Under British Rule. 37. Geary, Nigeria Under British Rule, 175. 38. Times, 21 April 1880, cited in Geary, Nigeria Under British Rule, 175. 39. Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria, 7. 40. Suddle, Reforming Pakistan Police, 94. 41. Ukpabi, “The Origins of the West African Frontier Force,” 492. 42. Willcocks, From Kabul to Kumassi, 177. 43. Ukpabi, “The Origins of the West African Frontier Force,” 492. 44. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria. 45. Shirley, A History of the Nigeria Police, 26–30. 46. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 10. 47. Calprof 5/6. Regulations and Instructions. 48. Ukpabi, “The Origins of the West African Frontier Force,” 485. 49. Nigeria Police Force, History of the Nigeria Police Force. 50. Foreign Office, 84/1828. 51. Ibid. 52. Foreign Office, 84/1377. 53. Foreign Office, 84/1701. 54. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 2. 55. Foreign Office, 84/1828(a). 56. Ibid. 57. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 3–5. 58. Foreign Office, 84/1828(b). 59. Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police. 60. Colonial Office, 520/1, Moor to Colonial Office. 61. Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria. 62. Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police.

3 The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision

The Royal Niger Company Constabulary (RNCC) was not the only police force established in Nigeria before the 1890s; indeed, it was not even the first. The official account of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) contends that “Nigeria Police was first established in 1820.”1 However, the NPF provides no further details, and the origin of this history of the force is unclear because British colonial rule had not even been established in the Nigerian territories at that time, just a few years past the official abolition of the slave trade on 25 March 1807.2 The establishment of a colonial police force presumably cannot predate the first colonial administration in a territory.3 Lagos did have a colonial presence, mostly centered on commerce after Britain abolished the slave trade, by the 1850s.4 Furthermore, merchants such as William McCoskry, who played a crucial role in the Colony of Lagos, were already active traders in the territory by then.5 British Presence in the Colony of Lagos A few months after Britain annexed the colony, the British War Office, on the strength of an earlier request by the Foreign Office in 1861, approved a contingent of two officers and 107 other ranks of the West India Regiment as the nucleus of a military force.6 Deployment of this force, on 22 January 1862 in Nigeria aimed to make it “quite clear that the British agents who had negotiated the annexation had [the] support of their government.”7 All

25

26

Policing and Politics in Nigeria

of this is an indication that Britain was serious about the Lagos Colony even before the 1860s. Nevertheless, it is crucial not to overembellish the colonialist administrative infrastructure, including that of the police, in early colonial Lagos. At best, the mid-nineteenth century, as far as substantive colonial administration in Nigeria is concerned, can be considered a precolonial era, as little had changed administratively, between the 1820s and late 1840s. As Tamuno observes, the 1840s and 1850s in Lagos were “the period of informal jurisdiction” (10). At the time, no royal charters were in place, no colonial administrations had been established, and the Crown had formally claimed no territories. Nevertheless, these formative years of an early British administrative and postslavery commercial presence in Lagos “had an important bearing on the origin, development and role of modern police there.”8 For such reasons, it is useful first to establish the colonization periods I discuss to obtain a clearer sense of the colonial police’s emergence within these administrations in the nineteenth century. Crowder outlines periods of colonial rule in West Africa as shown in Table 3.1. This time line makes it evident that Lagos, as a colonialist administrative center, was a city far ahead of its time relative to the rest of Nigeria. Consequently, I have opted to examine Lagos from a much earlier period (ca. 1861) compared with the Oil Rivers Protectorate and northern Nigeria, which I discuss later in this volume. When the British Crown began to administer Lagos as its first colony in the territories known today as Nigeria, Lagos was initially hostile to colonial rule. The territory remained so for at least a decade between 1861 and 1871, when several attacks on the police force were recorded.9 Indeed, after the British prime minister, Henry John Temple, Third Viscount Palmerston “acquired Lagos for the Crown in 1861,”10 the Colonial Office viewed it as potentially hostile to British rule. It was problematic to secure, and the Colonial Office referred to the colony as “that deadly gift from the

Table 3.1 Periods of Colonial Rule in West Africa

Period A Period B

Period C

Protocolonial period Colonial era 1. Conquest and occupation 2. Pacification and elaboration of systems of administration 3. Colonial rule 4. Watershed between colonial rule and decolonization Decolonization

Source: Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule.

1880–1895

1885–1900 1900–1919

1919–1939 1939–1945 1945–1960

The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision

27

foreign office.”11 Godpower Okereke writes that, in a request from February 1861, Lagos Consul H. G. Foote, a representative of the British government, proposed his intention “‘to establish a consul guard (although there were Local voluntary forces) to protect themselves from the natives’ shortly after which ‘Governor McCoskry (the then governor of Lagos) established a civil police force of 30 men.’”12 Tamuno debunks this thesis, calling the establishment of a so-called consular guard in Lagos nothing more than a theory, an idea floated by senior British officials at the Lagos Consul between 1860 and 1861 but never quite put into practice (11–15). The records do show that Consul Foote had indeed pushed, repeatedly, for the establishment of such a force.13 As Foote envisaged it, the armed force would consist of “Black troops, to be styled Consular Guards.”14 Such a force, he proposed, would help secure British interests, subjects, and territory during a period when the Lagos Colony had great unrest around the issue of the illegal slave trade that persisted despite its abolishment of a half-century earlier.15 Despite Foote’s prayer for a consular guard, which had a strong moral justification (helping police the end of the slave trade in the Colony), the Foreign Office opposed establishing such a force.16 John Russell, the secretary of state for foreign affairs (foreign secretary) at the time, and later the prime minister of the United Kingdom were averse to “the policy either of appointing any persons of colour as British Consular Agents on the African Coast or of establishing an isolated Consular Guards at the Consulates.”17 While still facing with this rejection, not having found a way around it, Foote died suddenly from dysentery and fever in May 1861.18 Nevertheless, although a consular guard was never formed in early colonial Lagos, a largely Hausa police force was eventually established to protect colonial interests, shortly after the British annexation of the Lagos Colony in 1861.19 The Annexation of Lagos and the Need for a Police Force

The earliest recorded colonial police in Nigeria, in 1861, were linked to the events of William McCoskry’s annexation of Lagos by from Oba Docemo (as he is referred to in British government documents; his real last name was Dosunmu), ruler of the ancient coastal city.20 This annexation was not by mutual agreement but by force. McCoskry, then acting consul in Lagos, along with Commander B. Norman Bedingfield convened a meeting with Dosunmu on 30 July 1861 aboard the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Prometheus.21 However, despite the imposing naval presence of the Prometheus, two brass gunboats, and several well-armed marines, Docemo refused to capitulate, saying he “will not sign a paper to which he is not agreed with the content.”22

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria

On 3 August, however, Commander Bedingfield threatened not just Docemo but all of Lagos, saying, “If you do not sign this paper, I will brake [sic] down Lagos.”23 Prior to his threat, seeing the British naval presence, “men, women, and children were getting into canoes and fleeing away for their lives.”24 Consequently, as reported by the Lagos chiefs, “to prevent the Commander from fireing in to the town, our King sign the paper, and inform’d that he will write to inform Her Britannic Majesty’s Queen of the whole matter, how that it was through compulsion he was made to sign the Treaty.”25 Annexing a city by the threat of force is one thing. Governing and administering its still-aggrieved inhabitants is a different matter. Shortly after the annexation of Lagos, McCoskry, the merchant made acting governor of Lagos for his part in forcing Docemo’s capitulation, faced restive city inhabitants. 26 McCoskry needed a police force, urgently, to preserve order. The Idea of a Consular Protection Force in Lagos, February–May 1861

Acting Governor McCoskry set about raising a quasimilitary armed force, and by October 1861, he was actively establishing a police force and had already constructed a gaol in anticipation of penal housing arrangements necessary during any unrest.27 McCoskry, pleased with his progress in establishing some sort of security in Lagos Colony, reported back to Russell.28 In Russell, McCoskry had found a previous listener to this idea of a police force. More specifically, Russell had already been apprised of this need for a consular guard in Lagos even before the annexation. In February 1861, Foote had “privately informed Lord Russell . . . that even the French naval officer at Lagos had recommended the establishment there of a Consular Guard comprising 50 or 100 men.”29 McCoskry was an unpaid vice consul at the time, having been appointed by Foote on 1 March 1861, a few months after Foote’s arrival in December 1860. 30 Just days before Foote died from dysentery and fever during an expedition into the Nigerian interior, he again informed Russell’s department, the Foreign Office, in May 1861, that he had the support of Commodore W. Edmonstone, of HMS Arrogant in Sierra Leone, regarding the establishment of a Lagos consular guard.31 When Foote died, McCoskry took over as acting consul. And this is the story of how a leading merchant trader in the Lagos area stumbled into becoming the first acting governor of Lagos. So, in raising the issue again, McCoskry had a precedent along with his new office of the governor of Lagos.

The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision

The Lagos Hausa Constabulary, October 1861

29

The force McCoskry established in 1861 was the first colonial police force in Lagos and in the broader territory known today as Nigeria.32 Records from 1862 show that by then, the force mostly consisted of Hausa constables—the lowest rank in the British colonial police—and that these recruits were mostly freed slaves residing in Lagos at the time.33 As for their number, Governor Henry Stanhope Freeman, who replaced interim governor McCoskry on 25 January 1862, reported in the same month that the police force in Lagos was twenty-five men strong, all constables.34 Insofar as the Hausa presence was the initial description of the force, an identity that persisted, I refer to this force as the Lagos Hausa Constabulary. The constables of the Lagos Hausa Constabulary sometimes were opposed by the city’s population.35 Perhaps because they were former slaves who now had these policing roles and were backed by the colonialist government, but more likely due to the latter point: that the Armed Hausa Police represented the same actors who now occupied their town and ruled over them. Attacks by locals did not help reassure Freeman, who had already been told by the Colonial Office in December 1861 “to establish a Police [force] and to enforce sanitary regulations” in Lagos.36 Nevertheless, as Tamuno points out, Freeman did not establish such a force. Instead, between January and July, Freeman considerably expanded the Lagos Hausa Constabulary initially established by McCoskry. Indeed, by the time Freeman provided his March 1862 estimate, the Lagos Hausa Constabulary was already three or four times its original size, consisting of “one Superintendent, four Sergeants, eight Corporals, and 100 Constables.”37 The Lagos Colony was always the vanguard as far as the admittedly limited opportunities for African careerists in British colonial Nigeria were concerned. As J. F. Ade Ajayi reports, by 1875, in Lagos, “the head of police, the head of posts and telegraphs, head of customs, and the Registrar of the Supreme Court were all Nigerians.”38 Such forward thinking on the part of the British administration in early colonial Lagos stood in contrast to that elsewhere in the country, where even decades later, “all Africans of their competence were relegated to subordinate positions in Nigeria.”39 I discuss this theme of marginalization of Africans within police contexts in colonial Nigeria in Chapter 6, in which I focus on the “Nigerianization” question and its implications for the Nigeria Police Force by the end of colonization. It is worth observing that the Lagos Colony’s tendency to provide opportunity for qualified Africans extended to the early colonial Lagos Hausa Constabulary. By mid-1862, there was already a record for the first African superintendent of police, Isaac H. Willoughby, who also became clerk of the criminal and slave court established by Freeman in Lagos.40

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria

In addition to this court, which handled more severe criminal cases, Freeman also established four courts of law, a police court for settling “petty cases,” and a commercial tribunal.41 These structures helped lend policing in Lagos Colony a semblance of semiprofessionalization reasonably quickly after British administration began. The Armed Hausa Police, February 1863

Freeman had initially wanted a largely Hausa quasimilitary police force of around 500 men. However, the Colonial Office in February 1863 allowed Freeman to raise an armed component of only 100 Hausa, employed for internal defense of the Lagos Colony. Shortly after the Colonial Office approved the Armed Hausa Police in February, its establishment meant that the Lagos Colony now had two police branches.42 The first, the Lagos Hausa Constabulary, established initially in 1861, more approximated civil police. The second, the Armed Hausa Police, established in 1863, had a quasimilitary identity. Captain John Hawley Glover, who later became governor of Lagos after Freeman died young from illness in 1865, was more interested in the military branch—the Armed Hausa Police.43 The unit was armed like a military force but trained and employed for some civil policing duties; hence I refer to it as a quasimilitary police outfit. Willoughby, in contrast, was more interested in the civil police of the Lagos Hausa Constabulary.44 “Glover’s Hausas,” October 1863

Glover took a keen interest in the minutiae of the recruitment, training, welfare, and performance of the Armed Hausa Police.45 Glover saw this force as crucial to the security of the colonial state he was trying to build. Glover was determined to create a strong colonial state, and like Freeman, he wanted tight personal control of it. . . . To construct relationships with Africans, he adopted patterns of behaviour rooted in local political culture, setting himself up, in certain ways, as an African big man. Glover’s second strategy was to develop, beginning during Freeman’s tenure in office but continuing through his own, a locally recruited armed police force drawn from slaves of northern origin, which he alone controlled. He used this force to provide defense and security and, along with the civil constabulary, to pursue his interests inside the colony, on the frontier and beyond.46

Glover exploited his “big man” persona to build up an Armed Hausa Force, referred to as “Glover’s Hausas,” with strong loyalty to him personally, not just to the colonialist administration (as the Lagos Hausa Constabulary was). To develop these personal bonds, Glover personally trained, com-

The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision

31

manded, and recruited those who came into Glover’s Hausas. Glover’s Hausas were also armed for the role: they were trained to use field artillery as well as the Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle musket, a muzzle-loading rifled musket ubiquitous among British colonial military forces of the period.47 By the 1870s, Glover’s Hausas were also trained to use the cartridge-loaded SniderEnfield rifle. Many of these firearms were either converted from the Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle musket or otherwise replaced in service. These elite trained forces were fiercely loyal to Glover because of his hands-on management style and the attention he paid to their welfare as well as their efficiency in the field. For example, in return for their loyalty, Glover assisted his Armed Hausa Police units with better dwellings or accommodation and land. Particularly after he became governor of Lagos in 1865 and had the power to seize and reallocate local lands, Glover’s Hausas also had better pay, were uniformed, and had increased status within Lagos society, relative to the station these men would otherwise have occupied. In many ways, this was an elite armed force, the first in the modern history in the territories later known as Nigeria.48 In October 1863, Glover obtained Colonial Office permission to expand the Armed Hausa Police by an additional 600 recruits in order to meet the Lagos Colony’s emergencies and other expanded security concerns.49 This force quickly replaced the West India Regiment, deployed for security of the Lagos colonial administration shortly before Glover arrived in January 1862.50 Among a list of reasons for this replacement (finalized by the end of December 1863), the Armed Hausa Police were more tolerant of the Lagos weather than the West India Regiment.51 All of Glover’s effort paid off. By 1865, Glover’s Hausas were an expanded, trained, and armed quasimilitary force setting a precedent for modern policing in colonial Nigeria. Over time, however, the force gradually went into decline. By 1879, it had evolved into a 1,200-member armed paramilitary called the Hausa Constabulary.52 By 1897, however, much of the force had either been disbanded, retired, or redeployed, and the Lagos Hausa Constabulary was less than 500 strong.53 This force was under the direct control of the Colonial Office and was the core of the Lagos Police, formed the previous year in 1896.54 The Lagos Police over the next decade, before the merger of the Colony of Lagos with the Southern Protectorate (1906), were an early representation of the colonialist administration’s concept of a central command. Extraterritorial Military Duties

Administrative changes from the Colonial Office between 1866 and 1874 meant that the Armed Hausa Police were deployed outside of the Lagos Colony for military duties. In 1866, the back story was that Lagos went

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria

from being part of the British West African Territories to becoming a part of the British West African Settlements. This was during the third tenure of Stephen John Hill as governor of Sierra Leone.55 Sierra Leone is relevant here because British West Africa as a colonial entity was initially designated the Colony of Sierra Leone and its dependencies. This later became known as the British West African Territories. The change to British West African Settlements (WAS), which now included Sierra Leone as well as the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), the Gambia, and Nigeria, occurred on 19 February 1866.56 From that point to 28 November 1888, all of these smaller territories were grouped into WAS as a single political entity administered by the Colonial Office in London. However, the administrative headquarters in West Africa was in Freetown, in Sierra Leone. From 1866 to 1874, the Colonial Office did some restructuring and, for unclear reasons, but likely for administrative expedience, decided to combine the Gold Coast with Lagos.57 In 1874, Lagos again became a separate colony. Between 1866 and 1874, when Lagos and Freetown were under the same colonial administration, a detachment of Armed Hausa Police was sent to the Gold Coast. Between 1872 and 1873, the period of deployment saw 381 Armed Hausa Police members serving in the Gold Coast where they demonstrated “the usefulness of their training in such firearms as the Enfield rifle and field artillery.”58 The main reason for that deployment of the Armed Hausa Force to the Gold Coast was to provide security after the Dutch settlements there were transferred to the British Crown.59 The British Gold Coast, formally established in 1867, expanded in 1872 after Britain purchased the Dutch Gold Coast.60 The territories purchased included Elmina, against which the indigenous Ashanti people rebelled. The Ashanti Rebellion escalated insecurity on the Gold Coast. More Armed Hausa Police units were quickly deployed there, along with Glover himself.61 Glover, whose tenure in Lagos ended in 1872, was dispatched to the Gold Coast in 1873 to help repel rebellious Ashanti incursions into now British territories.62 This was during the Third Anglo-Ashanti War. Glover’s Hausas were just a small, quasimilitary police component within a much larger military force of some 2,500 British troops and several thousand West Indian and African troops led by General Garnet Wolseley.63 The Armed Hausa Police, in general, “excelled” in such “military and semi-military engagements.”64 Outside of the Colony of Lagos, such militarized uses of the police developed separately and came to endure in the colonial institution. Indeed, militarized police forces, rather than civil ones, became the preferred choice for administrators such as Frederick Lugard decades later in British colonial Nigeria. Lugard, in particular, was an instrumental figure in the emergence of policing in colonial administration. Consequently, I place here some empha-

The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision

33

sis on his vision and influence on the emergence of the early twentiethcentury police in Nigeria. Lugard’s Militaristic Vision for the Northern Police Force Before Lugard was governor-general of Nigeria in 1914, he had been the first high commissioner of the Northern Nigerian Protectorate upon its establishment on 1 January 1900. Lugard took a hard-line view of policing and wanted a police force to resemble a militia outfit, complete with training in musketry every year—similar to military troops of the West African Frontier Force (WAFF), which had been formed the same year (1900) to garrison the West African colonies of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), Nigeria, and the Gambia.65 This plan would take time, so in the interim, Lugard began to fashion a northern police force, which he hoped would eventually become a constabulary. As I previously discussed, the RNCC was defunct after the RNC lost its royal charter in 1899. The constabulary’s police troops were available, and Lugard took fifty men from them to form the Northern Nigeria Civil Police (known as the Northern Police Force), under the newly established Northern Nigeria Protectorate Administration.66 To head this force, Lugard selected one of his trusted lieutenants, Senior Assistant Police Commissioner J. F. Carroll, who had headed the Civil Police and Prison Service in northern Nigeria.67 Carroll had also served in the Lagos Police and helped establish the detective branch in the colony police.68 However, Carroll did not spend long heading the Northern Police Force; he was appointed in August 1900 and died 10 December 1900.69 Carroll’s successor arrived in 1901 from Bombay. Albert L. de Morley Mynn, a former police inspector, became the new inspector general of the Northern Police Force.70 Certainly, Mynn was experienced as a career policeman and in working with Muslim populations.71 However, by 1903 Mynn had gradually become disillusioned with his role; he felt the police force was expanding too quickly and was too militarized, with little policing taking place. For Mynn, as a career police officer, unlike for Lugard, this was problematic. Lugard did not see Mynn fitting into his longer-term plans for a greatly expanded and militarized police constabulary in northern Nigeria.72 Some of Mynn’s concerns had to do with the rapid expansions Lugard orchestrated in the Northern Police Force: 100 new troops were deployed to the cantonments at Zungeru and Lokoja in 1901 alone, with an additional 50 deployed in 1902. Lugard’s rationale for this expansion, with which Mynn disagreed, was threefold. First, the Northern Police Force was too small and too poorly trained and equipped for the territory in question. Second, in expanding the force in this way, Lugard could eventually establish a constabulary that fit his

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria

vision for a larger, more militarized Northern Police Force. Third, in establishing a constabulary of this nature, Lugard could relieve the WAFF “of many duties that interfere with their training.”73 Mynn had initially envisaged a situation in which a detachment from the WAFF could be redeployed for policing duties, if necessary.74 This would save the cost of providing military drill and training for a large constabulary and make it redundant.75 Lugard disagreed because he “believed that the WAFF was too costly to be spared for police duties.”76 It is noteworthy at this point that Mynn, unlike Carroll, was not on record as having studied drill at the Dublin Depot of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).77 This did not appear to sit well with Lugard for reasons I explain below. Royal Irish Constabulary Training The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) training is useful to this examination because it emphasized military drill.78 In the colonial era, the RIC Depot at Phoenix Park, Dublin, was “the de facto training ground for officers and senior NCOs of the colonial police forces.”79 Additionally, “many, possibly several hundred, ‘other ranks’ of the RIC were selected for service overseas, and in many cases, rose to high rank. Their training, resilience and temperament were probably the main reason why the RIC was considered such high-quality material for service in the Empire.”80 Indeed, to quote Charles Jeffries in The Colonial Police, The fact is that the really effective influence on the development of colonial police forces during the nineteenth century was not that of the police of Great Britain, but that of the Royal Irish Constabulary. . . . Into the merits or demerits of this system, as applied to Ireland, it is not for me to enter. However, it is clear enough that from the point of view of the colonies, there was much attraction in an arrangement which provided what we should now call a “paramilitary” organisation or gendarmerie armed and trained to operate as an agent of the . . . government in a country where the population was predominantly rural, communications were poor, social conditions were largely primitive, and the recourse to violence by members of the public who were “against the government” was not infrequent. It was natural that such a force, rather than organised on the lines of the purely civilian and localised forces of Great Britain, should have been taken as a suitable model for adaptation to colonial conditions. (31)

For such reasons of control in volatile colonial contexts, Lugard expected his police officers to be RIC trained. RIC training was also important in this context because not only did it emphasise drill and military training but also it influenced the nature of firearms employed by trained personnel.81 Specifically, between 1897 and 1898, the Colonial Office sent

The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision

35

shipments of Snider rifles—the same rifles used by the Royal Irish Constabulary—to Nigeria for police personnel trained by the RIC.82 Several members of the Lagos Police had been at the training at the RIC depot at Phoenix Park, including Adolphus Pratt.83 And this was the sort of militaryleaning expertise Lugard wanted for the Northern Police Force, which he wanted to match and possibly exceed those of the Lagos Colony. Such military-leaning training practices were so dominant at a time within the RIC that on 14 May 1901 an urgent question was raised in Parliament for George Wyndham, the chief secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, asking, Whether he can explain why a number of officers and men of the Royal Irish Constabulary recently sent to the School of Musketry at Hythe for rifle drill and to qualify for certificates of proficiency to act as musketry instructors, instead of undergoing the course with the Martini-Henry rifle, with which the constabulary force were recently supplied, are undergoing the course of instruction with the Lee-Metford or magazine rifle; is it contemplated to re-arm the Irish constabulary force and place them on the same lines as the military as regards equipment; and, if so, on what grounds is the contemplated alteration based. . . . Were these men sent to Hythe to be instructed in the use of the magazine rifle? Is the Royal Irish Constabulary to be made an absolutely military force?84

To this, Wyndham simply replied, “There is no intention of doing that.” 85 Similar concerns were again raised in 1905 to Wyndham about where a new army drill practiced at the RIC Depot.86 Despite such reservations about the trajectory of RIC training at the time, the case was quite different with regard to RIC training for the colonial police. In September 1907 Lord Elgin, secretary of state for the colonies, decided that some police officers of commissioned rank in the British West Indies and British East and West Africa were to undergo a short period of training at the RIC Depot.87 Shortly afterward in 1907, the Colonial Office and the Irish authorities finalized arrangements for all police officers of commissioned rank in the Crown colonies—without exception—must be RIC trained. Indeed, in 1907 alone, when this requirement was put in place, more than a hundred colonial police officers were trained at Phoenix Park for varying times that depended on “their standing and experience, to receive instruction in drill, discipline and police duties.”88 If a British police officer joined the colonial police forces as a cadet, he had to be RIC trained for six months.89 Officers required minimum training for three months if they already had colonial police experience (it did not necessarily matter in which colony). What was so special about the RIC that the British government used it for colonial training, and how is it relevant to the Nigeria case? Moreover,

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria

why did the British government select the RIC Depot at Phoenix Park, Dublin, over the likes of the London Metropolitan Police training school?90 The answer is that no British Police Force was officered by cadets or armed with rifle and bayonet except for the Royal Irish Constabulary, and the Colonial police are officered, armed, drilled and trained more after the fashion and on the lines of the Irish than of any other British police force. . . . The Depot in Phoenix Park [had] facilities for learning everything connected with their future profession, except local colouring, custom, and language, the knowledge of which must be acquired on the spot.91

From 1907 there was accelerated training at the RIC Dublin Depot for a broad range of British colonial police officers serving all across the Crown’s African colonies in East Africa, Somaliland, Uganda, and the Gambia. In Nigeria, British colonial police officers from the Northern and Southern Provinces and the Lagos Colony all received RIC training.92 However, this is not to say that there was no training at all before 1907, or that even just British officers who underwent such training. For example, the first Nigerian (African) police officer to receive RIC training was Adolphus Pratt, along with three noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in 1895.93 Moreover, additional Lagos Police officers were trained in 1897 and 1899.94 Lugard was not only a proponent of RIC training but also it was practically a requirement for service in the Northern Police Force for British officers.95 For example, Lugard insisted that his British district superintendents in the Northern Police Force should be RIC trained.96 The Prewar Police Reorganization Scheme In 1903, Lugard proceeded with his plan for a Northern Police Force reorganization scheme. His vision underpinned the constabulary he formed that year. As I previously mentioned, the scheme entailed strong emphasis on a militarized police force assisted by “special service officers.” More than just police, this force was to be competent enough as an infantry unit to be floated as a possible reserve battalion for the WAFF, one aimed at preserving good order, keeping the peace, and maintaining law and order across the entire Northern Protectorate.97 Lugard proposed that the new constabulary, later renamed the Nigeria Police Force, was best led by a commissioner of police, assisted by RIC-trained superintendents. The new constabulary was made up of 29 officers and 1,000 noncommissioned officers and constables. True to the quasimilitary character of Lugard’s envisaged Northern Police Force, most of these personnel were said to be “time-expired native soldiers including several ex-sergeants and

The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision

37

corporals, of satisfactory character.”; and, instead of batons, the force was equipped like an army infantry unit with Lee-Enfield carbines.98 The training was consistent with military drill and like that of the WAFF “except for the modified musketry course.”99 Granted, the Northern Police Force was also able to perform general police duties; however, this outfit was also semimilitarized. Why did Lugard have a police force of 1,000 (a more than sixfold increase from just the previous year, 1902) so heavily militarized if ordinary police work was to be the force’s task? The answer to this question lies in the timing. The Northern Nigeria Expeditions

By 1902, Lugard decided it was time to move against the still independent Sokoto Caliphate, which the British had so far tolerated.100 The Colonial Office in London was against this course of action.101 Lugard, nevertheless, insisted on taking on the Caliphate for a number of reasons. First, France had designs on the region, and much of Francophone Africa, including Chad, was already in proximity. Lugard invoked bellum justum (just war tradition), justifying his move on the Caliphate based on its slavery commerce.102 After several skirmishes over the next year, including a massive defeat of the sultan’s superior numbers at Kano, British forces led by Lugard finally conquered the Caliphate and forced the last independent sultan, Attahiru I, to flee from Sokoto with large numbers of his supporters.103 The puppet sultan appointed by the British, Muhammadu Attahiru II, took the throne on 21 March 1903. However, Attahiru II, who only wielded power the colonialists allowed him to, was in a precarious position between the indigenous people and the British.104 Moreover, Attahiru I remained at large. Lugard would pursue Attahiru I until July 1903, when Attahiru’s forces were cornered at Burmi, about 150 miles southeast of Kano. With the end in sight, Lugard placed Brigadier George Kemball in charge of twenty-four British officers and two battalions of the battle-tested WAFF. With Maxim machine guns and field artillery, this formidable force commenced a march north.105 Against this heavily militarized force, Attahiru’s cavalry and troops had little chance. Consequently, in the battle that ensued, 80 British forces were casualties against more than 1,000 of Attahiru’s forces, including Attahiru himself, who was killed. Finally, Lugard had what he wanted: the Sokoto Caliphate capitulated and was absorbed into the British empire.106 Aftermath of the Northern Nigeria Expeditions

Despite this victory, there was still unrest and potential for more conflict in northern Nigeria after Lugard’s expeditions to Kano and Sokoto in

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria

1903.107 Lugard decided to err on the side of caution: he did not get the WAFF as an occupying army in northern Nigeria because the Colonial Office would not allow this. Nevertheless, with his new quasimilitary police constabulary, Lugard was killing two birds with one stone. On the one hand, Lugard was building a new police force from the RNCC ashes. On the other hand, he was ensuring that there was sufficient military muscle in this new outfit to protect the Northern Province from any possible unrest resulting from the earlier Kano and Soko expeditions. Additionally, with significant reforms of the Northern Police Force in place after just three years, Mynn’s role was redundant. By all indications, Lugard saw him as unfit for such a large force, the expansion of which Mynn never vociferously supported.108 Mynn would lament shortly after he was relieved of his inspector-general role in April 1903, When I was offered the police appointment in Northern Nigeria, I understood that I would be always the Head of the Department. Therefore, I gave every attention to my work and single-handed I worked both day and night. I had to drill, instruct and equip 157 men, keep all the records, enquire into and prosecute in all cases, out of my own pocket I had to build or three houses for my Police to live in, I had to buy my own stationary and books to enable me to keep my records, and I have never thought of a few shillings when it was necessary to improve my department.109

Mynn eventually left in January 1905, after a he was demoted to head of the Criminal Investigation Branch and reluctantly accepted it. The new police commissioner who replaced him, consistent with Lugard’s vision for the constabulary, was a military man: Major A. Bain of the Royal Engineers.110 Mynn, unable to work cordially with Bain, had his appointment terminated by the Colonial Office.111 The constabulary was unsettled while Mynn was there and only became fully functional after he left. Nigeria’s First Inspector-General (Northern Province)

Captain Arthur Evans Johnson joined as staff officer in April 1904, shortly after the post was re-created.112 Initially, Johnson had a larger force to administer; the district superintendent number was thirty-one in 1905, up from nineteen in 1903. However, Johnson appeared to take his duties in stride and thrived at the constabulary, staying on for more than a decade, including six years as inspector-general.113 Like all new constabulary officers, Johnson was required to take the RIC training course before or after the appointment. However, Johnson took his in 1908, only after he had become head of the Northern Police Force.114 Johnson was also noteworthy because he was the first head of the Northern Police Force, on 1 April 1908, to assume the title of inspector-general.115

The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision

39

Under Johnson, the Northern Police Force would continue to be reformed for the next few years. Perhaps the most substantive change was that traditional rulers could now police their respective areas, with indigenous police forces accountable to the colonial administration.116 This crucial change reduced bureaucracy at the local level and freed up the Northern Police Force for other duties. The arrangement was unique to the northern areas of the Northern Protectorate, however.117 The new high commissioner of northern Nigeria, Édouard Percy Cranwill Girouard, did permit such policing by locals in the Northern Protectorate’s southern regions, where Islam was not so prominent. Girouard, recommended by Winston Churchill (who was then undersecretary of state at the Colonial Office) to Lugard, was unconvinced that those rulers in the southern areas were competent and trustworthy enough to develop disciplined police forces in the way the northern emirs had developed their Dorarai, local police forces.118 Some other noteworthy changes from 1908 included better equipment; improved disciplinary records; better intelligence gathering; and, crucially, more ethnic diversity in the force. Even as of 1908, the Northern Police Force was not dominated by Hausas, even though they were a slight majority. The full ethnic demographics break down as follows: “240 Hausas, 216 Yorubas, 102 Beriberis, 53 Fulani and 25 Nupes,” with 54 having unrecorded ethnicities.119 By 1914, members of the unit had also upgraded their rifles from the older Snider model to a newer and more accurate Martini-Enfield carbine model with an effective firing range that almost doubled, from 600 yards for the Snider to 1,000 yards for the Martini-Enfield.120 Military drill and training were also now conducted annually for all unit members.121 Changes such as these meant that, by the outbreak of war in 1914, the Northern Police Force had one of the most capable field units anywhere in the country and indeed in West Africa. Notes

1. Nigeria Police Force, History of the Nigeria Police Force. 2. Robinson, Gallagher, and Denny, Africa and the Victorians, 36; Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule, 23. 3. Robinson, Gallagher, and Denny, Africa and the Victorians. 4. Crowder, A Short History of Nigeria. 5. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 6. Colonial Office, 147/1, Freeman to Newcastle, 10 February; Colonial Office, 147/2, FO to War Office, 22 November. 7. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 16. 8. Ibid., 10. 9. Ibid., 15–21. 10. Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule, 47. 11. Robinson, Gallagher, and Denny, Africa and the Victorians, 36.

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria

12. Okereke, “Police Powers and Law Enforcement Tactics,” 109. 13. Foreign Office, 84/1141, Foote to Russell, 8 May; Foreign Office, 84/1141, Foote to Russell, 9 February. 14. Foreign Office, 84/1141, Foote to Russell, 9 February. 15. Ibid. 16. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 12–13. 17. Prest, Lord John Russell; Foreign Office, 84/1141, FO to Foote, 23 March; Foreign Office, 84/1141, Foote to Russell, 9 February. 18. Smith, The Lagos Consulate, 116; Foreign Office, 84/1141, McCoskry to Russell, 28 May. 19. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria. 20. Shirley, A History of the Nigeria Police; Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 21. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 22. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, “Great Britain and Lagos,” 184–185. 23. Ibid., 185. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria. 27. Foreign Office, 84/1141, McCoskry to Russell, 5 October. Concerns about why McCoskry addressed the letter to the foreign secretary, not to the Home Office, and presumably why the previous relevant correspondence from H. G. Foote also went to the Foreign Office, instead of the Colonial Office, are germane. The explanation is that the Foreign Office only placed Lagos under the Colonial Office later that month in October. 28. Foreign Office, 84/1141, McCoskry to Russell, 5 October. 29. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 12–13; Foreign Office, 84/1141, Foote to Russell, 9 February. 30. See Foreign Office, 84/1141, Foote to Russell, 8 March. 31. Smith, Lagos Consulate, 116; Foreign Office, 84/1141, McCoskry to Russell, 28 May Foreign Office, 84/1141, Foote to Russell, 8 May. 32. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 15. 33. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/1, Freeman to Russell, 1 July; Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/1, Freeman to Newcastle, 3 July. 34. Colonial Office, 147/1, Freeman to Newcastle, 8 March. 35. Colonial Office, 147/2, McCoskry to Russell, 6 January. 36. Colonial Office, 147/1, CO to Freeman, 16 December. 37. Colonial Office, 147/1, Freeman to Newcastle, 8 March. 38. Ajayi, Milestones in Nigerian History, 24. 39. Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule, 9. 40. Colonial Office, 147/1, Freeman to Newcastle, 10 June. 41. Colonial Office, 147/1, Freeman to Newcastle, 8 March. 42. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 17. 43. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 44. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 17. 45. Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City, 106–114. 46. Ibid., 106. 47. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 19. 48. Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City, 106–114. 49. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/1, Glover to Newcastle, 10 October. 50. Colonial Office, 147/1, Freeman to Newcastle, 10 February.

The Colony of Lagos and Lugard’s Vision

41

51. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/1, Freeman to Newcastle, 31 December. 52. Nigeria Police Force, History of the Nigeria Police Force. 53. Otu, “The Development and Growth of the Nigeria Police Force from a Social Context Perspective”; Ikuteyijo and Rotimi, “The Image of Nigeria Police”; Ukeje, “Changing the Paradigm of Pacification”; Onyeozili, “Obstacles to Effective Policing in Nigeria”; Jauhari, “Colonial and Post-Colonial Human Rights Violations in Nigeria”; Ukpabi, “The Origins of the West African Frontier Force,” 492. 54. Chamberlain Papers, Sir E. Monson to Sanderson. 55. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 56. Gann and Duignan, The Rulers of British Africa. 57. Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule. 58. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 19. 59. Lloyd, The Drums of Kumasi; Colonial Office, 147/23, Hennessy to Kimberly, 29 April; Colonial Office, 147/23, Glover to Hennessy, 27 March; Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule. 60. Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule. 61. Colonial Office, 147/27, Berkeley to Hennessy, 17 February. 62. Lloyd, Drums of Kumasi; Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule. 63. Lloyd, Drums of Kumasi; Akyeampong and Gates, Dictionary of African Biography. 64. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 19. 65. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/27/3, Lugard to Chamberlain; Haywood and Clarke, The History of the West African Frontier Force; Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule. 66. Colonial Office, Colonial Reports, Annual, Northern Nigeria, January 1900, 1. 67. Colonial Office, Northern Nigeria, Blue Books, 1900, 11. 68. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 69. Ibid. 70. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/27/3; Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 71. Ibid. 72. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 51. 73. Ibid., 52. 74. Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police; Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 52. 75. Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police; Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 52. 76. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 52. 77. Ibid., 30. 78. Irish Constabulary, Colonial Police Training. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Hansard, Royal Irish Constabulary; Hansard, HC Deb 26 July 1905 vol. 150 c34. 82. The Snider rifle, in service since 1866, was not considered state of the art at the time. By 1900, the RIC had moved on to the Martini-Henry rifle, and by 1901 they were already using the Lee-Metford rifle for training at the Dublin Depot. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/18, Denton to Chamberlain; Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/21, McCallum to Chamberlain; Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/18, McCallum to Chamberlain. 83. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 30–31. 84. Hansard, Royal Irish Constabulary. 85. Ibid.

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86. Hansard, HC Deb 26 July 1905 vol. 150 c34. 87. Irish Constabulary, Colonial Police Training. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid. 93. Colonial Office, 147/102, Inspector-General, RIC, to CO. 94. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/18, Denton to CO, 20 April, 1897; Colonial Office, 147/126, Inspector-General, RIC, to CO, 13 September 1897, enclosure; Colonial Office, 147/146, War Office to CO, 9 August 1899. 95. Colonial Office, 147/103, CO to Commissioner, Metropolitan Police; Colonial Office, 147/103, Pratt to CO. 96. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/27/3, Lugard to Chamberlain. 97. In a sense, Lugard’s preparation of the Northern Police Force for quasimilitary police duties seemed prescient, with the outbreak of war in 1914. I will discuss the role of the Northern Police Force, when the time for war came, a little later. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/27/3, Lugard to Chamberlain. 98. Colonial Office, Colonial Reports, Annual, Northern Nigeria, 1903, 192. 99. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 52. 100. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 101. Dewhirst, Poison Arrow. 102. Dewhirst, Poison Arrow; Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria; Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria. 103. Ibid.; Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography; Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria. 104. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 105. Dewhirst, Poison Arrow. 106. Dewhirst, Poison Arrow; Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria. 107. Dewhirst, Poison Arrow; Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria. 108. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 52. 109. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/27/3, Mynn to Lugard, 28 April. 110. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/27/3, Bain to Lugard, No. 1308. 111. Colonial Office, Northern Nigeria, Blue Books, 1905, 37. 112. Colonial Office, Northern Nigeria, Blue Books, 1903 and 1904. 113. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 54–56. 114. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/28/9, Crewe to Girouard, conf. 23 July. 115. Colonial Office, Northern Nigeria, Blue Books, 1908, 39. 116. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 117. Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police; Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 55. 118. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography; Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/27/7, Girouard to Elgin, conf. 16 October. 119. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 55. 120. Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police; Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 56; Skennerton, S.A.I.S. No. 20; Skennerton, S.A.I.S. No. 15. 121. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 56.

4 Fighting the Great War

By 1914, George Dashwood Taubman Goldie, who set in motion the machinery that would create Nigeria, had long moved on—to Rhodesia and later to Pretoria.1 The political entity named Nigeria was no longer his concern. However, the impact of the ripples of its formation was only just starting to take effect. To many Nigerians, 1914 is readily recognizable as the year Frederick Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates to become Nigeria.2 To Lugard, his meant he was now in charge of an entire country, not just a protectorate. To the police force, it meant that each province, northern and southern, now had an inspector-general of police answerable to the lieutenant-general of the respective province. To Nigerians, it meant that autonomy was now a thing of the past; there was now a country called Nigeria, and everyone was in it together, or so the amalgamation propaganda said.3 For many Europeans, however, 1914 bears a different meaning indeed. This was the year World War I, otherwise known as the Great War, began. For Britain, a principal in the war, the conflict profoundly affected its imperialism, including its military and policing in its colonies.4 The conflict specifically affected, in some areas, colonial policing in Nigeria between 1914 and 1918.5 When the Great War broke out in 1914, the police workforce in Africa was integrated into the war effort. Although there remained some distinction between the police and military forces in the British colonies, many police personnel, because they had firearms training and stricter regimens than the average civilian, were integrated into new and existing military formations. This was the case for the police in Nigeria. Moreover, it was

43

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quite reasonable for police personnel to serve in the army and then return to the police, and vice versa.6 Reorganization of the Northern and Southern Police Forces As I discussed in previous chapters, Lugard had already made considerable reforms within the Northern Police Force during his earlier tenure as high commissioner from January 1900 to September 1906. Lugard’s reorganization scheme and the fact that Nigeria shared a border with German Kamerun (Cameroon) to the north meant Northern Police Force units played a role at the war front. However, neither the Northern Police Force nor the Southern Police Force was depleted to such an extent that it could no longer perform its duties because primarily the soldiers, not the police, were tasked with the war effort. Lugard had a hand in Nigeria’s internal defense organization, whereas the war effort was coordinated by the West African Frontier Force (WAFF), a separate outfit under the Colonial Office.7 With respect to the police’s internal defense responsibilities, Lugard, the governor-general (and later governor) of Nigeria, saw a need to mobilize additional police forces in both the Northern and Southern Protectorates. On 6 August 1914, two days after Britain declared war on Germany, Lugard proclaimed that from 7 August forward, “special constables,” as he called them, would be enrolled in both provinces and the Colony of Lagos. Enrollment was an open-ended approach to recruitment of new policemen. There was room both for inventiveness regarding the criteria for recruitment and how to recruit the men. Lugard’s use of the word special did not mean he accorded these wartime constables any added status. Lugard, after all, is known to have held the African surrogates in little regard; he is quoted as saying, “the typical African . . . is a happy, thriftless, excitable person, lacking in self-control, discipline and foresight, naturally courageous, courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with little of veracity; in brief, the virtues and defects of this race-type are those of attractive children.”8 Today, such views are considered overtly racist. At the time, however, Lugard’s approach was common practice, as evident in fewer opportunities available to African police personnel than to their British counterparts and in the way African rank-and-file police personnel were treated. The inspector-general of police in the Southern Province, assisted by the commissioners of police and district officers, implemented the governorgeneral’s orders and decided the special constable enrolment. Despite Lugard’s reorganization scheme in the Northern Province, the Southern Police Force was significantly larger than the Northern Police Force. Moreover, with the Lagos Colony integration into the Southern Protec-

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torate in 1906, the gap in size between the Southern and Northern Police Forces widened. The Declaration of 6 August benefited the Southern Province, which had not seen the same quasimilitary police reforms the Northern Province had over the previous decade. Nevertheless, the response from the local population in the South was less than promising because the title of special constable seemed to hold little appeal for most. For example, Benin Province had not recorded a single volunteer for policing by October 2014 for the war effort. Consequently, at Ifon, Assistant District Officer E. E. Porter, stopping short of full conscription measures, “rounded up ex-soldiers, ex-police, and gang-drivers from the SabonGida [Ora] area, and after explaining the idea to them obtained a promise of help if needed.”9 The Northern Police Force had encountered similar reluctance: as of 1915, it had recruited only thirty-nine special constables.10 By mid-August 1914, wartime tensions intensified in Europe. More countries entered the war, and their colonies followed suit.11 In Nigeria, Lugard took the unprecedented step of putting the entire Southern Police Force on standby on 13 August, a day after Britain and France declared war on Austria-Hungary.12 He implemented this measure even as the Northern Police Force had already sent a detachment to the WAFF campaign in German Kamerun, egressing from the northern Nigeria border. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and firearms training both the Northern Police Force and the Lagos Police had received over the previous decade was put to use when both units saw frontline action. In particular, the Northern Police Force detachment that deployed to the Yola and Muri border front in the Kamerun campaign saw firearms combat quite early in the war, certainly before 1915.13 Internal Policing During the War However, the opportunity cost of deploying police units to the war front, taking them away from civilian townships, meant that when trouble brewed, it was almost impossible to diffuse quickly. Very often, between 1914 and 1918, with police and military units away in either the Kamerun (1914– 1916) or East Africa (1916–1918) campaign, riotous behavior among Nigerian citizens turned deadly.14 In this sense, the war effort undermined efficient policing because it “reduced the effective supervision given by police officers in charge of the provincial commands.”15 The Northern Police Force was significantly affected because some of its best rank-and-file policemen and officers were seconded into the WAFF from August 1914.16 And “with few officers available, some police stations in the Northern Provinces had no inspection from 1914 to 1915.”17

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In August 1917, Lugard’s administration restructured the pre-existing police force by establishing the Southern Police Force, which covered the Lagos Colony and Southern Provinces, and the Northern Police Force for the Northern Provinces. The restructuring was achieved via the enactment of Police Ordinance (Cap. 32).18 Chiefly, the enactment sought to provide uniform regulations for the police forces in the amalgamated territories; it was the first of its kind since 1914.19 One of the practical features of Police Ordinance (Cap. 32) was the uniform chain of command. An inspector-general now headed each force, the NPF and the SPF. Under him were commissioners, assistant commissioners, superintendents, and subsuperintendents, also known as “other ranks.”20 Police Ordinance (Cap. 32) also stipulated that the government could prolong the retirement of police personnel whose service would have ended during wartime because of the national emergency. This delayed retirement, however, could not last more than twelve months maximum.21 This provision raised severe concerns for police personnel who had looked forward to retiring on a pension and now faced prolonged service. While the colonial government concerned itself with such administrative matters, which could be considered less pressing (and indeed proved so because there were no drastic changes despite the passing of the new ordinance), more urgent border and extraterritorial security concerns involved the colonial police at the same time. The West African Frontier Force When Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, Brigadier General Charles MacPherson Dobell, the most senior British officer in West Africa, was in England.22 Dobell’s presence in London was opportune. Whereas tactical maneuvers were accommodated by the colonial administration in Lagos, little operational decisionmaking was made in Lagos. And no strategic decisions at all were made outside of the Colonial Office in Whitehall, London. 23 Therefore, Dobell’s trip to London drastically accelerated war planning for the WAFF. By 22 August, war plans were complete. Eight days later, Dobell and his staff boarded a ship in Liverpool and set sail for Lagos.24 At the time, the leading threats were in the German protectorates of Togoland and Kamerun, already seeing skirmishes involving French and British forces, although no Nigerian forces from the WAFF, by early August. The WAFF was not particularly large by the standards of the forces being mobilized in Europe. However, the Nigerian forces within the WAFF were, by far, the largest.25 The Nigerian police component also constituted more than 10 percent of the Nigerian Army contribution.26 By the outbreak of war

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in Africa in 1914, the WAFF had 242 British regular officers seconded to the Colonial Office, along with 118 noncommissioned officers (NCOs).27 Dobell and his staff, in charge of the British officers and NCO contingent, commanded a total of 7,733 African soldiers. This brought the total size of the WAFF to 8,093, a lesser number than those of the smaller Great War divisions deployed in Europe.28 Nevertheless, the WAFF was the dominant military contingent in West Africa in 1914, at least thrice as large as the German forces in the region. Exploits of the Nigeria Regiment in Northern Nigeria and the Colony of Kamerun

The African forces constituted the rank and file of the WAFF, and of the 5,426 African soldiers deployed with it at the outbreak of war in 1914, over half came from Nigeria. A partial breakdown of the remaining troops is 1,553 troops from the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), 617 troops from Sierra Leone, and 137 from the Gambia.29 The Nigeria Regiment of the WAFF was roughly the size of a brigade and was organized into five infantry battalions.30 The commandant of the Nigeria Regiment in August 1914 was Colonel C. H. P. Carter. Carter, who unlike Dobell was in West Africa at the outbreak of war, first received permission from London to reconnoiter the Kamerun frontier on 14 August 1914.31 Carter wanted to maneuver his forces into Kamerun, and therefore wanted the Nigeria Regiment to have immediate contact with the Germans, who had only weak numbers at the border at the time. However, the Nigeria Regiment commandant was told that “the general policy was not to take offensive action” so early in the conflict. Understandably, London was cautious because “neither the Allies nor the Germans were prepared for war in Africa.”32 The earliest hostilities were delayed even further. Dobell, promoted to major general as the West Africa theater commander, who now had command of French land and sea forces besides the WAFF, left for West Africa from England at the end of August. Whereas Carter was “anxious to invade German territory by land,” London declined the request and “did not consider it desirable to initiate an offensive prior to the arrival of the Allied Expeditionary Force under General Dobell at Duala [sic].”33 Nevertheless, toward the end of August 1914, the British forces under Carter ignored offers of neutrality by the German authorities in Kamerun and invaded. Carter’s rationale was that the Nigeria Regiment had the numbers advantage. His ill-advised assumption was that the Germans, in requesting neutrality at the outbreak of war, were likely stalling for time while they awaited reinforcements. This calculation proved catastrophic for Carter and his Nigerian forces and most likely cost him his command.

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By the end of August 1914, Carter and the Nigeria Regiment had invaded the western part of Kamerun from northern Nigeria, crossing the border at several points. The backbone of the invasion force was the Nigeria Regiment. Contributing to the Nigerian forces were the Northern Police Force units that formed part the Maiduguri, Yola, and Muri columns, which crossed the frontier on 25 August.34 The War for German Kamerun

The Schutztruppe (German colonial forces) were led by the crafty Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, also known by his nom de guerre, Löwe von Afrika (“Lion of Africa”). Carter did not realize that both of von LettowVorbeck’s bases at Garua and Mora were heavily fortified and substantially armed. Von Lettow-Vorbeck dug into deep defensive positions, seeming to follow the maxim of Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military strategist, that “the defensive form of warfare is intrinsically stronger than the offensive.”35 Carter selected the bases at Garua and Mora for offensives in German Kamerun. Both outposts were in northern Kamerun, within sixty miles of the Nigerian border. Lacking information about the base fortifications, Carter pushed his Nigeria Regiment forces into Kamerun but suffered heavy losses because they soon came under artillery fire. After Carter’s repeated failed attempts at mounting offensives, the German Askaris (local African soldiers serving in the Schutztruppe as rank and file) forced the Nigeria Regiment into a tactical retreat. At this point, the Schutztruppe gradually took the initiative and began to “conduct raids into Nigeria. In the south, the [Nigeria Regiment] advance suffered heavy casualties at the battle of Nsanakong, just a few miles across the border. The contingent lost half of its 200 men, including most of the officers.”36 Nevertheless, by September 1914, Dobell had arrived and successfully led the British attack on the port of Douala.37 The British Navy warships, the HMS Challenger and the HMS Cumberland, enabled troops, including a Nigerian contingent, to disembark on German territory, whereas the land-based offensive by Carter had failed catastrophically. 38 Refusing to face the numerical and capabilities superiority of the Allies head on, Lettow-Vorbeck and his Schutztruppe retreated and remained entrenched in the interior of northern Kamerun by the end of 1914. The Germans adopted a defensive strategy with some guerrilla-warfare elements and slowed down the British campaign.39 In June 1915, Lieutenant-Colonel (later Brigadier General) Frederick Cunliffe, who had since assumed command of the Nigeria Regiment from Carter, attacked the German stronghold at Garua. Dealing the Germans a blow from which they never recovered, Cunliffe successfully took Garua.

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The Germans continued to employ guerrilla-style offensives and refused engagement except when it was in their favor. As a result, the Nigerian Regiment moved farther southward in Cameroon to assist Dobell’s forces. They fought several minor battles and skirmishes and eventually captured a German fort at Banyo in November 1915. By this time, the Germans were effectively holding out with little expectation of making offensive maneuvers. However, running out of food and water and in the face of strong opposition from the Nigeria Regiment, the Germans surrendered their final northern stronghold at Mora in February 1916.40 Some of the police troops in the Nigeria Regiment returned home, whereas others redeployed to German East Africa for the military campaign there. The Northern Provinces Police Companies of the Nigeria Regiment

The Northern Police Force played a critical role in this WAFF campaign, providing two companies of policemen and officers. Specifically, 7 Northern Police Force officers and 179 constables joined the WAFF in August 1914 on the front between the British and the Germans along the eastern borders of Yola and Muri Provinces in northern Nigeria.41 The Northern Police Force was involved in this conflict partly because there was no southern front in Nigeria during the Great War.42 In September 1914, after less than a month of his predecessor’s command, Cunliffe was posted as a replacement for Carter as commander of the Nigeria Regiment. Proving to be more patient and calculated than Carter, Cunliffe was a master of drawing out German forces and counterattacking. Eventually, the Nigeria Regiment began to make gains in the interior of Kamerun after driving the Germans out of northern Nigeria. The Northern Police Force companies, who were from those parts, participated in those border skirmishes.43 The Nigeria Police Force also participated extensively outside of Nigeria in the Kamerun campaign.44 Interestingly, the WAFF headquarters consisted of an inspector-general of police. This inspector-general, however, was neither British nor a police officer. Instead, it was the Canadian-born Dobell, made inspector-general of the WAFF at the outbreak of war. The inspector-general “was military adviser to the Colonial Office on all matters concerning the force, and he periodically inspected various units. In certain instances, he took command in the field. His headquarters were at the Colonial Office.”45 Regarding the NPF’s role within the WAFF, British officers and African constables (who might not all have been Nigerian) had different duties. For example, the officers did not engage in fighting but instead “performed war duties related to prisoners of war, intelligence gathering, enlisting and training army recruits and recruiting carriers for the troops.”

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The African constables, in contrast, saw combat. Four constables were killed and one wounded.46 The Impact of Military Service on the Colonial Nigeria Police

By the outbreak of war in 1914, the Nigerian Army had been gradually professionalized from company-sized units of 104 men into larger infantry battalions of around 800 men. These battalions could be raised relatively quickly because Nigeria already had large police numbers within its Northern and Southern Protectorates. Brigade-sized formations would follow shortly because Nigerian Army units also sometimes had small, detached units of police-trained men fighting with them in the WAFF.47 This practice of police-trained personnel fighting within Army formations endured (as evidenced by such service during World War II) as a necessity of recruitment and conscription in wartime.48 The Second Nigeria Regiment and the East Africa Campaign

By 1916, for instance, four battalions were formed within the Nigerian Army, each consisting of four companies with a mix of new conscripts, recruits, existing army personnel, and police-trained infantry riflemen. These mixed companies were numbered from 1 to 16 and the battalions from 1 to 4. A brigade headquarters was formed under Brigadier-General F. H. G. Cunliffe CB CMG. A battery of four 2.95-inch quick firing, breech loading mountain guns was an integral part of the brigade. In total, the Brigade consisted of 2,402 Nigerian rank and file, 125 British officers, 70 British noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and 812 machine gun and battery gun carriers. New Short Lee Enfield rifles were issued . . . and the men learned how to use these.49

This new brigade, the 2nd Nigeria Regiment, was formed because, with fighting now ended in Kamerun, there was an urgent need to redeploy troops and matériel, including some experienced and battle-tested police forces, to the East Africa front. Consequently, the Colonial Office called for Nigerian volunteers to form up another regiment. The 2nd Nigeria Regiment was smaller than the first, but at more than 4,000 troops was still comfortably over the minimum size of a brigade. The 2nd Nigeria Regiment, under Cunliffe, who headed to East Africa to renew his cat-andmouse rivalry with von Lettow-Vorbeck, had four infantry battalions and an artillery battery.50 The force sailed from Lagos in November 1916. By year’s end, it had reached its destination, the Rufiji River in southern Tanganyika (modern-day Tanzania).51

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Von Lettow-Vorbeck again commanded German enemy forces in the East Africa theater and used a mix of guerrilla-style tactics and regular engagement. This campaign was less successful for the 2nd Nigeria Regiment than the West Africa (Kamerun) campaign was for the 1st Nigeria Regiment between 1914 and 1918. There were more casualties, fewer victories, and no forced capitulation of von Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces, who rode through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin with the rest of his unit to a hero’s welcome on 2 March 1919.52 When the 2nd Nigeria Regiment returned home in January 1918, some 6,200 Nigerians had fought in the East Africa campaign. Many of them were veteran policemen from the West African campaign, and more than a third of the 2nd Nigeria Regiment were casualties of the East Africa campaign.53 Policing and Police Challenges During the War With two companies’ worth of police units away and some of their most experienced British officers commanding them in the Great War campaigns, the police forces in Nigeria had their hands full. As local rebellions sprang up in Nigeria between 1914 and 1918, the colonial government was forced to withdraw some troops and police units from the war front to help with growing levels of restiveness. Sometimes, as in the riots of February 1915 in the Udi district of the Onitsha division, local police forces had to be rescued by reinforcements and military units.54 At other times, such as in the Egba Kingdom troubles (which I discuss below), military units had to be called back to Lagos because the police took a big step back as the situation became volatile. As examples of the police’s troubles, in the sovereign Egba territory of Abeokuta, massive riots broke out around the same time as (but unrelated to) the outbreak of the Great War. The Egba Unrest, August 1914

Since July 1914, Ijemo people had insisted on the dismissal of the colonial government secretary, who they concluded was not protecting their interests and was not helping to resolve the issue of the suspicious death of ninety-year-old Egba activist Shobiyi Ponlade, arrested as a troublemaker because he opposed the Egba government policy of mandatory labor.55 Although the Egba Kingdom was sovereign, unique in Nigeria at the time, Ponlade was arrested, handcuffed, taken to the Egba capital of Abeokuta, brought before P. V. Young (the British commissioner), subjected to extensive abuse by the colonial police in attendance, and tied to a tree in full public view.56

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Not only did Ponlade eventually die in police custody but there were all sorts of issues with the case, broadly publicized by the Lagos press. The circumstances surrounding his ignominious treatment at police hands and subsequent death caused alarm. Ponlade, “a man of about ninety” was made to lie prostrate on the ground, flogged with heavy sticks, and tied to a tree overnight.57 Amid rumors that the colonial government killed Ponlade, the Egba people had become quite angry about the whole affair.58 Many took to the streets in open protests against the colonialist administration, which had another riot on its hands. The ruler of Egba Kingdom, the Alake, terrified of losing his throne because of these developments and facing people who saw him as a colonial puppet, appealed to the British commissioner, who promised him troops of a sterner disposition than that of the local police.59 The colonial government had seriously violated the Egba’s independence. Ponlade, as a subject of the kingdom, outside the jurisdiction of British courts, should not have been brought to the British commissioner for punishment. As Osuntokun writes: “The fact that Ponlade was brought before the British Commissioner and not the Alake, the head of the Egba government, is a clear indication of the hollowness of Egbaland’s independence.”60 Meanwhile, Lugard, who long had been against Egba land’s autonomy, saw the opportunity to revoke that autonomy and seized it. Even as the Alake of Egba land was warned that his kingdom’s autonomy was now in question, Lugard wrote, Obviously, if the head of state (the Alake) publicly says that he is compelled to appeal for the assistance of armed forces of the colonial government, the State can no longer be deemed capable of standing alone as an independent state. . . . It is imperative that a stop should be put to the possibility of riots breaking out and troops being required, at a time when England is at war or troops are needed elsewhere.61

Lugard was referring to the fact that soldiers and police officers had initially been deployed from Lagos to Egba Kingdom on 13 July (but they left after two weeks, when it seemed their presence was no longer needed).62 This contingent, however, returned when the riots escalated. At around 3:30 p.m. on 8 August 1914, a British officer, D. E. Wilson, fired live rounds into a crowd at Ijemo, killing thirty-five people of Egba.63 Wilson argued that the crowd, which numbered around 1,500, had made an attempt on his life, so he opened fire and his troops followed suit. “When his troops opened fire on the crowd . . . [Wilson] made no effort to check the killing of men and women who were in flight and who were offering no resistance.” Additionally, he used a Maxim gun, a coiloperated heavy machine gun typically towed on wheels, to mow down the crowd.64 Use of this anti-personnel machine gun, called the weapon “most

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associated with British imperial conquest,” was uncalled for, as was the fact that “soldiers entered the Oluwo’s house to shoot down people in their rooms.” 65 Instead of murder charges or even a court-martial, Wilson’s “punishment” seemed to be his promotion to captain’s rank and deployment to the WAFF in 1915.66 The Ijemo Massacre

The Ijemo Massacre was one of several serious protests and rebellions that sporadically broke out across many parts of Nigeria from 1914 forward. In Muri Province, near northern Nigeria’s border with Kamerun, fighting escalated as fifty-nine officials and government employees were killed.67 This led to Nigeria Police Force units, initially meant to be part of the Kamerun campaign, redeploying to Muri.68 The Oke-Ogun Uprising

Another example of unrest quickly escalated and involved the police in October 1916 in southwestern Nigeria, when the Ònkò (Oke-Ogun) uprising occurred among the Yoruba Ònkò people, who formed part of the expansive Oyo Empire. The locals rose up against “the introduction of indirect rule and the institution of a new court system after the amalgamation of Nigeria.”69 These political changes had real social implications because they denied and marginalized the leadership of some of the Ònkò (Oke-Ogun), who had more powers in the precolonial era and had gradually been deprived. The unrest came to a head when an “unpopular chief and his associates, who were seen by the rebels as Lugard’s collaborators” as well as underlings of the “puppet” ruler, the Alaafin of Oyo, were killed.70 With its worst riots around Okeho and Iseyin between 1916 and 1917, the uprising was “brutally suppressed,” after violent fighting between colonial forces and Oke-Ogun locals led to the colonial forces killing “over 200 men.”71 The colonial administration went further to send a warning by ordering the public executions of several chiefs, including the Aseyin (the king of Iseyin), dishonoring Yoruba culture.72 Another rebellion that soon escalated beyond police riot-control capabilities was in the Kwale district of Warri Province in November 1914. Locals began to kill government messengers and court clerks at random, without any specific incident of provocation. The indigenous people had greatly resented the “clerks because of how they had manipulated the newly created Native Court system to serve their pecuniary ends.”73 As the police struggled to contain the rebellion, it spread into other areas of Warri Province. By then, the Urhobo and Ika-Igbo ethnic groups had joined the Kwale people in their revolt. As the anger and killings

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spread, so did the victims.74 As the violence spread, Yoruba and Hausa employees in the colonial administration were also targeted.75 With a breakdown of law and order across Nigeria, the colonial government redeployed some police and military forces from the Ikom column on the Nigeria-Kamerun border to the restive Niger Delta area. The Egba Kingdom was still under occupation since its massive riots in July. However, because the situation seemed less volatile by the end of 1914, some of those troops were also redeployed to repress the Warri insurgency. Weeks of punitive operations by the British colonial forces led to a familiar outcome: artificial security was restored. Once again, the colonial police resurfaced to keep the peace as military troops returned either to their garrisons or to the Kamerun war front.76 The Egba Troubles, June 1914

Arguably the most significant rebellion began in the Egba Kingdom in June 1914. The kingdom had been particularly restive because the British colonial government was openly reneging on the terms of its treaty of 1893. The lieutenant governor of Southern Nigeria, Sir Alexander George Boyle, attempting to diffuse the situation, visited some Egba farmers but was threatened with open revolt by a small “mob.”77 Continued unrest in the area necessitated a deployment of troops. However, this failed to deter rebellion. Instead, mass protests erupted by May 1918, as the Egba people rejected taxation and administrative changes introduced by the Boyle government.78 The following month, on 13 June 1918, organized Egba forces “led by ‘les chefs de guerre’ or Bologuns,” moving from the countryside, attacked Abeokuta.79 Infrastructure, including railways and telegraph lines, was destroyed during these disturbances. The police were unable to handle this scale of violence, and an emergency was declared by the colonial administration.80 In July, several government troops, including ex-police units, were redeployed from East Africa.81 These military and police reinforcements eventually defeated the rebels; it was a bloody outcome. More than 1,000 Africans were casualties of the violence; most of these were killed.82 The Egba troubles were part of a pattern of revolt observable across the new federation of Nigeria. Such violent protests began with covert and then overt defiance of “native” authority seen as complicit with the British colonial government. Next came civil disobedience and open challenges to colonialist rule. The colonial authorities, in turn, would, time and again, brutally suppress these uprisings, often using military units in replacement, or in support of, the local police forces. This pattern frequently resurfaced in one form or another across the Northern and Southern Regions, throughout the war.

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By the war’s end, however, with military forces now returning to Nigeria at the end of the East Africa campaign in 1918, police forces were relieved because instances of rebellion were neither as volatile nor as plentiful as they had been in wartime. A Militarized Police Policing during the Great War was as present as it was before. However, during the Kamerun and East Africa campaigns, it became a highly militarized affair, and police forces were sometimes distinguishable from military forces only in uniform and accoutrements.83 Indeed, this indistinguishability between police and military forces was so widespread that although “pre-war colonial units of all three powers, Britain, France, and Germany, had been designed primarily for internal policing,” they nevertheless were well suited for extensive offensive and defensive wartime operations.84 As the war continued, military battalions often comprised large numbers of African policemen drilled in similar ways, employing the same weaponry, and with similar levels of experience as African soldiers. As far as army or police officers were concerned, the distinction was clearer, but for all intents and purposes, during the Great War the armies deployed either quasimilitary police units seconded for the war effort or military units designed for internal security rather than regular warfare per se.85 By the time of the East Africa campaign in 1917, recruitment en masse of African policemen and soldiers meant that training and overall troop quality was inadequate. Policemen were allowed to volunteer to join the war effort, and many did so with the 2nd Nigeria Regiment, which swelled its numbers and became an operational concern because the quality was no longer there. Even when policemen did not volunteer, many found themselves pressed into security duties that had little to do with regular police work, and subsequently, “a considerable number of these police found their way into military service.”86 However, a police constable who thinks and acts like a soldier is not necessarily a good thing for the task of serving and protecting communities with minimum force.

Notes 1. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 2. Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria. 3. Ibid. 4. Geary, Nigeria Under British Rule.

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5. Shirley, A History of the Nigeria Police; Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria. 6. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 7. Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule. 8. Gann and Duignan, The Rulers of British Africa, 340. 9. Colonial Office, Calabar Province Files, 4/1, E. E. Porter to Commissioner. 10. Secretariat of the Northern Provinces, Annual Report on the Northern Nigeria Police, 1. 11. Farwell, The Great War in Africa; Osuntokun, Nigeria in the First World War. 12. Nigerian Gazette Extraordinary, 14 August 1914. 13. Secretariat of the Northern Provinces, Annual Report on the Northern Nigeria Police, 2–3; Osuntokun, Nigeria in the First World War. 14. Osuntokun, Nigeria in the First World War. 15. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 57. 16. Osuntokun, Nigeria in the First World War; Ahire, Imperial Policing, 61; Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police. 17. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 57. 18. Kingdon, The Laws of Nigeria 1923, 441–461. 19. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 58. 20. Kingdon, The Laws of Nigeria, 441–461. 21. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 58. 22. Farwell, The Great War in Africa, 35–36. 23. Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule. 24. Farwell, The Great War in Africa, 35–36. 25. Haywood and Clarke, The History of the West African Frontier Force. 26. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 61. 27. Farwell, The Great War in Africa, 35–36. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Haywood and Clarke, The History of the West African Frontier Force. 31. Gorges, The Great War in West Africa, 132. 32. Farwell, The Great War in Africa, 35. 33. Gorges, The Great War in West Africa, 131–132. 34. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 61; Gorges, The Great War in West Africa, 132. 35. Von Clausewitz, On War, 108. 36. National Archives (United Kingdom), “Conquest of the Cameroons.” 37. Gorges, Great War in West Africa; Hoyt, Guerrilla; Gaudi, African Kaiser. 38. Gorges, Great War in West Africa; Hoyt, Guerrilla; Gaudi, African Kaiser. 39. National Archives (United Kingdom), Conquest of the Cameroons. 40. Ibid. 41. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 61. 42. Farwell, The Great War in Africa. 43. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 61. 44. Gorges, The Great War in West Africa, 92. 45. Ibid. 46. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 61. 47. Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police; Ukpabi, “The Origins of the West African Frontier Force”; Ahire, Imperial Policing. 48. Colonial Office, Colonial Reports, Nigeria, 1947. 49. Kaiserscross.com, “Bweho-Chini.” 50. National Archives (United Kingdom), “Nigerian Brigade.”

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51. Ibid. 52. Gaudi, African Kaiser, 410. 53. Ibid. 54. Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 180. 55. Nigeria Encyclopedia, Ijemo Massacre; Olawin, “Massacre”; Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 174–177. 56. Stallard and Richards, Ordinances, and Orders and Rules Thereunder; Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 175. 57. Ibid. 58. Nigerian Chronicle, 7 August 1914. 59. Colonial Office, 583/25/34071. 60. Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 175. 61. Colonial Office, 583/19/42181. 62. Nigeria Encyclopedia, Ijemo Massacre; Olawin, “Massacre”; Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 174–177. 63. Nigeria Encyclopedia, Ijemo Massacre; Olawin, “Massacre”; Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 174–177. A British Army officer seconded to the Colonial Office. Wilson’s home unit was the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. National Archives, “Rebellions.” 64. Colonial Office, 583/34/32247, Unpublished Report. 65. Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 11; Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 177. 66. Gorges, The Great War in West Africa, 272. 67. National Archives (United Kingdom), “Rebellions.” 68. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 61; Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police. 69. Ojoawo, “Oke-Ogun Uprising,” 2558. 70. National Archives (United Kingdom), “Rebellions”; Ojoawo, “Oke-Ogun Uprising,” 2558. 71. Ibid. 72. Ojoawo, “Oke-Ogun Uprising,” 2558. 73. Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 178. 74. Colonial Office, 583/30/4960. 75. Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 178. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid., 188. 78. Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria, 88–90. 79. Osuntokun, “Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War,” 188. 80. Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police. 81. National Archives (United Kingdom), “Rebellions.” 82. Ibid. 83. Farwell, The Great War in Africa, 23. 84. Strachan, The First World War in Africa, 5. 85. This applied more to the Germans, certainly, but also applied to the British, French, and Belgian forces. 86. Ross Anderson, The Forgotten Front, 22.

5 Postwar Amalgamation

Upon completion of service in World War I, or the Great War, in 1918, a lot of ex–military personnel were signed up for the colonial Nigeria police forces in the Northern and Southern Provinces. Additionally, some policemen had already been drafted for military duty. This meant that by the 1920s, both police forces had been militarized. However, this quasimilitary police identity was particularly evident in the Northern Police Force, where the large number of demobilized soldiers served as a ready source of recruitment.1 The post–World War I police recruitment statistics in northern Nigeria support this assertion. In 1924, as an example, 181 police constables reported for duty in the Northern Police Force. Of these recruits, 91 constables, or just over 50 percent, had just served as soldiers in the African theater of the Great War.2 This percentage decreased only slightly the following year (1925), when of the 150 recruits deployed in the Northern Police Force, 67 members, or 44.6 percent, were ex-soldiers.3 Policing After World War I The role of ex-soldiers in the Northern Police Force in the postwar period was so typical that it became broadly normalized within the institution. So much so that “an agreement was reached with the Commandant of the Northern Regiment of the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) whereby reservists of the WAFF could be enlisted into the Northern Police Force ‘without the liability of being called up for annual training.’”4 To seal this,

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the postwar Nigeria Police Force in the Northern Region adopted the Nigerian Army’s infantry drill book as the primary training manual for police drill fundamentals.5 Moreover, the Nigeria Police Force Standing Orders, which applied to both the Northern and the Southern Police Forces after the 1930 amalgamation was still unapologetic in its insistence that “officers and men are required to model their drill standards on those for the military infantry, as the force is itself a semi-military organisation. . . . It is essential that every constable should be able to use his rifle to shoot with a fair amount of accuracy, for if a man is totally unable to shoot, he is useless to the force.”6 The overlap between police and military service was not just constrained to indigenous personnel. Even British officials made the switch from the military to the police. A case in point is that of Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Lawrence Uniacke. Nigeria Police or Army or Both? The Case of Uniacke

In 1917, Brevet-Major and Lieutenant-Colonel Uniacke of the Royal Lancaster Regiment (Special Reserve, Reserve of Officers) was instrumental to the formation and professionalization of one of Nigeria’s earliest wartime brigades, the 2nd Nigeria Regiment.7 The Uniacke family members were no strangers to commanding and indeed fighting in Africa. As for this Uniacke, he had served in the South Africa War earning the Queen’s Medal with five clasps, in the 1903 Kano-Sokoto Campaign in northern Nigeria, in three minor operations also in northern Nigeria between 1907 and 1908, and in the Cameroon campaign where he was Mentioned in Despatches (31 May 1916). He had retired as a soldier and taken up government service in Nigeria but he returned to the colours on the outbreak of war.8

By the time the Great War ended in 1918, Uniacke, commanding officer of the 2nd Nigeria Regiment, “had been awarded a Distinguished Service Order with the citation: Conspicuous gallantry at Bweho-Chini on 22nd September 1917 when in command of his Battalion.” Uniacke retained his command of the 2nd Nigeria regiment until 1918, when he returned to government service in Nigeria. Upon his return to Nigeria, however, Uniacke threw in his lot with the NPF; it was never clear if he retained his Nigerian Army commission and was merely seconded to the police. 9 In total, Uniacke served for about twenty-six years—in virtual exile from Britain—eventually rising to become the commissioner of the Northern Police Force.10 I return to Uniacke, who retired from the NPF in July 1929, a little later. Suffice to say for now that the Great War experience afforded considerable policing and political overlap for many military personnel who, like Uniacke, served in and commanded units in the African theater between

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1914 and 1918. As Ukpabi notes regarding this overlap of military, police, and political duty, Officers were appointed District Commissioners, especially in the frontier districts where they combined political with military duties. Others (sometimes ex-officers) were appointed Governors or Commissioners of large territories, where their military training enabled them, as Commanders-inChief, to determine how to deploy their forces in times of trouble. Other officers were sent into outlying areas to make treaties with chiefs.11

The Postwar Police Amalgamation Conversation In 1914, the regions of Nigeria were politically amalgamated by the colonial government of Nigeria. For the police, however, the different regions were still locally administered. Recruitment, ethnic makeup, training, and law enforcement priorities all reflected local character. By 1926, the British government was keen for a centralized approach to law enforcement, easier to manage. The police force amalgamation of 1930, therefore, was an enactment of both political expedience and administrative necessity. In a sense, the process was inevitable. Since 1912, the colonial government aimed to centralize the administration of the main parastatals, institutions, and departments of the regions known today as Nigeria. Before 1930, virtually all the major departments aside from the police had been merged. The railway, postal services, educational departments, and judicial and legal administrative departments across the various provinces were all consolidated.12 Perhaps budgetary savings underpinned consolidation and mergers in those areas. However, it is unclear that a similar financial calculus drove the police amalgamation, which would have saved a relatively minor amount of just £552 even if it had occurred two years earlier.13 What, then, could explain the police amalgamation of 1930? The answer takes us back to the issue of centralization of administration, authority, and coordination of the federation’s police forces. Lack of such centralization was increasingly problematic within a territory where so many police groups existed. Until 1919, for instance, the Southern Police Force had jurisdiction over all railway matters in the Southern Provinces. Likewise, the Northern Police Force made similar security provisions for the sections of the railway infrastructure in the Northern Provinces. This arrangement remained in place, although on 3 October 1912, the Lagos Government Railway and the Bayero-Kano Railway were amalgamated.14 Moreover, railway services at the time were a great deal more prominent in southern Nigeria; the South saw considerably more commercial and human traffic than the North did

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and so required more police resources. These police resources could be— but were not—requisitioned from the Northern Police Force for Southern Police Force railway duties. Consequently, the general manager of the Railway Corporation of Nigeria, which then operated nationwide rail services under the name Government Department of Railways, began petitioning the government for a separate police force that consolidated Northern and Southern Province assets for exclusive railway duties. This “new” NPF element was to be detached from both the Northern and Southern Police Forces but still “under the supervision of the Inspector-General of the Southern Police Force,” according to Lieutenant-Colonel F. D. Hammond.15 Eventually, the petition was successful. The police force restructuring came after the visit of Hammond, whom the Colonial Office sent from Britain to Nigeria in November 1923 to give a situation report on railway security across the federation.16 The colonial government was in an awkward position whereby it had no centralized authority for policing, so, as the railway case indicates, it had to resort to ad hoc measures to ensure police security in certain instances. The colonial government needed a centralized police force and one individual accountable for policing across the entire federation. After all, a federation where regional lieutenant-governors and administrative subordinates could exercise de facto provincial and district-level control over police forces was antithetical to the idea of centralized colonial authority. I will show that this question of centralization (also called unification) of the police forces in Nigeria endured for decades, even long after colonial rule had ended. By the 1920s, the police administration centralization issue was paramount in the local security infrastructure because the colonial government needed such a regime for three reasons: first, to curb local influence and de facto control of personnel and duties; second, to appoint a central authority in the police headquarters in Lagos who could advise the government on all things police-related across the federation and be accountable for the police force(s); and third, to help reduce the administrative challenge of dealing with multiple streams of police correspondence from all over the federation to the office of the secretary of the government of Nigeria.17 It would appear obvious what a centralized police force would do for the colonial government. Yet between 1914 and 1926, the centralization issue was little discussed formally. Moreover, the actual reform process was not formalized and actualized until 1930. Why the delay? Several considerations, rather than one, spread over different periods, help address this question. The delay between 1914 and 1919 likely occurred because of the outbreak of the Great War and the requisition of African troops for continent-wide campaigns; administrative issues related to securing the Nigerian interior were

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probably subordinate to the war effort. Even during the Great War, though, there was a bit of administrative consideration to the centralization issue. The 1917 Police Ordinance (Cap. 32), for example, “introduced a measure of uniformity in police administration without any formal amalgamation.”18 The Lieutenant-Governors Express Their Concerns Other obstacles followed, such as between 1926 and 1928 whereby local administrative concerns around the centralization issue forced the government to pause it. The regional lieutenant-governors expressed deep concern that a single police officer, quite possibly one from the London Metropolitan Police or otherwise a senior government official who did not wield regional power, would relieve them of their police administrative and authoritative powers. Indeed, the regional lieutenant-governors were suspicious that the new head of a centralized police force answerable to Lagos would alter the status quo of power arrangements around the federation. In this sense, because the Nigeria Police Force “is not as technical as the Public Works, Agriculture, Forestry and Roads and similar departments, the Lieutenant-Governors claimed equal knowledge and ability in police administration with the Inspector-General,” who was the head of the police force in Nigeria (and who presumably would control police work across the federation after the amalgamation of the force).19 The lieutenant-governors were of the view that such an official should not supersede their own regional authority; it would undermine their local power because the inspector-general and his subordinates were viewed regionally as the “eyes and ears of the Administration.”20 Concerns from the lieutenant-governors about “a system of unified control of the Police exercised from a distance” were, arguably, alarmist and, as the government’s choice of C. W. Duncan as police inspectorgeneral showed, mostly unjustified.21 Duncan, who in 1929 became the first inspector-general of the amalgamated police forces, had spent almost ten years in Nigeria and was intimately familiar with local police work and the differences in regions and regional administration across the federation.22 Specifically, Duncan “was aware of the need for maintaining close contact between the police officers and the staff of the Political Department.”23 This was in line with the stipulation of the governor-general of Nigeria at the time, Hugh Clifford, in his Memorandum of 1920, written shortly after Clifford arrived in Nigeria from the Gold Coast.24 Clifford’s memorandum is important to understanding both the extent of local power wielded by the lieutenant-governors and the complex interactions involving them, the regional police forces, and the local administrative authorities in the districts and subdistricts. The Clifford memorandum notes,

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Policing and Politics in Nigeria The resident of a province is, within the limits of his Province, the Principal Executive Officer of Government and is personally and directly responsible to the Lieutenant-Governor under whom he is serving for the peace, tranquillity and good order of his province and for the efficient execution of all public business which at any time is being carried on within it. A District Officer in charge of a Division occupies within his area a position as nearly analogous to that of the Resident in his province as the relative dignity and importance of the two offices render possible.25

Clifford also makes unique accommodation for the police force in administered areas when he notes, When visiting detachments of Police which are under the command of Administrative officers, Police Officers should issue all their instructions through the Administrative Officer in charge in order that he may know what is taking place within his command. Police Officers should not interfere with local matters of duty or routine except after consultation with the Administrative Officer.26

Indeed, with such broad oversight as this excerpt from the Clifford memorandum allows regional lieutenant-governors, it becomes clear how much power these officials wield over local police. For example, the lieutenantgovernor of the Northern Region, Herbert Richmond Palmer, who ruled over the region indirectly and so did relatively less while wielding total administrative power over more than half the Nigerian land mass, was keen to retain regional control over the police. The notion that Palmer would lose such power to an inspector-general of police did not go over well with the lieutenant-governor.27 C. W. Duncan Makes His Case to the Lieutenant-Governors Meanwhile, Duncan, in pushing for the police amalgamation—a process that would greatly expand his administrative station as inspector general of the Southern Police Force—aimed to reassure the lieutenant-governors of both regions.28 Specifically, Duncan, for some time, had attempted to reassure Palmer, who had previously worked amicably with Uniacke.29 The reassurances in question were that Duncan’s primary aim was to help the Clifford colonial government have a more streamlined and efficient police force. In this sense, Duncan impressed upon Palmer the idea that he (Duncan) was not aiming to subvert the lieutenant-governors’ police powers or to undermine their administrative authority.30 More to the previous point, as inspector-general of the Southern Police Force, Duncan pointed out to the lieutenant-governors that Clifford’s memorandum had always guided his actions. Duncan argued that this charge

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would not change if he became the inspector-general of the amalgamated police force.31 Consequently, Duncan promised to continue the existing administrative practice in this respect even after the proposed police amalgamation. Duncan made it quite clear that he would make good his word soon after the amalgamation was accomplished.32 Moreover, Duncan did seem to keep his word in the respect he accorded to the existing authority of lieutenant-governors as codified in the Standing Orders of 17 November 1932, which Duncan himself had drawn up within Regulation 28 of the Police Regulations, 1930. The Lieutenant-Governors Again Express Their Concerns In no small part because of the efforts of Duncan, the formal amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Police Forces was completed on 1 April 1930. The force that emerged “became known as the Nigerian Police Force (NPF).”33 However, the lieutenant-governors of the regions were displeased at this development. They each voiced reservations around the amalgamation and its impact on regional authority and administration of policing. The lieutenant-governor of the North argued, “The essential character of the Native Authorities Police as a force principally responsible to and under the direction of the Native Authorities” should not be affected “in the least degree” by the amalgamation. In the lieutenant-governor’s view, should this character be altered, the Northern Police Force, composed of several native police forces, “would become in effect an adjunct of the NPF, though paid for by the Native Authorities, and the present interest of the Native Authorities . . . would be completely destroyed. The lieutenant-governor of the South, in a rare show of unison with his counterpart in the North, shared similar sentiments: The Inspector-General wants complete absorption of the Native Administration Police or their independence, but he can have neither. If control were to pass completely from the Native Authorities to the InspectorGeneral, the Native Administration Police would become a central Government Police different from the Nigerian Police only in so far as they were paid for by the Native Authorities and were less paid, well clad or well educated.34

Despite their concerns about the amalgamation, however, the lieutenantgovernors were in many ways in good stead with Duncan as inspectorgeneral. Of all the previous heads of police in Nigeria (for the Northern and Southern Police Forces), he did not have a strong military background. In this sense, Duncan was more of the quintessential administrator rather than the field commander, compared with previous police heads. Indeed, he

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arrived in Nigeria in 1919, principally to act as inspector-general of police and director of prisons in the Southern Provinces (he stepped down as director of prisons in November 1921). Duncan’s background as a bureaucrat meant that he played it much safer than even the lieutenant-governors could have envisaged. As for the impact of the 1930 amalgamation itself, before the process, there was much talk of centralization of power and reallocation of regional administrative duties. In practice, when it came down to it, there was no substantive “altering of the existing powers, duties, discipline and privileges of the policemen.” A year after his appointment and shortly after the amalgamation, Duncan introduced the Police Ordinance (No. 2 of 1930). Even here, there were no significant changes in “the existing position except in organisation.”35 For the African police personnel within the NPF, the impact of the amalgamation was particularly disappointing. Despite more than fifty years of police involvement since the 1870s, no indigenous Nigerians were afforded significant NPF status by 1930. Most officers were British. This state of affairs begged the question: With three decades till independence, when would mid- to senior-level Nigerians begin to staff, administer, and command the NPF? Did the Police Amalgamation of 1930 Yield the Expected Outcomes? Indeed, with the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Police Forces in 1930 came increased optimism that the previous question would be answered positively for indigenous roles at mid to senior levels within the NPF. However, Police Ordinance (No. 2 of 1930) carried no such stipulation, and it was left to the discretion of the British government to promote and assign Nigerian policemen to higher ranks and offices. This never quite materialized before World War II.36 Although, after that conflict, and with the role of the Nigerian Army and police detachments in the war, it seemed the British either found or rediscovered respect for Nigerian policemen.37 By 1950, more mid- to senior-level policemen moved upward through the ranks (which the British were keen to point out in their annual colonial office reports).38 Consequently, the first Nigerian inspector-general eventually emerged in 1964. Table 5.1 shows the successors of Duncan as inspector-general of police in colonial Nigeria. British officials continued to serve as inspectorgeneral of police even after Nigeria gained independence and up until 1964 when the first indigenous Nigerian police officer, Louis Oruk Edet, took over as the eleventh head of the police in Nigeria.

Postwar Amalgamation Table 5.1 Heads of the Amalgamated Police in Nigeria Name

C. W. Duncan S. H. Trantham Alan Saunders A. Smavrogordato W. C. King T. V. M. Finlay I. Stourton A. N. MacLaughlin Ken Bovell J. E. Hodge L. O. Edeta

Title

IGP/Director of Prisons AG, IGP IGP Commissioner of the NPF Commissioner of Police Commissioner of Police IGP IGP IGP IGP IGP

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Tenure

1910–1930 1930–1935 1936–1937 1937–1942 1942–1947 1948–1949 1950–1952 1952–1956 1956–1962 1962–1964 1964–1966

Source: Alozie, “Critical Assessment of the Nigeria Police and National Security in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic,” 5. Note: a. First indigenous inspector general of the Nigeria Police Force.

The road to Inspector-General Edet’s appointment was a lengthy and difficult one, not just for him but for the indigenous hopes for a senior appointment in the Nigeria Police Force.39 The Lagos press and the Legislative Council members, long before 1930, had expressed part concern and part optimism that the British would eventually shift administrative and authoritative responsibility to Nigerian policemen. Indeed, in March 1919, one of main news dailies in Lagos, the Lagos Standard, urged the Legislative Council, which had a mix of British and Nigerian officials: They should keep in mind that a Native held the office and discharged with high distinction the duties of the Superintendent—and that for more than one generation. It is for them to see that the office is re-opened to the natives and, what is more, that the posts of commissioners are also open to the Natives. . . . Mr. Pratt has led the way, let every police officer do his best to follow.40

Of course, the reference to Pratt was to Adolphus Pratt, once an inspector of police in Lagos who had risen “from humble beginnings to become the Superintendent of Police.”41 However, as Tamuno observes, “Pratt also encountered the same problem of colour bar and racial discrimination during his forty-odd years’ public service.”42 So, on the one hand, Pratt indeed might have “led the way,” as the Lagos Evening Standard observed. However, he was an outlier as an indigenous officer in the NPF by 1930. The substantial race-discriminatory practices the British had in place to prevent such exceptions from becoming the norm were evident. This view is given further credence in a 1909 declaration made by C. Strachey from the Colonial Office, who was principal clerk. Strachey

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remarked in December 1909 about the “general question” of why Africans (not just Nigerians now) held such low status in British colonial administrations, “It is necessary to recognise that the administration of the West African colonies is British, and that as long as this is the case no native African can expect to be appointed to any but subordinate posts.”43 However, the debate did not end in 1909, nor did it end in 1919. This is why the so-called reform sequel to the amalgamation of 1930 was met with such disappointment. After all, the protestations against qualified Nigerian policemen denied mid- to senior-level positions appeared to have gathered momentum by the late 1920s. In 1927, as an example, J. Akilade Caulcrick, the third elected member for Lagos to the Legislative Council posed two Council Questions during the February Session.44 The first of these inquired “whether African officers like the late Lieutenant Daniel, Messrs A. C. Willoughby, T. Raymond Davies, Adolphus Pratt, who for long and meritorious service received the King’s Police Medal, did not amply justify such appointments being held by Africans?”45 And the second supplementary question by Caulcrick was for the colonial government to state “whether officers such as Mr. Cobham of Calabar, who was trained in England, and Mr. Ajayi, who very capably superintended the Police Department on two occasions during the Wembley Exhibition, are not considered eligible as Superintendents of Police.”46 The British response to Caulcrick was presented by Major C. T. Lawrence, who at the time was acting secretary of the Southern Provinces. In a statement that “hardly satisfied Caulcrick,” Lawrence argued that “the grade of Superintendent is about to be abolished: this appointment has not hitherto been open to African officers on account of the nature of the duties Superintendents were required to perform.”47 Caulcrick, who was vocal about the fact that Nigerian representation in the administration was instrumental to fair governance across the provinces, was one of the nationalist statesmen of the day.48 To his credit, Caulcrick did not merely sit on his dissatisfaction about Lawrence’s statement, which was both inaccurate (the grade of police superintendent was not, in fact, abolished) and deflective of the crux of the question, which related to discrimination, as a general issue, against highly qualified Nigerian policemen in the force. Instead, Caulcrick took his agitation outside the council and also wrote about these matters later that year in the Lagos Daily News, one of colonial Nigeria’s largest and most influential newspapers.49 Such protests fell mostly on deaf ears, and “for nearly two decades after the 1930 amalgamation, there was no marked change in this respect.”50 On the contrary, the widespread discrimination against qualified Nigerian police personnel seemed to worsen with the centralization of the force and the 1930 amalgamation. This is insofar as Lagos had more oversight, less paperwork to deal with, and thus less need for senior police-

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men across the regions, even though police numbers and lower-level policework remained mostly unchanged. Notes

1. Ahire, Imperial Policing. 2. Chief Secretary’s Office, 26, Annual Report, 1924, 1–2. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 2. 5. Secretariat of the Northern Provinces, Annual Report, 2. 6. Nigeria Police Force, Standing Orders, 45, 93. 7. Brevet major. Brevet (military). In many of the world’s military establishments, a brevet (/brəˈvɛt/) was a warrant that gave an already-commissioned officer a higher rank and title. This was usually a nonmonetary recognition, or, in a sense, a reward, for gallantry or meritorious conduct. However, such warrants did not confer the authority, precedence, or pay of real rank to the recipient. Kaiserscross.com, “Bweho-Chini.” 8. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 9. Ibid. 10. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 65. 11. Ukpabi, “The Origins of the West African Frontier Force,” 485. 12. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 63. 13. Chief Secretary’s Office, 26/2/1, F. Baddeley to Amery. 14. Stocker, Nigerian Railway Jubilee, 3. 15. Hammond, Report on the Railway System of Nigeria, 156. 16. Ibid. 17. Chief Secretary’s Office, 26/2/1, Minutes by the Acting Secretary. 18. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 64. 19. Ibid. 20. Chief Secretary’s Office, 26/2/1, Minutes by GJFT (omlinson). 21. Chief Secretary’s Office, 26/2/1, Memo by J. M. Fremantle, 15/10/28. 22. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 23. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 65. 24. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 25. Nigerian Gazette Extraordinary, vol. 13, no. 13. The original Minute by Sir Hugh Clifford is dated 21 November 1920 but was revised in the Nigerian Gazette Extraordinary, 2 March 1926. 26. This section of Hugh Clifford’s Minute is from the original dated 21 November 1920; it was not revised in the Nigerian Gazette Extraordinary publication, as the previous excerpt was. 27. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 28. Colonial Office, Colonial Reports, Nigeria, 1929. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 32. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 65. 33. Ibid., 66. 34. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 100–101. 35. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 64. 36. Colonial Office, Colonial Reports, Nigeria, 1947.

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37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 40. Lagos Evening Standard, 19 March 1919. 41. Obichere, Studies in Southern Nigerian History, 176. 42. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 67. 43. Colonial Office, 520/87, MP. No. 40542. 44. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 68. 45. Legislative Council Debates, 1 February 1927, 17. 46. Ibid. 47. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 69. 48. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 49. Ogunyemi, “The Role of Media in Promoting African Indigenous Languages,” 5. 50. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 69.

6 The “Nigerianization” Question

Public interest in the “Nigerianization” of the colonial police force gained momentum from 1930 onward, as I foreshadowed in Chapter 5. At the time, colonialist government propaganda and media made much of the amalgamation of the Northern Police Force and Southern Police Force into the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and thus put the institution in the spotlight.1 Interest in indigenous control of policing increased even further as the country headed toward independence and the evidence of empire evidentially weakened across the Nigerian federation. Additionally, J. Akilade Caulcrick and others in the Legislative Council increased their scrutiny of the non-Nigerianized nature of mid- to senior-level positions in the NPF in its postamalgamation state. This might have put some pressure on British officials to reconfigure the police force. Nevertheless, by the mid-1930s, upward mobility prospects, for Nigerian noncommissioned officers (NCOs), or constables, looking to advance to the rank of an “African officer” (subinspector) remained modest because of the “rigorous procedure” put in place by the British. The process applied not only to the subinspector position but also to Nigerians’ prospects of climbing beyond that rank. These urgent questions were raised in Legislative Council debates starting in the late 1920s and continued to be an issue almost a decade later in the late 1930s.2 Yet, in all that time, “only a few African policemen qualified to be Sub-Inspectors.” 3 Considerably fewer rose further still above that rank, which was at least two full ranks below the ceiling of superintendent of police set decades earlier in the Lagos Police Command by Adolphus Pratt.

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The existing processes did little to help the upward mobility of Nigerian policemen in the force partly because of the design of the cadet subinspector scheme. The cadet subinspector rank is junior to that of a confirmed inspector. The rank is operational, which meant that although African constables could be awarded that rank, which came with some prestige beyond the noncommissioned officer cadre because it was above that of a sergeant, the cadet subinspector spent most of his time doing actual policing. Uniformed inspectors often supervised a duty shift made up of constables and sergeants, or, acting within specialist capacities, helped with traffic supervision. On paper, the cadet subinspector role indicated that the “African officer” could rise through the ranks and eventually enter the superintendent role. However, in practice in the Nigerian Police Force, this was seldom the case. Cadet subinspectors stayed at or around that rank and saw little if any promotion afterward. Table 6.1 provides a snapshot of just how few African officers came through the ranks even as of 1934, when it might have been expected that a sizable number of Nigerian senior officers would have been active. The heading “African Officers” in Table 6.1 is somewhat of a misnomer. This is because, except in rare instances, the African officers in each of those categories did not, in fact, have the minimum rank of assistant superintendent of police, considered the first real officer rank. Indeed, even the rank of assistant superintendent, viewed by many African policemen as a career achievement that most never attained, was by the twentieth century usually the lowest rank that could be held by a British officer in the NPF. Moreover, most British officers already held this rank as their first commission upon joining the colonial police; they did not aspire to it. By the twentieth century, when the joining rank for most British policemen in the colonial NPF was moved up to superintendent, the rank of assistant superintendent of police was then opened up to African policemen. In other words, the highest aspiration of Nigerianization in the NPF of the 1930s was, for the British counterparts, not much of an aspiration at all.

Table 6.1 Personnel in the NPF, 1934

Headquarters Colony Southern Provinces Northern Provinces Total

European Officers 3 13 34 25 75

African (Nigerian) Officers – 20 19 – 39

Rank and File – 711 1,926 1,089 3,726

Sources: Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, 1934, 1–2; Colonial Office, Blue Book, 1934.

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Indeed, for British officers, this rank—a big deal for Nigerian personnel— was one of the least possible appointments. The limited scope for African policemen to progress in the NPF even after the much-heralded amalgamation in 1930 is shown in the breakdown of actual ranks in 1931 in Table 6.2. One possible interpretation of Table 6.2 is that whereas the total number of British officers in the colonial NPF was eighty-two, and the total number of African police officers was forty, the rank of the lowest British officer was higher than the rank of the highest, and presumably most capable, African officer. The situation for African policemen in the Nigeria Police Force took a turn for the worse when in 1936 the British government “began recruiting European ‘Cadets’ whose lowest rank was that of assistant superintendent.”4 In 1937 alone, there were three such cadets: D. S. Fountain, E. J. G. Jacobs, and N. K. Miller.5 In 1937, the only active African assistant superintendent of police, Timothy Idowu Kester, had occupied this rank for more than two decades, having first been promoted on 3 October 1915, when the previous year’s political amalgamation of Nigeria left the colonial government with a shortfall of qualified British police officers.6 Kester left the NPF in July 1937. At the time he retired, he was still at the same rank of assistant superintendent of police.7 Also in 1937, the highest-ranking African officer in the NPF after Kester retired was Henshaw Thomas Eyo, an inspector (grade one).8 Eyo joined the Southern Police Force in April 1904 as a “native” assistant

Table 6.2 Officer Rank Personnel, British and African, in the NPF, 1931

Inspector-general Deputy inspector-general Assistant inspector-general Senior commissioner Commissioners and assistant commissioners Superintendent Deputy superintendent of police Assistant superintendent of police Chief inspector of police Inspector of police Total

European Officers

African (Nigerian) Officers, Southern Provinces

African (Nigerian) Officers, Northern Provinces

African (Nigerian) Officers, Lagos Colony

6 – – – – 82

– – – 5 14 19

– – – – – –

– – 1 3 17 21

1 1 2 2 76

– – – – –

– – – – –

– – – – –

Sources: Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, 1931, 1–2; Colonial Office, Blue Book, 1931.

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inspector” and retired from the force in September 1938.9 However, “after thirty-four years of distinguished service,” Eyo achieved only the rank of assistant superintendent in 1938 and was only awarded his stripes the day before he retired.10 Likewise, Chief Inspector Joshua Ajayi, who joined the Southern Police Force in January 1917, was made an inspector (grade two) around April 1926, according to the Colonial Office Blue Book for 1937.11 However, Ajayi never left the inspectorate and retired at the same rank in 1939.12 Neither Kester nor Ajayi were run-of-the-mill policemen. Both were distinguished with several awards. For instance, Kester earned the African Police Medal, the Silver Jubilee Medal in 1935, and the Colonial Police Long Service Medal as far back as 1924.13 Likewise, Ajayi was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM), the King’s Silver Jubilee Medal, the African Police Medal for Meritorious Service, and even an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1938. Moreover, like Kester, Ajayi also had the Colonial Police Long Service Medal.14 Nor was it the case that such medals were a monopoly for the pair. Indeed, “Medals and other decorations came thick and fast to several African policemen of non-gazetted rank and the few of gazetted rank [even] when they failed to get into the upper strata of the NPF. If the medals and decorations with which they were covered could be narrowly interpreted as status symbols, then such [lack of] progress left much to be desired.”15 Career Training for Africans in the NPF Even by the 1940s, the Nigerianization of the mid- to senior-officer ranks of the police had changed little. Until the 1930s, African police personnel were viewed as, and given duties akin to, little more than guards and escorts. After the Aba riots of 1932, the colonial administration showed a little more promise about how it would treat African police personnel in the NPF. Along these lines, in 1932, the Southern Area Police Reserve Depot opened training courses based on recognition of some lower forms of formal education, such as School Standard VI.16 This training, held in Enugu from 1937 on, was open to all African personnel in the NPF and was offered to some twenty entrants per month. The training lasted twenty-four weeks and, if necessary, could be extended to thirty-six weeks. The recruits, in theory, could have come from any of the regions, but in practice they turned out to be mainly Ibo. The course was structured to cover a range of policing tasks including beat duty, interaction with suspects and detainees, and administrative work. These areas hitherto had not been open to Africans in the NPF. Specific skills covered in the course included daily court duties, under what circumstances to conduct an

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arrest, how to conduct an arrest when one became necessary, evidence collection and provision, traffic control, physical training and unarmed combat, drill, musketry, first aid, elementary law, police regulations, and correct behavior and conduct when in public spaces.17 The Southern Area Police Reserve Depot was not the only location to provide career training for Africans in the NPF. A depot at Kaduna also conducted similar training. This was important because it meant increased training capacity and made it more likely that entrants in the North got a full training experience as well.18 The outbreak of World War II in 1939 displaced the police as a primary security concern of the colonial government. Training and promotion of Africans within the NPF was stalled.19 In addition to the other factors holding back Africans from moving up police ranks, the colonial government’s interests in a skilled workforce turned to the military campaigns in the African theater of World War II.20 One casualty of the British shift of interest to the war effort was that the cadet inspectorship scheme introduced within the NPF in the 1930s was promptly discontinued. As a result, the preference for inspector appointments, only after noncommissioned officer (NCO) service rather than as an officer career pathway based on course completion, remained in place.21 The World War II Years, 1940–1945 The Pioneers’ Riot of 1943 was one of the more notable incidents involving the NPF. The riots consisted of two separate, brief events within days of each other. The “pioneers,” as they were called, were indigenous Nigerian troops conscripted into the Nigerian Regiment of the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) for military labor.22 During the first riot, some two battalions’ worth (around 1,300) of troops stationed in Aba were to have a parade immediately before their deployment. The soldiers refused the British officers’ orders to march, as they had not yet been paid, and despite protesting to that effect, had gone with three days’ salary overdue. Angry at the state of affairs, the soldiers left their garrison and began looting in the town, promptly joined by civilians displeased with the colonial administration. Forty-nine policemen were called in who eventually pacified the soldiers and civilians and restored order.23 The second riot occurred at Calabar, triggered by the arrest of one pioneer whose colleagues promptly mobilized to teach the police a lesson. Consequently, soldiers besieged the police station where the pioneer was held, first in groups of fifty and then two hundred. Pandemonium ensued as the pioneers began rioting and damaging the police station; some

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policemen fled and then returned to quell the marauding pioneers. Sixty armed policemen, committed to firing, cautioned the pioneers. With a first clear warning ignored, a second was issued, and then the police opened fire with live rounds. At the end of the skirmish, five pioneers had been shot dead and six injured.24 Another incident that showed the displeasure of Nigerian police personnel conscripted into the war effort relates to the 9th Battalion of the Nigerian Regiment, WAFF. This was an infantry unit of police personnel, around 800 strong, formed during the war in 1941. However, the troops of the 9th Battalion were unhappy because as it was not formed of mostly paid volunteer forces, as with other regular military battalions. Instead, British officers conscripted their African policemen into the unit. Thus, the 9th Battalion’s troops reflected national character, with one Hausa company, one Yoruba company, and one mostly Ibo company.25 As part of the deployment phase, the unit was hurriedly relocated to Enugu, and its troops’ welfare, particularly regarding the stationing of their families, was ignored. There were rumors that the 9th Battalion was to ship imminently to the East Africa campaign. All of this led first to disquiet and then full-blown unrest of the troops, who felt neglected. The issue was ultimately resolved when it became clear the conscripts were not motivated enough to deploy. Given the choice of departing the battalion or remaining, the Yoruba troops promptly left, whereas the Hausa and a few of the Ibo continued to serve. A number of those who left the unit were redrafted into the Harbour Police.26 The aftermath of World War II also led to administrative hardships for the NPF and was arguably when its corruption first became publicly observable. Policemen openly stole from military stores. The police force now seemed so driven by material gain and so unashamed of bribes from the public that one commissioner “ordered the trouser pockets of all rank and file to be sewn up and the gazetted officers’ oath of allegiance was amended to include a promise to stamp out corruption within the force.”27 Political Displeasure About Nigerianization of the NPF With the NPF recovering from the war years, there was little change regarding the Nigerianization question. Corruption and disciplinary measures against the rank and file were so rampant that the British officers probably questioned the wisdom of delegating administration and command of police authority to Africans in the police force. Indeed, in the postwar years, the colonialists voiced their concerns. The effect was that Africans, even those who had served meritoriously and without a record of corruption, were being sidelined along with corrupt rank-and-file members. Although some

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Nigerians might have exploited their positions in the higher ranks, this approach of limiting corruption within the force was, nevertheless, the administrative equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.28 By the late 1940s, both the public and Nigerian parliamentarians began to voice displeasure with the police. In May 1948, the British government either caved in to the political pressure or otherwise appointed a token commission of inquiry into why so few Nigerians were in senior appointments in the government (not just in the police force).29 By this time, there was just over a decade to go until the Nigerian government, technically at least, was to be independent of British rule. The commission of inquiry was tasked with making recommendations about “the execution of the declared policy of the government of Nigeria to appoint Nigerians to posts in the Government Senior Service as far as suitable candidates with the necessary qualifications came forward, with special reference to scholarship and training.”30 The commission of inquiry was headed first by H. M. Foote and later by Lord Caradon, who at the time was chief secretary to the government of Nigeria.31 Lord Caradon’s recommendations in the final committee report were that Nigerians’ training to fill senior positions was to be prioritized. Secondly, trained and qualified Nigerians were to be afforded “accelerated promotion” within the colonial government.32 However, it is one thing to produce a committee report and quite another to implement its recommendations. In the case of the commission of inquiry (1948) in Nigeria, its findings did not translate to measurable action even into the early 1950s. Consequently, Nigerian politicians in the House of Representatives who had watched this state of affairs for some time with concern again began to voice displeasure. One concern was that recruits, constables, and NCOs, all of whom were African, could earn as low as fifteen times less than the basic salary of a British superintendent of police, a rank not only denied Africans but that had no path toward it for even the most meritorious African officers. Table 6.3 shows the difference in annual salary pay scales between recruits (Africans) and superintendents of police (British) by the 1940s. The pay discrepancy was problematic for several reasons. First, at all levels of pay up to superintendent, accommodations remained extremely modest. This meant that the lower-ranked Nigerian personnel had a pressing accommodation concern and insufficient pay to address it. Indeed, even as of the 1950s, policemen often had to be roommates with colleagues who had wives. Also, although policemen received a uniform and modest lodgings, they received no food. Uniforms consisted of a khaki tunic, shorts, belt, cummerbund, blue socks, and shoes.33 One of the most prominent critics of the British colonial government’s discrimination against qualified Nigerian policemen was Jaja Anucha

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Table 6.3 Nigerian Police Force Pay Scales, 1950s (in pounds)

Recruit Third-class constable Second-class constable First-class constable Lance-corporal Corporal Sergeant Sergeant-major Subinspector of police Subinspector of police (grade two) Inspector (grade one) Chief inspector Assistant superintendent Senior assistant superintendent Superintendent (basic)

Base 1st Salary Revision 57 66 75 90 112 128 150 170 170 230

290 420 450 610

810

69 78 93 116 132 155 180 180 240

305 435 450 bar

840

2nd 72 81 96 120 136 160 190 190 250

320 450 450 660

870

3rd 84 100

140 165 200 200 260

335 465 510 690

900

4th

144 170

210 270

350 480 530 720

5th

220 280

365 500 550 750

6th

7th

380

400

570 780

590

Source: Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 30.

Wachuku. He was Nigeria’s first indigenous speaker of the House of Representatives (1959–1960), the country’s first indigenous ambassador to the United Nations (1960–1961), and its first foreign minister (1961–1965). In a speech he made to the House of Representatives in March 1952, Wachuku, representing Owerri, said, There is no European who has taken up appointment in this country in the Police Force as a Sub-Inspector, Inspector, or even as a Chief Inspector of Police, be he a recruit in England at the eve of his coming to Nigeria. They—Europeans—are appointed from the outset as Assistant Superintendents of Police, but Nigerians have myriads of ranks to pass through before they get to the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police.34

Accelerated Nigerianization in the 1950s By the late 1940s and into the 1950s, the police force had improved because of political pressure on the colonial government sustained over decades by Nigerian members of the Legislative Council and politicians in the House of Representatives such as Wachuku and K. O. Mbadiwe (also from Owerri). These lawmakers pointed to the lack of promotion of the African personnel within the NPF. Wachuku was an influential voice in the House of Representatives and had “urged the elimination of ‘unnecessary ladder work’ in the force.” Mbadiwe likewise “demanded that Nigerian policemen be allowed

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to assume responsible posts quickly in their youth and not on the eve of their retirement.”35 In August 1995, the House Committee on Nigerianization, with T. T. Solaru, L. S. Fonka, L. J. Dosumu, Maitama Sule, and Wachuku as members, set out on a fact-finding mission about how the government could speed up Nigerianization across the board (not just in the police force).36 The committee stated in its report that (1) Nigerianization was not to lag behind independence; (2) invariably, Nigerianization would be slower in some government departments than in others, and (3) Nigerianization would remain a slow process, and possibly even an unrealistic one if the number of British expatriates in Nigeria occupying mid- to senior-level positions of government was not drastically reduced.37 In its recommendations, the committee stated that the number of British employees in mid- to senior-level Nigerian posts was a problem that had to be solved, albeit in a way that did not disrespect these workers. The committee’s proposal was that if large numbers of British officials could retire before their expected date upon Nigeria’s independence, they would receive lump-sum compensation. The committee also recognized that if this happened without a similar number of comparably skilled and experienced Nigerians to fill vacated posts, the government would face a staffing crisis. The recommendation to address this second problem was that Nigerian officers were, as soon as possible, to be given “supernumerary superscale posts” to acquire experience. These posts were to be filled by Nigerians as soon as the vacancies became possible—no delays; the process was to be accelerated. Training was critical to this process. Indeed, as Clayton and Killingray point out regarding police force adjustments to accommodate the political climate, “The most important innovation, reflecting the mounting political ebullience, was the introduction of refresher courses at the police colleges, initially at Kaduna (opened as a college in 1949) and at Ikeja (where police training had moved from Enugu), and later with further refresher course centers in the East and West.”38 These refresher courses were offered even as there was, evidentially, increased urgency to the Nigerianization question by the colonial authorities. As Shirley points out, by 1947 there were ten Nigerian assistant superintendents of police, with the first Nigerian attaining that rank in 1941 and the first Nigerian officer sent to Britain for training in 1948. Additionally, the 1950 subinspector scheme created a new career path for well-educated young men who could join the police by attending courses at either Kaduna or Ikeja. By the late 1950s, in the final years of colonial rule, even more Nigerian personnel were sent to six-month courses in Britain. This included six-month courses for gazetted officers, or those at Rython. There was also a specialist officers’ course at the Scottish Police College Tulliallan, in Perthshire, Scotland.39 The course provided a number of paths for colonial

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police training, including detective, covert and crime prevention training, road policing and driver training, crime and intelligence analysis, and police officer recruit training. Meanwhile, officers from the Criminal Investigation Department were sent to the Detective Training School at Wakefield, West Yorkshire (which also trained some of Britain’s finest detectives). Indeed, such was the pace of Nigerianization from the post–World War II years to the 1950s that the last British career police officer was recruited in 1955. Only specialists were sent to the NPF from overseas from that point on and only on a shortterm contract. Gradually, officer roles were filled by Nigerian, rather than British, personnel.40 The Women Police By the early 1950s, the NPF’s lack of women personnel prompted the idea of a female component of the force. In 1955, the Women Police was formed, and applications were invited. A significant screening exercise commenced, at the end of which twenty women were recruited for an initial six-month training programme at Ikeja. The training was markedly different from those experienced by male recruits, in many respects. As an example, it included an introduction to Western clothing and footwear as part of the uniform. Initially, women’s role in the NPF was limited to administrative office tasks such as recordkeeping and Special Branch work. By 1960, however, in a rapid progression, the NPF already had women police personnel moved to the beat. Again though, “beat duty” here was unconventional in the expectations of the women’s contribution. As an example, the Women Police was more focused on law enforcement related to women and children. The latter effectively approximated social work insofar as it involved cases of children experiencing homelessness or who had no parents or guardians.41 Following courses at the Southern Police College, some members of the Women Police were promoted to NCO rank and others to subinspector rank and then posted mainly to Ibadan, in the western region, and Enugu, in the eastern region. No Women Police were posted to northern Nigeria at that time. Postings soon meant that the Women Police’s skill and professionalism had to be raised. Consequently, six years after it was formed, the Women Police had its first personnel sent to Wakefield for advanced detective work training. Upon returning to Nigeria, these women were promoted to gazetted rank.42 This expedited regime of Nigerianization became so necessary that, between 29 October 1958 and 20 May 1959, “a hundred expatriate NPF officers gave notice of electing to receive their lump-sum compensation and

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leave Nigeria before the retiring age. During the same period, only twelve expatriate NPF officers chose to stay until the retiring age.”43 Grooming a qualified and experienced Nigerian to take up the post of inspector-general was an urgent matter. However, for such a significant appointment, the Nigerian federal government, now in place postindependence, was more circumspect. After independence, the government elected to have a British officer, Ken Bovell, stay on as inspector-general for another two years, until 1962. Louis Oruk Edet By that time, however, arguably the most experienced Nigerian police officer in the force, Louis O. Edet, had been in the Congo since December 1960 as the head of a police contingent within the UN Mission to the Congo (in French, Opération des Nations Unies au Congo [ONUC]). Edet, who commanded the 1st Contingent of the NPF in ONUC, was still an assistant commissioner of police. Upon returning to Nigeria, Edet gained swift promotions over the next four years, partly because of the NPF “supernumerary superscale posts” policy in place at the time, meant to fast track the Nigerianization objective for qualified Nigerian officers. After Bovell’s tenure ended, J. E. Hodge was appointed to the post of inspector-general of the police. Hodge was well liked by the NPF and befriended with many Nigerian policemen coming up through the ranks, even relatively junior ones. For example, he attended the funeral of Chief Inspector Joshua Ajayi, a friend, after the latter died in Oshogbo in October 1960. Nevertheless, when Edet returned from the successful Congo mission, with more experience, awards, and broad respect across the force, he was by all measures the most qualified and highest-ranked Nigerian policeman for the office of inspector-general. Edet replaced Hodge to become the first indigenous inspector-general of the NPF on 1 April 1964, bringing the force into a new, Nigerianized era.44 Nigerianization and Police Identity Despite Nigeria becoming independent in 1960, it was four years later, in 1964, that the first Nigerian inspector-general of police, Edet, was appointed. Therefore, in many respects, total accountability for policing can be entirely attributed to the Nigerian administration. This was a significant moment; it should have been a turning point in police-community relations. The discriminatory stereotype of Nigerians as “natives” who had

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to be subjugated, and at the hands of their countrymen, no less,45 could be unraveled, and a new narrative about what policing for Nigerians, by a Nigerian government, could mean, now seemed ripe for the telling and enactment. The NPF could make as strong a case as it ever could for reform and better relations with the people. However, as Alka Jauhari argues, rather than abrogating coercive practices, surrogate military and police personnel were more repressive in turn. “In fact, after independence,” Jauhari notes, “both the national and the regional governments have practised the policies pursued by their colonial masters with greater impunity.”46 This colonial-era mentality of police maltreatment of Nigerians goes back to the original reasons Africans were employed as police constables. As Niven observes, use of the African police surrogate, whether in direct rule (as in southern Nigeria) or through indirect rule (as in northern Nigeria) was necessary because “Lugard [the British governor-general of Nigeria] had a very small European staff, and the money he had to spend could not possibly pay for the large numbers that would be required had it been decided to run the whole country by direct administration—that is, by the personal rule of the white man.”47 Niven suggests that by 1950, security was delegated to locals who subsequently carried out these duties with undiminished brutality. Within this militarized function, “wrongdoers”—anyone opposed to British occupation—were said to be “punished—brutally.” Niven rationalizes this behavior, noting that such brutality came “under a recognized system of law” and was to be expected, coming as it did under a transformation process (Nigerianization) that incrementally divested security duty from colonial to indigenous personnel.48 Killingray appears to take a somewhat different view, however. Rather than seeing colonial force against citizens as “inevitable,” as Niven does in How Nigeria Is Governed, Killingray observes that when “violence had to be used some colonial officials saw this as an admission of failure.”49 However, like Niven, Killingray often overembellishes the idea that the British colonialist was a benevolent ruler interested in local issues beyond their convergence with Crown interests. As an example, Killingray appears defensive of his view that British colonialist administration “rested on a minimum of force.”50 This was not always the case; there were numerous incidents of the use of force. Yet even one incident, morally speaking, was one too many. The point here is not only a moral one but also a practical one. In failing to reconfigure itself after the Nigerianization question arose, the NPF not only missed a major opportunity at reform but also set itself up to continue to indulge in the same reprehensible practices against the population that characterized it during colonialism. More than that, it failed to reform

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the range of processes—from recruitment criteria and doctrine to the nature of operations—that should define a modern, service-oriented police force. As M. S. Suddle notes: It is crucial to understand the basic difference between a colonial police and a police meant for a free country. Whereas the former was geared at raising semi-militarised, semi-literate, underpaid, bodies of men for maintaining order by overawing an often turbulent and hostile—native—population, the latter aimed at creating quality professionals tasked to prevent and detect crime in plural, multi-ethnic and socially conscious communities, through just and impartial enforcement of laws. The former knew how to rule, the latter to serve.51

This colonial-era identity, which the NPF failed to shake at independence, would damage the reputation and perceptions of the force over the decades. So, having established that the colonial police force did not undergo a substantive transition to a postcolonial institution, an emergent question is why that substantive reform never quite materialized. The Challenge of Changing Police Culture To begin with, insofar as the NPF failed to reform at such as crucial juncture of its history, substantive police reform is not altogether impossible. Police reform is indeed possible, just difficult to accomplish and dependent on so many institutional, social, and political factors that the whole becomes considerably more daunting than the sum of the parts. One of the most convincing studies about the possibility of police reform at its most essential level—the cultural level—is Foster’s “Two Stations,” conducted in 1989. In this ethnographic study, Foster shows not only how cultural police reform is possible but also what happens when such reform fails. In the first of two police institutions he studied, Foster shows that substantive reform in police culture was reflected in such areas as policing practices, attitudes toward the job, interaction with communities, and overall perception and performance. Changes here were underpinned by a recommendation for a community policing doctrine. However, the recommendation itself was not the key ingredient of success—it was an “overall commitment and solid backing of the whole management hierarchy.” Indeed, such backing was not only viewed as important but also proposed as the critical ingredient for substantive police culture reform.52 In the other case study by Foster in “Two Stations,” in which police culture reform failed to materialize, such high-level support was absent, and the status quo and police traditionalists stifled institutional change as a result.

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The argument that police cultural reform has to be supported from the top officers, who must see the need to get intimately involved in the process, is also backed in a study by J. Skolnick and D. B. Bayley, The New Blue Line, which investigates the reform-centered innovation of six different police chiefs in the United States. All six police chiefs developed a cultural change agenda toward a more community-centered approach to policing and personally saw that the doctrine was promulgated down to the street-level practice, in which police officers gradually listened to communities’ needs and policing requirements as they became more integrated with them. Reiner also argues that a combination of senior police officials who fail to commit to reform substantively, along with police personnel “alienated from the populations they policed” not only leads to more “abrasive encounters” but also reduces the chances for police reform.53 All of these arguments apply to the NPF in both its colonial and postcolonial contexts. In the colonial context, police constabularies had, by necessity, to project force in order to protect the interests of first the mercantilist companies and then the colonial administration. Thus, whereas police reform becomes necessary in a democratic territory, in a colonial state it is not. There is a counterargument in this reform debate that has two main premises. The first is that police reform is only necessary if the current approach fails to work. The second is that if the reform conversation is geared toward the community policing philosophy, then proponents should bear in mind that whereas that philosophy might be adequate for quiet communities, it is problematic in more volatile contexts and might have been problematic in colonies where neither the police nor the administration were there by consent. In this sense, it is worth recognizing the context of reformist aversion in both the colonial and postcolonial police forces in Nigeria. As Reiner points out, “Police culture and its variations are reflections of the power structures of the societies being policed.”54 Where such structures are change averse and unconstitutional and lack a viable social contract with the population, police culture is undermined. This was the case in Nigeria for decades; it came from colonial rule, went straight into military rule after a brief period, and remained there (barring a few short democratic spells) for decades. Additionally, “the social map of the police is differentiated according to the power of the particular groups to cause problems for the police, with the least powerful elements in society becoming police ‘property.’”55 Again, this hypothesis applies to the case of the colonial and postcolonial police in power. Policing did not apply to the British colonialists in any real sense. In the D. E. Wilson case, during the Egba Kingdom troubles of 1914, the lieutenant was promoted to a captain and sent off to command a wartime unit despite killing civilians in cold blood. By contrast, an indigenous person

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who committed murder was given the capital punishment of execution by hanging even if he was a chief.56 In a conversation about the police and policing character in Nigeria in the colonial and postcolonial periods, it is worth noting that the similarities between both institutions have decreased over time. Whereas the NPF of 1966, as an example, remained largely identical to the British model in place by 1959, the force of today has shown more signs of cultural reform, even though many Nigerian historians dispute this.57 As Reiner observes, Police culture is neither monolithic nor unchanging. But the police’s predicament in maintaining law and order and enforcing the law in liberal democracies generates a typical cultural pattern. Officers vary in their responses. However, some factors have a global influence on unit-level policing. These include perception of the relevance of individual roles in the organizational division of labour; demographic background; interpretation of the work environment, and other personal profile characteristics.58

For such reasons, poor police behavior should not be narrowed down to the unit level, dealt with, and then the assumption made that such action approximates reform. Police reform should be more substantive, and such change will require more than unit-level changes aimed at individuals or small groups. Similarly, “grand policy declarations” translate to little or no substantive change if the most senior police officers and the rear echelon do not intimately participate in the process (not least because setting examples might be required). What might be more relevant to the reform calculus of police culture, which certainly does apply to the NPF, according to Reiner, is demonstrated will and action aimed at improving “the basic character of the police role as a result of wider social transformation” (106). Notes 1. Shirley, A History of the Nigeria Police. 2. Colonial Office, Legislative Council Debates, 1 February 1927, 17; Colonial Office, Legislative Council Debates, 29 November 1937, 153. 3. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 145. 4. Ibid., 147. 5. Colonial Office, Nigeria, Blue Book, 1937. 6. Colonial Office, Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, Southern Provinces, 1915, 1. 7. Colonial Office, Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, 1937, 5. 8. Colonial Office, Nigeria, Blue Book, 1937. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. Or, he was retired by the government; the Blue Book entry does not make this clear, although Tamuno suggests that H. T. Eyo’s retirement was indeed voluntary. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 147.

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11. Colonial regulations required an annual Blue Book to be transported from each colony to the British Colonial Office. The Blue Book provided, documented, and in many cases interpreted a broad range of colony-relevant detail. The Blue Book, in this sense, aimed to standardize qualitative and quantitative statistical reports. These reports covered economic and development updates and data. They also discussed public records and provided ecclesiastical and demographic data. Nigeria was formed from three separate colonies, and its Blue Book reflects this administrative arrangement. The statistics for Lagos, as an example, run from 1863 until 1905. Lagos, however, became a part of southern Nigeria from 1906 until 1913. This meant that the records for Nigeria’s southern provinces, therefore, follow those for Lagos. The northern provinces also have Blue Book data that run from 1900 until 1913. Things changed slightly from 1913; Blue Book statistics from 1914 on were compiled for the entire Nigerian federation after the country’s amalgamation. The Blue Book was vital for the data provided in this volume because it includes lists of the colonies’ officers, including details about police officers and personnel, both British and African. Blue Book data for Nigeria cover the period from 1862 to 1945. 12. Colonial Office, Nigeria, Blue Book, 1937. 13. Colonial Office, Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, 1937, 5. 14. Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria Police Magazine 9, no. 2, 25; Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria Police Magazine 9, no. 7, 29; Colonial Office, Nigeria, Blue Book, 1926; Colonial Office, Nigeria, Blue Book, 1937. 15. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 146. 16. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 28. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Colonial Office, Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, 1941, 1–2; Colonial Office, Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, 1942, 1–2; Colonial Office, Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, 1946, 1–2. 20. Shirley, A History of the Nigeria Police. 21. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 28. 22. Ibid., 28–29. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. In the Nigerian Army nomenclature, a company is typically more than a hundred men and is commanded by an officer at the rank of captain or major. A platoon is typically twenty men commanded by a lieutenant. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 29. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 28. 28. Shirley, A History of the Nigeria Police. 29. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 147. 30. Colonial Office, Colonial Report, Annual, Nigeria, 1948, 127–128. 31. Colonial Office, Nigeria, Blue Books, 1948–1951. 32. Colonial Office, Colonial Report, Annual, Nigeria, 1948, 128. 33. Ibid. 34. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography. 35. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 147. 36. House of Representatives of Nigeria, Sessional Paper No. 4 of 1956, 1. 37. House of Representatives of Nigeria, Sessional Paper No. 7 of 1958, 15. 38. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 31.

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39. Ibid., 32. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 33. 42. Ibid. 43. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 149. 44. Only eighteen at the time when he joined the Nigerian Police Force in 1931, Edet started his police career as a clerk. After deciding to be on the police force, he transferred to general duties and for more than a decade and a half worked his way up the ranks until his eventual promotion to subinspector in August 1945. Edet retired on 1 September 1966 because of poor health. By then he had served for more than thirty-five years in the Nigeria Police Force; he died on 17 January 1979. The headquarters of the Nigeria Police Force in FCT Abuja, Louis Edet House, is named in honor of him and his service. 45. Niven, How Nigeria Is Governed, 97. 46. Jauhari, “Colonial and Post-Colonial Human Rights Violations in Nigeria,” 55. 47. Niven, How Nigeria Is Governed, 97. 48. Ibid. 49. Killingray, “The Maintenance of Law and Order,” 414. 50. Ibid., 422. 51. Suddle, Reforming Pakistan Police, 94–95. 52. Reiner, Politics of the Police, 105. 53. Ibid., 104–105. 54. Reiner, Politics of the Police, 106. 55. Ibid. 56. Wilson was a British Army officer seconded to the Colonial Office. Wilson’s home unit was the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. See Chapter 4’s discussion of internal troubles during the Great War. Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria; Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria; Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police. 57. Otu, “The Development and Growth of the Nigeria Police Force from a Social Context Perspective”; Ikuteyijo and Rotimi, “The Image of Nigeria Police”; Ukeje, “Changing the Paradigm of Pacification”; Onyeozili, “Obstacles to Effective Policing in Nigeria”; Jauhari, “Colonial and Post-Colonial Human Rights Violations in Nigeria.” 58. Reiner, The Politics of the Police, 106.

7 Police Practices and Institutional Issues

In studying the police institution in Nigeria as it was constituted until the 1950s, around the period of independence, it is crucial to acknowledge and discuss the positive aspects of having a police force in areas such as Lagos, where crime statistics began to grow as the colony became more commercialized and more populated. Much of the previous chapter focused on institutional issues within the Nigeria Police Force in those formative years. However, despite these issues, the police had a job to do. With regard to police work statistics, the official records of the Nigeria Police Force between 1930 and 1960 indicate that despite difficulties in fighting crime, the police obtained satisfactory results. However, the record has to be examined in light of the prevailing conditions of the period. In the first place, there was a period of severe economic strain and emotional stress during the Great Depression. In this era, the illicit distillation of spirits, counterfeiting, child abduction, peddling of Indian hemp (cannabis sativa), and armed robbery were rife in parts of Nigeria. The most troublesome areas were the Warri and Owerri Provinces and the Agege District, near Lagos. In the Agege District, armed gangs, carefully disguised, seized upon the inadequate police protection to terrorize people during the early 1930s. Using the cult of the Egbe Enumenu (Makoya) with its binding oath that disavowed flinching of any form, these gangs raided homes and, in addition to robbing them, also murdered and raped their victims. The criminal activities of the Agege armed gangs were so severe that E. O. Moore and C. C. Adeniyi Jones, the two elected members for Lagos on the Legislative Council, called for government action in July 1933 and June 1934.

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The government responded to such pressure. Before long, the centralized Nigeria Police Force detective unit sent to Agege succeeded in infiltrating the Egbe Enumenu. This operation ended with the arrest of the sect leaders. As a precaution against the resumption of criminal activities, the police covered the district with bicycle patrols and strengthened their detachment. The Agege gangs’ activities were copied by other bands of brigands in the nearby Abeokuta Province in 1937. The Nigeria Police Force strengthened its presence for that province and slowed the criminal activities. To deal with the offense of illicit distillation of spirits, which occurred in the Warri and Owerri Provinces during the early 1930s, the force set up special squads there, but whatever success these squads made between 1933 and 1934 was limited. The second major external factor that significantly affected crime control and law enforcement in Nigeria was World War II. The war partly eased unemployment because many hitherto jobless people volunteered for active service. However, it also intensified such problems as racketeering and inflation. This period of social and economic distress might have encouraged higher crime rates observable at the time. Crime and Policing in Lagos During World War II From 1939 to 1949, the annual total of “true cases” of crime exceeded that recorded for the preceding decade. There were also many “false cases” of crime not taken as seriously. These included “offences against persons, receiving, fraud, false pretences, breaking and entering, stealing and other crimes and contraventions.”1 There are a number of explanations for the extensive crime occurring around the Lagos axis in the early 1940s. First, Lagos was now colonial Nigeria’s main commercial hub, with the ports and significant trade despite World War II crippling activity outside the African continent.2 Second, policing during the war was far less robust than in the decade preceding it; police numbers were undoubtedly reduced because of the conscription effort. Colonial authorities might have been distracted with other administrative matters; thus, criminal gangs might have predicted that their activities would not be prioritized for a while. The crime rate could have resulted from a combination of all of the above. Third, the many coastal points of ingress and egress for Lagos allowed criminal gangs to employ the waterways, which many appeared to do.3 On the matter of the escalated crime statistics in Lagos by 1942, the colonial authorities concluded that the Lagos axis had its particular difficulties for the duration of World War II. Despite the limited staffing in

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policing because of Britain’s expeditionary war effort, something nevertheless had to be done. In Lagos, law and order were also viewed as critical insofar as the colonial authority emerged as the de facto seat of power in the 1940s.4 As a result of lawlessness on the coastal water, the Lagos Harbor Police, a new branch of the Nigeria Police Force in the Lagos ports, was formed in 1942. This new branch was meant to police the ports and waterways and protect them from the “bad characters who pester and annoy sailors, merchant seamen and visitors.”5 Shifting Away from a Hausa-Dominated Lagos Police Force

Lagos authorities had historically preferred nonlocal recruits, particularly Hausas, within Lagos police units.6 However, the Lagos Harbor Police of 1942 reflected a more local character compared with police forces in early colonial Lagos. In other words, there was a shift from a Hausa-centric recruitment calculus to a stronger Yoruba characterization by the 1940s. The historical backdrop to the Lagos Police Force’s preference for Hausa recruits appeared to stem from a colonialist belief that the ethnic group was “traditionally endowed” “aggressive” dispositions and violent tendencies. Philip Ahire observes that “Hausas, in particular, were singled out as ideal material for military and police duties.”7 Henry Stanhope Freeman, William McCoskry’s successor and the first governor of Lagos, also provides a colonialist explanation for the Lagos Police Force’s historical preference for Hausas.8 Unlike his predecessor, Freeman was a bureaucrat rather than a merchant and, concerning himself even with the minutiae, took the task to heart of carefully forming police units.9 Freeman reported on how Hausa recruits, in general, were detached from the Lagos inhabitants, spoke no Yoruba and often very little English, and had little rapport with or connection to the communities. Such sociocultural detachment meant that the Hausa units could discharge their duties with conviction and without bias. As Freeman puts it, The [Hausa] men, being from the interior, and professing the Mussulman religion [Islam] are hated by the [Lagos] natives of these parts who have hitherto only known them as their slaves. . . . Besides, they require no commissariat, little or no transport, and nourishing themselves on the produce of the country which is always to be had; wearing no shoes, they do not get footsore on a long march, and the simplicity of their dress renders it both convenient and economical.10

These traits, along with their detachment from the Lagos communities, and indeed from most communities, made them “ideal material for pacifying

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such communities.”11 For instance, George Chardin Denton, acting governor of Lagos in 1895 and later appointed lieutenant-governor of the Lagos in 1900, had also been quite blunt about the advantage of having primarily Hausa personnel in the Lagos Police Force.12 Earlier in his career in the Lagos colonial administration, Denton observed, “In our Hausa Force, we have a body of men dissociated from the countries immediately around Lagos both by birth and religion, and who are as a matter of fact the hereditary enemies of the Yorubas. This is such an enormous advantage in any interior complication that I should be sorry to see it abandoned if it be possible to obtain a supply of recruits in any other way.”13 Simply put, a Hausa Lagos Police Force was advantageous because such a force was more likely to be loyal to the British colonists than it was to support or be indifferent to local instances of rebellion. Nevertheless, Denton did an about face on this mentality as he assumed more responsibility and edged closer toward becoming lieutenant-governor of Lagos. By 1895, Denton had not only softened his emphasis on Hausadominated police units in Lagos, but he “now required all ranks of the new police force in Lagos to speak Yoruba” and insisted that local recruitment was to swell his police ranks.14 The extent to which the non-Hausa emphasis on recruits in the 1940s Lagos Police Force contributed to performance is unclear. After all, since the 1890s, the Lagos Police Force always reflected a strong Hausa ethnic character.15 Regardless of whether ethnic makeup affected its performance, a benefit of having a force more reflective of local recruitment was that police units were less “frequently attacked” by locals, a problem that had long afflicted the force.16 A strong case could be made that between the late 1800s and early 1900s, the recruitment of nonlocals into colonialist police units was to discourage police complicity, attachment, and sympathy toward possible rebellion. This sort of recruitment calculus is hardly unique to the colonial police history in Nigeria. As George Danns observes in Domination and Power in Guyana, colonialists did not employ police forces consistently with classical policing doctrine; that is, the colonial police forces were often used as a tool of subjugation and repression. The colonial police were a physical representation of a constant deterrent. Policemen were meant to protect the colonial state’s interests rather than to serve and protect the colonized people in any altruistic sense. This remained the case even when the colonial police’s rank and file were entirely indigenous. Indeed, this idea of control and domination was not only crucial to the colonialist administrators recruiting for their police force but also it superseded every other classical police function for the state. As Danns writes, “The policeman at the street level not only sym-

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bolizes the authority of the state by allocating . . . order in the community according to culturally and legally defined norms of behaviour, but he also possesses the capacity to decide which acts violate these norms. . . . The policeman is the most conspicuous of frontline bureaucrats and is the omnipresent symbol of government authority.”17 However, by the 1940s, concerns about rebellion were arguably fewer, and colonialist paranoia about pitchfork-wielding “natives” scaling fort walls was primarily replaced with more pressing concerns about day-to-day administration that involved more participation from local representatives. It was clear that the colonial authorities seemed quite satisfied with the Lagos Harbor Police’s performance in reducing crime around the coastal area. Based on the unit’s strong performance, it was also evident that law enforcement success need not be predicated on ethnic animosities between police forces and local inhabitants. Policing After World War II The more ethnically diverse Lagos Harbor Police were so successful that in March 1944, just two years after the unit was formed, the Lagos port was reevaluated. This time, the port was presented by the previously concerned colonial authorities as one of the “cleanest” on West Africa’s coastline.18 Nevertheless, there were still policing issues in the Lagos axis. By December 1944, Commissioner King expressed concern that the Lagos area still had several semiorganized crime syndicates in operation and pointed to instances of gangsterism and prostitution in Lagos. This assessment, so soon after the March one, “cast doubts on the degree of permanent ‘cleanliness’ attained by Lagos.”19 At the end of World War II, the government reorganized the Lagos Harbor Police to allow close cooperation between the force and the passport and immigration branches of the Nigeria Police Force. Together, they controlled shipping and passenger traffic and protected property along the Lagos waterfront. The immediate postwar era caused Nigeria Police Force officers much concern. Commissioner Finlay noted in April 1947 that violent crime and cases affecting persons and property had increased.20 In particular, he was disturbed by the increase in such crimes as murder, manslaughter, counterfeiting, illicit distillation, child abduction, burglary, and illegal gold mining. In fact, the strict import controls on goods resulting in the shortage of spare parts at the end of World War II became a major factor in the “epidemic” of bicycle and clock theft from the western provinces into Dahomey.21

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Prospect of Aerial Capabilities for the Police

The development of air transport in Nigeria in 1936 constituted the third major factor that seriously affected crime control. Even before the end of World War II, the government knew of a crime syndicate that transported by aircraft raw gold and gold bars from Nigeria. After inquiries by the Criminal Investigation Department, a Nigeria Police Force officer visited Egypt and Palestine and secured the principal crime syndicate figure’s conviction.22 Encouraged by such results, Governor Richards in March 1945 “hoped that the day is not far distant when an aeroplane will be at the disposal of the Commissioner of Police for speedy transport and emergency action.”23 Indeed, during Richards’s tenure the Criminal Investigation Department began employing aircraft to investigate “important cases” in such areas of Nigeria as Kano, Maiduguri, Port Harcourt, and Calabar. 24 However, the Nigeria Police Force did not fully exploit its development of air transport. For a country of Nigeria’s size, regional and provincial units’ inspection by air would have been useful and saved time. For example, Major A. Saunders, who in one of his ex officio duties was principal immigration officer, “entertained such high hopes after his tour of January–July 1937, part of which was covered by air.”25 Over the next decade, some progress would be made, with regards to the NPF’s air capabilities. From the 1950s on, the inspector-general had a helicopter available for rapid surveillance and emergency duties. Even so, the police did not develop an air service similar to the Kenya Police Reserve Air Wing, instituted in 1949.26 The Unsolved Lafiaji Murders

The Lagos Police Force faced an altogether peculiar challenge of unusual murders around the Lafiaji area. Lafiaji was a popular district in “C” Ward that ran from Tinubi up to Ikoyi. Part of this district, “largely uninhabited and unkempt,” became not only notorious for murder but also for being a “dumpsite of corpses murdered elsewhere.”27 Colonial police officials responded by increasing patrols in Lafiaji and deployed two sets of officers to the broader “C” Ward. The first set of police personnel was uniformed, to reassure locals that the colonial administration was working to solve the murders. However, operational priority in this case was given to plain-clothed officers who effectively blended into the community. The uniformed personnel presence in the Oke-Suna vicinity of “C” Ward was increased to eight and later to thirteen policemen. The uniformed personnel openly questioned people while the undercover police investigated.28 Despite this approach, however, the murders remained unsolved by December 1947.

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Consequently, the Association of Rate Payers and Home Owners in “C” Ward sent a delegation of respected representatives, including J. A. Williams, Dr. Olorun-Nimbe, and A. O. Philips, to discuss the issue with the commissioner of the Lagos Colony. The high-level delegation also included the “C” Ward Representative, A. O. Lipede. At that time, commissioner of the Lagos Colony, E. A. Carr, also acted as the president of the Lagos Town Council and commissioner of police. Carr also had senior members of the police in attendance: R. G. Henderson, the superintendent of police (SP) in charge of the Lagos Province; A. Cooper, the assistant superintendent of police (ASP) for the Criminal Investigation Department (CID); and Captain R. P. Rankin, ASP of the “B” Division.29 The delegation, led by Lipede, told the police officials how the residents of Lafiaji felt unsafe. Lipede’s argument was that crime and specifically murders occurred in the ward because of “inadequate lighting of streets and the compound of the Government School [King’s College Lagos], overgrown grass and weeds which were not promptly cut by the relevant authorities and finally, the absence of police patrols. Thus, at the setting of the sun, the spot became an ideal location for thieves, a home for all mischief-makers and a retreat for every lawbreaker, including murderers.” 30 Lipede urgently recommended that police patrols be increased and that better lighting be provided for Lafiaji. His views were consistent with those of Dr. Olorun-Nimbe, who referred to the “hopelessly inadequate” police protection in “C” Ward despite its proximity to Ikoyi, the best-protected area of Lagos, where the most senior colonial officials lived. SP Henderson did not quite agree with Olorun-Nimbe’s comparison with Ikoyi and pointed out that Ikoyi too had seen its share of crime, including burglaries and larceny, since 1947. Any concentration of policemen there was in direct response to that threat. Henderson reassured Olorun-Nimbe that the uniformed policemen in Lafiaji were not the only policemen there and that additional plain-clothed policemen meant that “C” Ward was “saturated with police presence.” ASP Cooper contributed by saying that “Lafiaji was probably more closely patrolled than any area in Nigeria,” although this may have been somewhat of an exaggeration. 31 ASP Cooper said that despite this presence, there had not been the progress that all would have liked because of lack of cooperation by locals in the area. Therefore, the issue was not just about more police numbers (on which there were severe limits at the time). For the police force to be effective, it had to work intimately with communities. Therefore, Cooper recommended that the police public relations officer

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(PPRO) “should give lectures and write articles on the value of cooperating with the police, as a way of educating and awakening the people to their civic responsibility.”32 Captain Rankin noted that patrols could not be the main work of the force because several government establishments required an enduring police presence. In his “B” Division, he noted, he had 185 personnel, and of this number he had to deploy men to “the Juvenile Court, the Lagos Town Council and others.” There were additional police patrol locations in his area of operation, at least twenty subareas for his forces to police. Commissioner Carr’s final words were to empathize with the delegation and support the view of ASP Cooper that better cooperation with the police would lead to safer communities—Lafiaji included—and this was a better approach than flooding the streets with patrols. Carr noted that the Lagos Police Force, like other police forces in Nigeria, was stretched to the breaking point. What personnel numbers they had should be used effectively and in close concert with community-based policing practices.33 The Lafiaji case was a virtual admission that the Lagos Police Force lacked the capacity to solve the “C” Ward murders by apprehending the perpetrators. The case also was indicative of a broader challenge of colonial policing by the tail end of the 1940s. Police forces were understaffed and affected by a range of issues that undermined their effectiveness. Perhaps the British administration was also running out of steam when nationalist sentiments were gaining momentum. And, the police had other institutional and administrative issues to contend with. Police Challenges in Enugu, Benin, Ondo, and Calabar Lagos might have had the highest incidence of petty crime and murder cases; however, other parts of the country also had the Nigeria Police Force dealing with major crises of various forms. One such incident, in November 1949, was the Enugu riot. The trouble began fairly innocuously with a colliery workers’ strike and some rowdy behavior. A police dispatch was sent to Enugu from the north and west because the workers refused to back down and more people arrived. The local senior police superintendent ordered a detachment to go to his explosives store, which he feared might be raided in the rampage. A small skirmish broke out during which the police rank and file, northerners, opened fire on the Ibos. That action was taken without clearance from the superior officer. When the smoke settled, four Ibo colliery workers lay dead.34 Massive riots swiftly followed at Aba, Onitsha, Calabar, and Port Harcourt. The people’s behavior worsened again as police fired upon the crowds with live ammunition. The colonial government ordered a commis-

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sion to look into the shooting, and as one of the lessons learned, the Nigeria Police Force was found to have no capabilities for nonviolent riot control. Efficient riot control would only come much later, after the development of the Police Mobile Unit (MOPOL) in 1962.35 Other serious police challenges emerged in the early 1950s, such as in Benin City in 1951. In this incident, the chief minister of the Oba of Benin was attempting to influence the application process for the Native Authority to ensure that recruits were members of the reformed Ogboni Fraternity (of which he was a member). This was not a problem for Native Authority members in Benin. However, those in the villages resisted this plan, mobilized, and formed the Otu Edo Society as a countermovement. The Otu Edo members began a campaign of violence and arson, prompting the colonial government deployment of a mobile police detachment of some fifty men as a show of force in affected areas. What made the case all the more volatile was the disagreement between the senior British colonial officer, who sympathized with the Ogboni Fraternity, unlike his subordinates, who supported the Otu Edo.36 In Ondo province, the next year (1952), trouble also broke out when a colonial survey party was sent to the border between Idanre and Akure. A crowd of Idanre youths attacked the survey party, which had a police escort. Upon this provocation, the police escort opened fire, leading to some fatalities among the six injured. These incidents were not premeditated or even opportunistic crimes but rather were more in line with spontaneous outbreaks of turmoil as a collective action repertoire.37 One of the most shocking police cases from Eastern Nigeria was that of the Leopard Society between 1945 and 1948.38 The cult of the leopard men was a ritualistic fraternity that employed human sacrifice. The cult murdered people, mutilated them, and used their parts for charms. Such practices, and the charms they created, were said by cult members to be necessary for the cult to thrive and for the workings of its oracle. Human body parts not used in sacrifice or for charms were sold. In total, by the time the case was solved, the cult had murdered almost two hundred people—men, women, and children—typically in brutal fashion, in the Abak, Opobo, and Uyo divisions of the Calabar Province.39 The killings were initially said to be done by leopards because of how badly mutilated the bodies were. Moreover, the cultists placed artificial leopard prints in the vicinity both to terrorize locals and to mask human involvement. Only after a lengthy investigation by the district police office were two men apprehended who eventually confessed to being leopard men, responsible for the murders.40 It took a crack team of police investigators, including four assistant superintendents of police, two inspectors, and ninety-five rank-and-file policemen “assembled to prevent further crimes, to investigate, and to

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analyze the causes of the troubles.”41 The police team was given special powers to search and detain suspects. And the colonial government demonstrated its seriousness in moving additional magistrates to the Abak area, where the case was being investigated.42 Despite convictions, more police patrol units, and even public hangings, however, the murders continued. Although by the time a curfew was put in place toward the end of 1946—the murders tended to occur in the early evening—the killings decreased. More investigations followed, particularly after a policeman was killed by the cultists in January 1947.43 Further police work discovered that the ritual killings were also linked to a locally powerful Idiong cult. With this knowledge, the Idiong society was proscribed by an act of law. The police, empowered, swept in with a series of widespread raids of about 1,000 Idiong shrines. Regalia and cult objects were confiscated and burned in public. By May 1948 the troubles were over, but only after over a hundred people had been convicted, with seventy executions linked to the so-called leopard killings. The Leopard Society, once feared, was now locally rejected. The Ibibio Union was a major actor here, moving to actively repudiate the Idiong cult “and the stigma that the Leopard Men had placed upon the people” in the Calabar Province.44 Moreover, the Idiong shrines, now decimated, lost much of their hold on the Abak area. The curfew was lifted, and the police presence reduced after a major show of colonial police protection of communities as well as the Nigeria Police Force’s ability to investigate and solve complex murder cases with strong ethnic and cultist underpinnings. Police Work Challenges in the 1950s

From the 1950s, the Nigeria Police Force’s ability to tackle crime on such a scale was affected by unrest across the federation. As an example, agitation for higher wages and better working conditions led to industrial action and demonstrations. Such economic unrest was compounded by political factors resulting from hooliganism and other offenses connected with regional and federal elections. Another factor that increased crime levels was the operations of resurgent secret societies and cult organizations with precolonial origins. The Leopard Society as well as the Idiong Ebok section of the Idiong cult, also in the Calabar Province around 1947, are examples. As contorted representations of ancient cults, some of these colonial and early postindependence variants of secret societies clashed with the Nigeria Police Force around criminal activities. However, the police’s main challenges in the years leading up to independence, and even for a couple of decades beyond, were

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institutional challenges from within rather than external difficulties caused by local adversaries. For instance, the police lacked the expertise and capabilities to tackle large-scale unrest and riotous behavior without a preponderance of force. By the early 1960s, however, insofar as mass protests often accompanied Nigeria’s political and electoral process, police authorities took steps to redress this particular challenge. Notes 1. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 191. 2. Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria. 3. Shirley, A History of the Nigeria Police. 4. Falola and Heaton, History of Nigeria. 5. Richards, Governor’s Address to the Legislative Council, 13 March 1944, 36. 6. Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police. 7. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 56. 8. William McCoskry was a prominent British merchant trading in the Lagos area. McCoskry was the British Consul at Lagos and was appointed acting Governor of Lagos Colony, after helping the British Crown annex Lagos from King Docemu (Dosunmu) in August 1861. 9. Akyeampong and Gates Jr., Dictionary of African Biography; Ahire, Imperial Policing. 10. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/1, Freeman to Newcastle. 11. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 56. 12. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 28. 13. Chief Secretary’s Office, 1/1/14, Denton to Ripon. 14. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 28. 15. Ibid.; Ahire, Imperial Policing, 56. 16. Ahire, Imperial Policing, 56. 17. Danns, Domination and Power in Guyana, 2. 18. Richards, Governor’s Address to the Legislative Council, 13 March 1944, 36. 19. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 191. 20. Nigeria Police Force, Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, 1946, 15. 21. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 192. 22. Colonial Office, Legislative Council Debates, 13 March 1944, 99. 23. Richards, Governor’s Address to the Legislative Council, 5 March 1945, 63– 64. 24. Richards, Governor’s Address to the Legislative Council, 18 March 1946, 85. 25. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 125; Colonial Office, Annual Report on the Nigeria Police Force, 1937, 14. 26. Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria Police Magazine 6, no. 4, 25. 27. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 145. 28. Ibid., 145–146. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 146. 31. Ibid., 147–148. 32. Ibid., 148.

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33. Ibid. 34. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 38–39. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Chapter 14 takes a more analytical lens to this issue of social movements and the emergence of spontaneous violence as part of contentious collective action repertoires. For more on social movement theory and repertoires of collective action, see Traugott, Repertoires and Cycles of Contentious Action. 38. Pratten, Man-Leopard Murders. 39. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria. 40. Pratten, Man-Leopard Murders. 41. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 37. 42. Shirley, History of the Nigeria Police. 43. Pratten, Man-Leopard Murders. 44. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 38.

8 The Independence Era

With Nigeria’s stronger push for independence in the 1950s came increased scrutiny to how the police employed force against the citizenry. There was no outright declaration about police use of “minimum force”; however, the emerging philosophy appeared to support that idea. The 1951 Colonial Police Conference at the Police College, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire, England, produced new guidelines about the role of police forces in keeping the peace in colonies. As an example, minutes from the 1951 conference emphasized “that colonial police forces should be organized as civilian forces existing for service to the community on the general lines observable in the United Kingdom.”1 These new guidelines now encouraged colonial policing to lean toward the same principles of minimum force and community service employed by police forces in Britain. This new doctrine constituted an extraordinary shift from the decadeslong principles of peacekeeping in the colonies, where coercion and brutality against indigenous people were acceptable as I discussed in Chapter 7. The emergent doctrine from the 1951 Colonial Police Conference, however, makes an exception to this move toward less coercive policing approaches. In many territories, owing to the absence of military forces, the large areas to be controlled, the nature of the population, or to some combination of these factors, it was necessary for some or all of the police to be employed in a semi-military manner, so as to be able to deal with disturbances, whether in urban or rural areas, without the immediate support of military forces.2

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Despite the recommendations about the cautious use of colonial police powers by the early 1950s, there was no material change to the way the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) responded to riotous disturbances over the next decade. The colonial police in Nigeria, after all, operated in an environment markedly tenser and potentially hostile compared with that in the United Kingdom, with its unarmed police model that advocated minimum force. However, by 1962, the NPF began to make some structural changes in how it responded to riotous behavior. Crowd control in colonial policing in Nigeria was viewed within the institution as the upper spectrum of the violence semimilitary police would be required to handle. In the spirit of preparation for such police activity and “serious police emergencies,” the NPF began creating its mobile squadrons. Formation of Mobile Squadrons The police in Nigeria had often depended on the military for help in more extreme cases of civil disturbances. This approach—combined with a colonialist doctrine more heavy-handed than not—required some measure of reform for riotous behavior. Part of the reason for this need for reform was the potential for civilian casualties in instances of widescale unrest requiring police intervention. Police approached such instances in the past in a semimilitary configuration. Otherwise, the police outright turned to the Nigerian Army for assistance, often with violent outcomes.3 However, in the postcolonial administration, the police force had to develop its own nonviolent riot-control capabilities. Between the Police and the Army

To redress the threat of emergencies, widescale unrest, riotous behavior, and unruly but unarmed crowds, the NPF began the establishment of several mobile squadrons. This process commenced shortly after independence in 1960 and would continue throughout the 1960s postindependence era. The mobile squadron was a police unit with specialized training and equipment that had completed the assault course up to the “advanced Army standard.”4 In a sense, mobile police squadrons were a stopgap between the regular police and the Nigerian Army’s infantry, which might have stepped in to support the colonial government with a Military Assistance to the Civil Authority (MACA) mandate.5 The House of Representatives provided support for the establishment of the first mobile squadron in 1962, and according to a House debate record of December 1962, the creation of more mobile squadrons for the police in the coming years would put Nigerian authorities, and the police

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more specifically, in a better position “to combat rioters and to ensure more peace and freedom throughout the Federation.”6 Consequently, between 1964 and 1965, in the first year of Louis Edet’s tenure as inspector-general of police, he helped establish more mobile squadrons around Lagos in particular and across the four regions of the federation in general.7 As for the actual employment of these mobile squadrons and how they fared in the field, they “played an increasingly useful part in the prompt measures taken by the NPF to handle serious emergencies. In 1964 alone, the Mobile Squadrons were deployed [to] such emergencies in two of Nigeria’s trouble spots—Gboko in the Tiv area of Northern Nigeria and Okrika in the Niger Delta section of Eastern Nigeria.”8 The mobile squadrons, or mobile police (MOPOL), as they would soon be known, were viewed as an essential wing of the NPF that had to be developed with different equipment, training, and indeed doctrine from the regular personnel. This realization came on the strength of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa’s permission that a small team of five Nigerian policemen be deployed to assist the British in quelling riotous behavior and unrest in what was known as the Malaya Emergency.9 These riots endured within the restive British territories around 1960, even after almost twelve long years of a British Army counterinsurgency in the region.10 In 1962, Emmanuel Adu Olawaiye, who had led a team of five policemen comprising three officers and two other ranks to Malaya as part of the British commonwealth contribution to policing restive areas of Malaya, returned to Nigeria. Olawaiye and his police special unit brought back the hands-on experience that formed Nigeria’s Police Mobile Force (PMF, or MOPOL).11 The PMF initiative came from the top. Kerr Bovell, the inspectorgeneral of the police at the time, based on his previous police service in Malaya, decided to form specialist police mobile units that had learned from the experience of riot-control policing in the Malaya Emergency, which had been ongoing from 1948 and just ended in July 1960.12 Over the decades, the MOPOL became a critical part of police response to riotous behavior when such behavior exceeded regular police units’ capabilities but did not yet warrant military intervention. In this regard, it was fortuitous for Balewa and his government that Olawaiye and his team gained the relevant experience in Malaya and eventually returned with the MOPOL concept. The MOPOL, after all, was extensively deployed in the troubles that emerged in the early 1960s in Nigeria’s Western Region, which I discuss later in this chapter. The capability gap between the police and the military in Nigeria was yet to be pronounced, and the MOPOL created quite a name for itself in helping to contain civilian unrest across the newly independent country. At that time, the Nigerian Army was neither tainted by politics nor politicians

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that misused it. Its leaders were not of a particular mind to intervene in Nigeria. Instead, the army contented itself in peacekeeping operations across Africa: in the Congo, in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), and in Cameroon. The Nigerian Army generally steered clear of fighting civil disturbances at home by the late 1950s. Alexander Madiebo, who later became chief of staff of the Biafran Army, tells of a quaint era of the Nigerian Army around the late 1950s. This was an army that hunted animals and held training games internally and even then grumbled of being too “internally involved” at its task. Under Madiebo’s command, in 1958 the Reconnaissance Squadron of the Nigerian Army “conducted an operation throughout the Northern Region designed to exterminate the Quitia birds that destroyed grain.” In 1959, the same army unit deployed “to Northern Camerouns (now Sardauna Province) to destroy lions alleged to be killing cattle in the Mambila Plateau. Apart from those specific tasks, the Army carried out ‘flag matches’ all the year round in the Northern Region to reassure their leaders.” Indeed, the army’s involvement in politics, as Madiebo put it, was yet to take a turn for the worse.13 There was an operational security gap to fill, however. The Nigerian Army was, and remains, overequipped for fighting large crowds of angry rioters.14 Still, the regular NPF—which until the mid-1960s favored batons over pistols and rifles—might not have been up to the anti-riot task. By the early 1960s, the army was engaged in peacekeeping on an African continent struggling with nationalist and ethnic violence and anticolonialist agitation. Around this time, the MOPOL in Nigeria emerged as the vital stopgap between the police units that fought common crime and the army units trained and better equipped to fight and defeat escalated threats and forms of violence. Indeed, if there was a golden era for the MOPOL, the period between 1962 and 1965 might have been it.15 Steering itself away from regular crime fighting and staying true to its anti-riot mission, the MOPOL only stepped in to end riotous behavior and civil disturbances on a massive scale. In helping to develop the young force, Olawaiye, who was only “20 when he joined the police in 1940, went for virile young men to lay a solid foundation. And they got the best of training to tackle riots. Shooting at protesters was out of it.”16 However, this changed when politicians gradually began to abuse the power of the Nigerian Army. Against the Tiv, as an example, the MOPOL were eventually “shoved away from internal security,” and the army was deployed to northern Nigeria and the middle belt by 1964. As commander of the 5th Battalion of the Nigerian Army (Kano), Colonel Arthur Chinyelu Unegbe “opposed the move” to deploy his soldiers to the middle belt against the Tiv. However, by 1964, the politics of the day and the military were deeply intertwined. For his trouble, Unegbe “not only failed to stop

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the move but was immediately relieved of his command and posted to Lagos on the orders of the Sardauna [Amahdu Bello].”17 Also, Major Chris Anuforo, who commanded army troops against the Tiv, reportedly was against their deployment in that operation and registered dismay at the use of military force against angry Tiv rioters.18 Indeed, expanded disquiet among certain officers in the Nigerian Army about the way it was being deployed internally by politicians, such as in the Tiv Division, contributed to the 15 January 1966 coup d’état.19 Even when senior officers did not act on their displeasure about the Nigerian Army being used for riot control, “the division within the Army widened, intensified by the unofficial move of troops to the Tiv Division.”20 Some army officers were not that subtle or perhaps had simply lost patience. Major “Kaduna” Nzeogwu would later point to the Tiv situation in coded references to a “revolution” against the politicians and senior army personnel who instigated the military’s involvement in the region.21 Indeed, as Madiebo put it, the Nigerian Army by 1965 had become impartial in its internal security role.22 Many officers had not only noticed but decided to respond to the corruption of the army by politics with violent change.23 Therefore, questions emerge about an alternate Nigerian history in which the MOPOL was trained and equipped for an internal role. Instead, the only history that occurred was one in which the army played the MOPOL role and much more in the troubles that emerged between 1962 and 1965.24 The consequences have endured through the decades. Assistant Inspector General of Police Godfrey Okeke, interviewed for this book, pointed out that in actively undermining the MOPOL role during its rule, the military made itself more relevant with the securitization of contentious collective action. However, the consequence has been an enduringly ineffective MOPOL institution; a situation that remains until today.25 Special Branch of the Force Criminal Investigation Department A branch of the NPF equally relevant as MOPOL—particularly bearing in mind the political environment of the independence era—was its Special Branch. Because the Special Branch originated in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), I begin my analysis with the latter. The CID, which also contained the fingerprints department, was tasked with intelligence-based crime-solving and investigation of cases that required more substantive detective work. Initially based on Hunter Street in Lagos, the CID headquarters later moved to Algabon Close, in Ikoyi, in Lagos.26 In 1958, Inspector-General Bovell embarked on a significant NPF reorganization. As part of this process, Bovell established a Special Branch

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entirely distinct in function from the CID. John O’Sullivan moved to Lagos to head this branch. The administrative and operational separation of the Special Branch from the CID was completed in March 1958. The newly established branch had twenty-one gazetted police officers, which was commendable and spoke to its ambition considering its size.27 Bovell’s reorganization plans were complicated by the shortage of trained personnel in other areas of the force. The Special Branch, after all, was not a standalone entity. This meant that as each region demanded its own Special Branch, personnel experience, training, and overall quality across the board was more liable to be compromised. Bovell looked to resolve this challenge by increasing the numbers of NPF personnel sent overseas for training and specialist courses. Additionally, more British expatriate police officers were brought in on contract to the force. As a result, the Special Branch quickly became a formidable part of the force and excelled at its mandate.28 The Special Branch was, effectively, the intelligence wing of the NPF. It was tasked with internal security up to the national level; this was not a unit interested in mere petty crime, although it also participated in, and proved highly effective at, crime investigations for the police force.29 In more specific terms, the Special Branch’s directive was articulated in documentation produced by O’Sullivan and approved by the Federal Intelligence Committee. In this directive, the major items included “production of intelligence, Records and Research Assessment and Reports, Technical Aids and Protective Security, and the Protection of VIPS.”30 Because of its highly placed mission in domestic intelligence, the Special Branch was the “intelligence brain-box” of the NPF and the first incarnation of secret police in Nigeria.31 It was undoubtedly the progenitor of future secret police institutions in Nigeria, most notably the State Security Service (SSS), or, as it chooses to style itself these days, the Department of State Services (DSS). In this sense, the Special Branch hit the ground running in the pre-independence era; surveilling not only domestic minority movements but also doing the same for international actors attempting to gain influence in Nigeria. The branch monitored domestic movements across Nigeria. In the North, the branch watched Ilorin Yoruba, Birom, and Tiv. In the West, it surveilled the Itsekiris, Urhobos, and Western Yoruba. And, in the East, the Special Branch likewise watched the Ijaw and Calabaris. Internationally, Egyptian foreign actors’ activities, along with Israeli attempts to gain influence, were also part of the Special Branch surveillance work.32 Later, the Special Branch also began to surveil individual “persons of interest” in the postindependence era. Examples include Awolowo (as we shall soon see), Ojukwu, and Nzeogwu (who emerged as a ringleader of the January 1966 coup d’état). Indeed, “by reason of their antecedents and associations,” virtually anyone could be surveilled and investigated by the Spe-

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cial Branch. Considering the ebullience of micronationalisms and subversive forms of antigovernment dissent in the early Independence era, the Special Branch kept busy indeed.33 The Special Branch’s early work benefited from the expertise of Assistant Superintendent of Police Biles as well as the first crop of indigenous specialist forensic investigators. These included Assistant Superintendent of Police Daniel Uwaezuoke, who had a meteoric rise within the CID, going from a police sergeant with less than a year’s experience to an assistant superintendent of police and head of the Central Criminal Registrar in less than three years.34 Policing the Nationalists

In the first quarter of 1949, a section of the CID was detached and made autonomous. The Special Branch’s main task was the monitoring, investigation, and reporting of the increasingly concerning activities of prominent Nigerian nationalists. Among the more troublesome nationalists by the 1950s were Nnamdi Azikiwe and his followers, otherwise known as members of the Zikist Movement. The Zikist Movement was a radical and nationalist wing of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), the political party of the likes of Azikiwe, Raymond Njoku, Festus Okotie-Eboh, Eyo Ita, and J. O. Fadahunsi. The Special Branch at its inception, especially for indigenous personnel, was a careerist’s dream. Accelerated promotions were offered every six months for members of the Special Branch team.35 This kept the team highly motivated and produced results that kept the police a step ahead of the nationalist challenge, as I detail in Chapter 9. As for the decline of the Special Branch, this came beyond the period covered in this section—see the endnotes for that particular narrative.36 Mounted Police Units Aside from the new MOPOL and the Special Branch, other specialist police units were also created as the NPF was reorganized under the tenure of Bovell. Shortly after the MOPOL was formed in 1962, the Dog Section followed in 1963. 37 However, in the formation of the Mounted Police Branch, the use of animals in a specialist unit of the force first came into prominence. The Mounted Police Branch, initially viewed as a curiosity by Nigerian parliamentarians when A. Saunders first proposed it in July 1937, was eventually formed in July 1961 and began operating in Kaduna around the same time.38

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Probably a more useful task for the unit were its patrols at the MubiAdamawa border. These patrols came into areas at a time when neither the regular police nor the Nigerian Army had sufficient motorized mobility for border functions. Likewise, when more mounted units were established in Maiduguri and Lagos, the Maiduguri squadron, a detachment, was active as a border patrol unit in the Bornu axis by the mid-1960s.39 To Unify or Not to Unify: The Centralization Debate Revisited Aside from restructuring and creating new branches, which marked significant operational and tactical capabilities development in the immediate postcolonial era, the NPF also had to contend with the question of centralization and control. This question dates back to the previously discussed centralization debate from colonial times about whether to unify locally controlled and indirectly administered police forces with the NPF. During colonial times, traditional forms of policing were historically tolerated by the British government within its indirect rule policy. This meant that the colonial administration absorbed traditional policing mechanisms where possible and “accommodated within the developing system of native administration, as long as these conformed to British standards for order, decency, and good conscience.”40 In theory, the British colonial government, and thus the NPF, had control over these local forces. In practice, however, as a result of the strong patronage politics around local recruitment of policemen, and because of the very nature of what constituted a local police force (“cults, self-help, ordeals, secret societies, messengers and palace guards,” and so on), the local rulers and authorities had control over these traditional police outfits.41 Leading up to independence in 1960, lawmakers began to revisit whether the police should be centralized to limit control that local rulers had over police forces. By 1962, as an example, eight local governments in the Western Region controlled 2,374 police officers. In the North, 6,169 policemen were employed by 61 traditional authorities for a combined total of more than 8,500 policemen under local forces. By contrast, the NPF in 1962 was 14,770 strong. This meant local forces not unified with the national force were well over half the latter’s strength.42 As the numbers above indicate, therefore, policing in the Northern Region of Nigeria, even after independence, had a large component of forces primarily controlled and administered by local authorities. This contrasted with policing in the West, mainly controlled and administered directly by the provincial governments.43

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To further confuse matters, there seemed to be some ambiguity about where local police forces functioned relative to the NPF. The former, “by formal agreement and habit” worked mainly in rural areas. The NPF, enshrined in the constitution after independence, “was responsible for urban law enforcement and all traffic control.”44 There was a method to the seeming madness about who controlled what police force, however: “Liaison between the two forces was exercised by NPF advisers assigned fulltime to local forces in the North. NPF officers were seconded to command local forces during periods of emergency and civil unrest. Meanwhile, ‘cases of complexity’ were assigned to the NPF.”45 There were all sorts of problems with police forces’ localization because recruitment was patronage-based rather than merit-based. This meant training was lacking and policing was generally ineffective—more so within these localized contexts. Additionally, with the system being patronage-based, “local forces easily became tools for mischief, political advantage and repression” and “quickly acquired a well-deserved reputation for arbitrary, rude and corrupt law enforcement. Fear of the local police was widespread, especially among minorities and political opposition.”46 Consequently, by the 1950s the local police had effectively become an occupation force put in place by rulers and local authorities and fiercely loyal to a system that rewarded patronage rather than actual policing work. As Akpa notes, local communities came to fear the police and saw them as “one and the same” with the local political establishment.47 With such fears sometimes leading to skirmishes between local communities and the police, the colonialist government had to act. The Sir Henry Willink Commission of 1957 was established. The commission’s central task was to understand communities’ fears of colonial policing.48 One of the Sir Henry Willink Commission’s outcomes was a recommendation that local police forces be demobilized, with members who made the merit requirements and were so inclined to be absorbed into the Nigerian Police Force.49 However, “these recommendations stood little chance against the concerted opposition of regional elites who saw decentralized police forces as a useful tool against challenges to their rule from below and from the centre.”50 For example, ten years later in 1967, the Federal Military Government (FMG) was yet to resolve police unification and centralization. Moreover, around that period, the two police factions—the NPF and local police forces—sometimes aligned to different political actors.51 Skirmishes ensued as civilians loyal to one faction or the other would target the related police stations. Trying to do some fact-finding on the unification question, the FMG set up the Working Party on Nigeria Police, Local Government, and Native Authority and Prisons. The working party was chaired by Alhaji Yusuf A.

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Gobir, a permanent secretary in Kaduna. Gobir and his team toured the country and “heard testimony from traditional rulers and political and academic elites favouring unification.”52 Consequently, the Gobir Commission (Working Party) recommended that “police forces in the West should be absorbed immediately into the NPF (as their standards were high enough) and that qualified members from local forces in the Northern Region should be absorbed.”53 The Gobir Commission’s findings laid bare stark political differences in the calculus of policing between the Northern Region and Southern Region. For example, “all fourteen Northern Emirs and Chiefs, along with their councillors, rejected the idea of unification,” an attitude shared by a “majority of Northern elite and intelligentsia.”54 Indeed, along these lines, the emir of Zaria in Kaduna, in “an emotional statement” argued, “The people have been used to the Native Authority Police in uniform as a manifestation of the Emir’s authority. If the Police and Prisons are taken away from Native Authorities, the Emir and his Council will lose respect; there will be a breakdown of law and order since the people will then realize that the Emir cannot order them.”56 Such agitation about police unification in the North was in contrast to the disposition of the South, whereby most groups supported unifying local forces with the NPF.56 On the strength of the Gobir Commission’s recommendations, the MG implemented sweeping changes across the NPF.57 “Qualified forces were absorbed into the NPF by 1967 in the West and by 1972 in the North.”58 The long-standing conflict “between the federal centre and the federation states, over operational control of the Nigeria Police Force” seemed to be resolved.59 Yet, this was not necessarily true. Indeed, notwithstanding such structural and institutional shifts, the debate about the centralization of police powers continued for decades. However, in the 1950s, particularly between 1950 and 1954, the police centralization debate developed a decidedly partisan character. The Politics of Police Control and Partisanship The issue of police partisanship is helpful in understanding the landscape of politics and the positions of the three main political parties in Nigeria with respect to each other. Police-related issues that appeared resolved on paper proved not to be in practice given the political crises in 1962 and 1965. By the late 1950s, as Nigeria looked to become independent, there was an increasingly contentious atmosphere around the political parties of the three regions. The parties in question were the Yoruba-led Action Group (AG), the Igbo-led National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), and the Northern People’s Congress (NPC). The latter two con-

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trolled the federal government at independence, whereas the AG, under Awolowo, constituted the opposition. Of the many fractious issues amongst the three parties, one of them was control of the NPF. Earlier in the chapter, I discussed the big question about the police in Nigeria around independence. The question pivoted between two extreme political positions that would determine the nature of policing in a postindependence Nigeria: whether or not to keep the force centralized, which is to say, ensure that it is a federal government– controlled institution. To this end, substantive constitutional talks on the NPF among the three political parties from 1953 to October 1960, when Nigeria became independent, pivoted between both positions. How did each of the parties view this issue? Fundamentally, Awolowo’s AG, which represented Nigeria’s Western Region, was keen on the regionalization of the police and took a robust political stance on the issue.60 The Northern Region, represented by the NPC and Tafawa Balewa, also supported the idea of a regionalized police force. However, unlike the Western Region, it was more flexible on the issue.61 By contrast, the Eastern Region, represented by the NCNC, had a strong preference for a centralized NPF and wanted no changes to that status quo.62 Interestingly, however, the Eastern Region adopted this position “while pushing for establishing its own Local Government Police.”63 Even as all these discussions went on during the 1950s, Nigeria was still under colonial rule, and the colonial government was concerned that the police, one way or another, would come under the influence of one or more political parties. Such concerns turned out to have some material truth to them. The colonial government tried to prevent police control from coming under any one of the political parties.64 In a few years, the colonial government would transition to a Nigerian government. And, postindependence, one or more of these same parties would be in power. Thus, only time would tell whether the police in Nigeria would be abused as a partisan political force or whether it would retain its nonpartisan character. After substantive political discussions by all three parties, It was agreed that the police should remain a federal force, but measures taken to ensure that they did not come under the ruling party’s influence. [However], the political reality after independence showed that the police had not been practically insulated from the ruling party’s control. . . . Despite the much-touted neutrality of the police, the NPC and the NCNC, which jointly controlled the Federal Government at the time, successfully used the Nigerian Police as a political instrument to deal with the opposition party, the Action Group (AG).65

It might have been the case, although this would certainly be difficult to prove, that this collective position (a rarity because all three parties did

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not necessarily always agree on policy) was influenced by the Constitutional Conferences in 1953 and 1954, held in London and in Lagos, respectively.66 At the conferences, the secretary of state for the colonies under Winston Churchill’s government, Alan Lennox-Boyd, clarified his position on the issue.67 Britain’s official preference was that the NPF should remain centralized (the central government’s responsibility). However, this was not to be interpreted to mean that the political party that controlled the central government should automatically control the police.68 The distinction is an important one. Regarding the implications for the NPF, the consensus agreement to centralize it meant “the fixing of establishments, conditions of service, training and equipment would be central subjects, and all Force expenditure would be paid for out of central funds.”69 Consequently, the 1954 Constitution of Nigeria stipulated that the central government should control the NPF, with said powers vested in the governor-general. However, control and funding of both the Native Authority Police Force (NAPF) and the Local Government Police Force (LGPF) were to be retained within the respective regions.70 Additionally, where NPF contingents were stationed in a given region, control of these units was to be vested in the regional commissioners of police, who then answered to the region’s governor. Ultimately, the governor of each region was answerable to the governor-general.71 Despite such clarifications by the secretary of state for the colonies on the contentious subject of police control in Nigeria, “the debates on the control of the police continued well after the 1954 conference.”72 Indeed, the Western Region government went beyond just political rhetoric and took action to the tune of reforming its LGPF and using it as a law enforcement instrument. The idea of this reformed LGPF in the Western Region was effectively floated and then partially implemented as a replacement for the NPF, or as an alternative, parallel force to it.73 Ostensibly, this step was taken insofar as the Western Region’s strong petition for its own LGPF was dismissed and absent from the 1954 constitutional amendments. As was to be expected, both the Northern and Eastern Regions opposed such moves by the Western Region.74 Aside from what the politicians were trying to decide regarding its future, the NPF did a commendable job staying grounded in the present task of its policing role. The force between the 1940s and 1950s gradually restructured itself for postcolonial rule. Its skill base and technical depth in its units were also bolstered by importing world-leading expertise from the United Kingdom to train the crop of indigenous personnel who would gradually take over policing and investigation after independence. By 1949, the police were organized via a departmental system that endured for decades, with the template still visible in the contemporary NPF organizational chart.

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The NPF Structure By 1950, the NPF had created five departments; each was assigned various police duties and helped promote efficient organizational performance. These departments were named after the first five letters of the alphabet— A, B, C, D, and E—and were highly specialized in terms of the expertise they employed and the tasks they performed. No one department was necessarily deemed superior to the others. For example, alphabetical order should not be taken to mean descending order of administrative or operational relevance. “A Department” was assigned the task of correspondence and administration of the force. “B Department” was tasked with maintaining law and order—using force when necessary within its mission. “C Department” had the duty of the treasury of the force; this unit was in charge of cash inflow and outflow, staff salaries, the remittances of operational sums, and allowances. This department deployed the MOPOL against massive riotous behavior in the country.75 “D Department” was assigned to the protection of life and property. Crucially, this department was tasked with the prevention and detection of crime. Finally, “E Department” was the custodian of the nation’s domestic security. Because there was no DSS at the time, “E Department” was effectively Nigeria’s secret police.76 By independence in 1960, these departments had been seasoned by more than a decade of cases and administrative duties. However, between independence and the outbreak of the civil war in 1967, one branch’s activities, in particular, are of import. The Special Branch came under the “E Department,” also known as the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). The CID was one of the oldest NPF departments, formed in 1936 just a few years after the amalgamation of the previous Northern and Southern Police Forces. The Special Branch was created in 1949, more than a decade after the CID’s creation.77 By this time the NPF was some 7,500 strong and headed by an inspectorgeneral, with two assistant inspector-generals for the Northern and Southern Regions, respectively. Each provincial administrative center had a commissioner of police. For instance, the Lagos area headquarters had a police commissioner supported by a deputy, who exercised direct control. The NPF had three regional commands: an assistant commissioner of police for the West in charge of three provinces, another in the East in charge of six provinces (with one of these being Cameroon), and a third for the North in charge of eight provinces—extending as far south as Ilorin (modern-day Kwara). These police jurisdictions largely foreshadowed the later regional boundaries.78 Both the Eastern and Western Regions had preventative services for smuggling, a Harbor Police Force some thirty strong, Railway Police, a

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motor traffic unit in Lagos, and an Ibadan section. Further commitments of the NPF by the 1950s emerged after the post–World War II reorganization of the force. This process also created the standardization of colonial police ranks. Some of the commitments that fell to the reorganized NPF in the 1950s included fire brigade work, weights and measures inspection, civil bailiffs’ duties, and on occasion customs and immigration redeployment duties.79 Evidently, the NPF was a busy institution, yet even this early was already understaffed and overstretched. Relationship with the Native Authority Police (NAP) In the North and the West, local native administrative forces, referred to as the Native Authority Police (NAP), supported the NPF. The Eastern Region had no such forces. The relationship between the NPF and NAP was not always seamless, and there were sometimes recorded incidents of friction. On paper, potential differences between the outfits were managed by an allocation system. Here, the NAP policed the rural areas, smaller towns, and municipalities. The NPF was responsible for government areas, metropolitan and commercial centers, larger towns, and big administrative municipalities. Additionally, the NPF, not the NAP, handled serious crimes and criminal investigations.80 Incidents of friction arose when, say, the NAP detachment in an area was under the command of an inspector, whereas a sergeant headed the perhaps better-trained NPF detachment. The NPF personnel in such instances would question being viewed as equivalent to the NAP, even though the depth of quality of the latter seemed dubious in comparison. The British personnel, in particular, often resented the space and authority allowed the NAP.81 A. N. M. Davies, a British officer serving in the NPF in the Western Region, notes in a letter to the Inspector-General in 1958, I suppose the thing I found the most difficult to accustom myself was this system whereby the NAs [Native Authorities] are, literally, a law unto themselves and the Nigeria Police are actively discouraged from entering their confines when one has been accustomed, as in the South, to taking prompt and firm action in times of trouble. It is irksome, to say the least, to be compelled to sit back and merely “suggest” what should be done.82

Aside from such official complaints and resentments, however, the NPF and NAP relationship was generally amicable, with some mutual respect. Still, there was a gap in the quality of the outfits. The NPF was overstretched and generally had insufficient resources to lend the NAP, and training of the latter by the former occurred but was limited. The NAP was unarmed, unlike the NPF, which by the late 1950s was generally firearm

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trained and equipped with the .303 rifle. For such reasons, the NAP generally stayed in a single jurisdiction in its home area. By contrast, NPF personnel could be posted anywhere in Nigeria.83 The State and Structure of the NPF at the End of the Colonial Era In 1962, with J. E. Hodge as the final British inspector-general of the police, the force was yet to be fully Nigerianized, but it was clear that those at the highest levels of police leadership needed to be exceptional in the navigation of the interface between the force and the public. Following political pressure to this effect, Hodge—shortly after his tenure began and Bovell’s ended—selected two men with exceptional civil service records and drafted them into senior police positions at chief superintendent rank. One of these men, M. D. Yusuf, who features prominently a little later in this book, eventually became inspector-general himself. Additionally, with an eye on the inspectorate’s dignity, Hodge commissioned a number of messes for inspectors. Throughout his tenure, Hodge strengthened the force in a range of ways, including empowering the Women Police and bringing that unit into closer integration with the main force, establishing the MOPOL, the Dog Section, and the Mounted Police Branch and supporting an extensive recruitment and training drive. Consequently, by the time Hodge handed over the force to Edet in 1964, the police institution in Nigeria, relative to any other period in its history, was quite possibly at its healthiest. The range of new police units, welfare packages, additional training and recruitment, and—for the first time ever— increased recognition of the need for parity between male and female police personnel, are noteworthy here. All of these contributed to among the most substantive preindependence reforms within the police institution. The NPF was some 16,815 strong at this time. This included 534 gazetted officers, of which less than 18 percent—just 94—were expatriates. Moreover, of this number, almost half, 44, were contracted. In any event, the remaining 50, who like Hodge were career officers, all retired shortly afterward as earlier highlighted.84 The force also had a robust administrative and organizational structure in place. Each region was headed by a commissioner now, rather than the previous arrangement from the 1930s in which an assistant inspector-general headed the Northern and Southern Police Forces. The whole system was more hierarchical, with a tidier, flatter structure than Lugard originally envisaged. There was an additional commissioner of police for Lagos and yet another for force training. Regional governments were advised that the commissioners and the police forces in their regions were under their command.

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However, the same officers and forces, including the regional CIDs, were all federal officers and offices.85 Simply put, regional control was not to be abused because ultimately the NPF was not a regional force but a federal one. This point of control proved a crucial factor for the politics of Nigeria’s First Republic (1960–1966). Notes 1. Jeffries, The Colonial Police, 217–219. 2. Ibid. 3. Omeni, Insurgency and War in Nigeria. 4. Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria Police Magazine 10, no. 5, 11. 5. Omeni, Insurgency and War in Nigeria. 6. House of Representatives of Nigeria, Debate, 11 December 1962, column 2945. 7. Colonial Office, Annual Report of the Nigeria Police Force, 1963, 16. 8. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 134. 9. Obasi, “Bring Back Mobile Police.” 10. Barber, The War of the Running Dogs. 11. Obasi, “Bring Back Mobile Police.” 12. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 33; Barber, The War of the Running Dogs. 13. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, 13. 14. Okeke, interview with author. 15. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 134. 16. Obasi, “Bring Back Mobile Police.” 17. Colonel Unegbe was posted to Lagos as Quarter Master-General, Army Headquarters, Lagos. It was in this role that he was killed by the plotters of the abortive 15 January coup d’état. There remains some controversy over his killing. Madiebo, Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, 12; Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 50. 18. Major Anuforo would become part of the group that violently expressed their disquiet in the abortive 15 January coup d’état. 19. Obasanjo, Nzeogwu; see also Obasi, “Bring Back Mobile Police.” 20. Obasanjo, Nzeogwu; Madiebo, Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, 12. 21. “Army personnel,” in the specific case of the Tiv operation, was none other than Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, commander of the Nigerian Army’s First Brigade, who agreed to the sardauna of Sokoto’s request to deploy troops to quell the Tiv crisis. Ademulegun and the sardauna were close friends; something that also did not sit well with Nzeogwu, who wanted a clear and professional separation between the politicians and the Nigerian Army. See Madiebo, Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, 12. 22. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, 14. 23. Obasanjo, Nzeogwu. 24. As for what those troubles are, how they emerged, the police role in them and how the Army quickly supplanted that role, we shall discuss these a little later in this chapter, and the next. 25. Okeke, interview with author. 26. See This Day, “A Delicious Dinner Without the Main Course (I)”; Uwaezuoke, The Missing Main Course of a Delicious Dinner reported in This Day, “A Delicious

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Dinner Without the Main Course (IV),” 40, for information on the Nigeria Police Force CID Headquarters at Hunter Street and at Algabon Close, respectively. 27. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 45. 28. Ibid. 29. As an example, refer to the Special Branch role in the George Ossai criminal case. 30. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 45. 31. Omole, The SSS and Law Enforcement in Nigeria. 32. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 45. 33. Ibid. 34. Uwaezuoke, The Missing Main Course of a Delicious Dinner reported in This Day, “A Delicious Dinner Without the Main Course (IV),” 40. 35. Ibid. 36. The Special Branch continued to play an active role in a swath of postindependence commitments even after O’Sullivan’s retirement in 1965. Indeed, the decline of the Special Branch began only a decade later, in the mid-1970s. After it began, it was swift. Arguably the catalyst was the abortive Buka Suka Dimka coup of 1976, which led to the death of the military head of state, General Murtala Mohammed. After the coup, the police intelligence wing took much blame. Specifically, the failure of intelligence that allowed the coupists to plot without detection and nearly succeed (including Mohammed’s assassination) led to punitive measures against the Special Branch. This was systematic and came via the creation of the National Security Organization (NSO), the emergence of which spelled an end to the Special Branch. The branch would later reform as the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CID) but never regained the scope of its domestic security and intelligence powers. 37. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 33. 38. Chief Secretary’s Office, 26, File 32858; Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 135. 39. Nigeria Police Force, Nigeria Police Magazine, June–August 1969, 10–11. 40. Marenin, “Policing Nigeria: Control,” 83. 41. Ibid.; Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria. 42. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 162. 43. Marenin, “Policing Nigeria: Control,” 84. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria. 47. Akpa, Police Community Relationship. 48. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria. 49. Marenin, “Policing Nigeria: Control,” 84. 50. Ibid. 51. Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria. 52. Marenin, “Policing Nigeria: Control,” 85. 53. Federal Republic of Nigeria, Gobir Commission Report, sec. III, 60. 54. Ibid., 42. 55. Ibid., 43. 56. Ibid. 57. Marenin, “Policing Nigeria: Control,” 85. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 78. 60. Colonial Office, Note on the Future Roles, File CO 554/1030. 61. Ibid.; see also Clark, A Right Honourable Gentleman, 286–287. 62. Colonial Office, Extract from Eastern Regional Region, File CO 554/1030.

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63. Balogun, “An Assessment of the Partisan Role of the Nigeria Police Force in the 1962 Action Group Crisis,” 37. 64. Colonial Office, Operational Control of Colonial Police Forces, 1–2. File HO 287/w50. 65. Ibid., 33. 66. Colonial Office, Brief for the Secretary of State, File CO 554/570. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Balogun, “An Assessment of the Partisan Role of the Nigeria Police Force in the 1962 Action Group Crisis,” 38. 73. Colonial Office, Extract from Eastern Regional Region, File CO 554/1030. 74. Ibid. 75. Refer to the earlier sections of this chapter for the substantive analysis of the introduction and early actions of the MOPOL in Nigeria. 76. Uwaezuoke, Missing Main Course of a Delicious Dinner reported in This Day, 18 June 2017, 40. 77. Refer to the notes under the Special Branch subsection of this chapter to find out more about how its removal from the police intelligence architecture in the mid1970s weakened the overall police investigative and domestic security capabilities. 78. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 26. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., 27. 81. Ibid. 82. Davies, “Weekly and Monthly Letters, Sent to Superiors, About Police Work.” 83. Clayton and Killingray, Khaki and Blue, 27. 84. Ibid., 33. 85. Ibid.

9 Intrigue and Politics in the New Republic

By 1960, the Nigeria Police Force, alongside the Nigerian Army, was one of the country’s most organized institutions and was close to being fully Nigerianized. This was fortunate because the political climate of the day could sometimes get tumultuous enough for the police to have to step in and restore order. Such was the case on 25 May 1962 when a debate took place at the western region’s House of Assembly over tabling a motion of no confidence in Samuel Ladoke Akintola, deputy leader of the opposition party, the Yoruba-led Action Group (AG), headed by Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo. Awolowo suspected Akintola was trying to take over party leadership and wanted the meeting of the House of Assembly to remove Akintola.1 However, after the vote of no confidence passed, chairs were thrown, the speaker’s mace was seized, and a violent scuffle on the house floor ensued.2 Subsequently, “order was temporarily restored when baton- and tear-gaswielding police entered. When the meeting reassembled hours later, with police inside the chamber, Akintola’s supporters led by J. O. Adigun and Chief S. A. Tinubu again disrupted proceedings by smashing and throwing chairs. The speaker adjourned the meeting.”3 However, the role of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in the first two years of the new republic went beyond law enforcement, security, and chaperoning badly behaved lawmakers. From its Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which helped prevent and solve major crimes, to its Special Branch, which was an excellent intelligence section privy to the changing political climate’s inner workings, the NPF was a vital government organ.

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The CID handled crime cases that confounded regular policemen and was quite good at this task. In a particular case from 1961 to 1962, one George Ossai had been burglarizing houses in the government-reserved areas (GRAs) of Ikoyi, Apapa, and Ebute Metta. The suspect’s fingerprints were taken at the scene of one of his crimes, and it was these, along with the recognition of Ossai by a quick-thinking inspector, which later confirmed the suspect’s identity and led to his arrest in 1962.4 The Ossai case was so important that when he was arrested at Apapa, the officer in charge of the Apapa Police Station called John Lynn, who headed the CID. And Lynn promptly informed Inspector General Ken Bovell, who had asked to be notified of Ossai’s arrest before anyone else.5 In contrast with the detective work on regular or serious crimes the CID conducted, the Special Branch had a different task. In Nigeria’s fragile political climate, the Special Branch was one of the most active security units by the early 1960s. As the state of emergency and the subsequent unrest in the Midwest between June and December of 1962 indicated, a reactive police force rather than a proactive one could have catastrophic political consequences for the government or, as in this case, for the opposition. Awolowo, as the opposition leader, and some of his supporters, including Lateef Jakande and Anthony Enahoro, were arrested in 1962 for treason. Awolowo and his supporters had denied any such plot existed and instead pointed the finger back at the government of Tafawa Balewa, blaming it for trying to get rid of the opposition. However, as Siollun points out, “a genuine plot to overthrow the government did exist and was infiltrated by Special Branch police officers.”6 This is consistent with the account of the general secretary of the AG, Samuel Ikoku. Decades later, in 1993, Ikoku, who had escaped arrest of the plotters, including Awolowo, confessed to the existence of a plot to overthrow the Balewa government but also noted the plot had been compromised thanks to the intervention of the Special Branch. In Ikoku’s words, “We started preparations for it [the plot] and the preparations had gone very far and I believe we would have pulled it off. But unfortunately for us, our leader was so kind to the Nigerian police that he had a police informant among his planners and so the police knew every move we were making. And so it was easy to trip us up.”7 The Special Branch and the Awolowo Case Given how impactful the arrest of Awolowo was, the implications for politics in western Nigeria in the early independence era, and the Special Branch role in building a case against the plotters and eventually arresting them, further examination of the case is useful here.

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By the early 1960s, after Lynn’s arrival at the CID headquarters in Lagos, Awolowo and many of his followers were prominent on the list of nationalists to be watched.8 Some information reached the CID related to a plot to unseat the government of Balewa. Awolowo and several followers were arrested, charged, convicted, and jailed for treasonous conspiracy with the Ghanaian government to overthrow Balewa and destabilize Nigeria.9 In many ways, the Special Branch arrest of Awolowo and his removal as premier of western Nigeria might well have changed the political landscape of 1962 and beyond. It certainly shifted the political power in the Yoruba region, with the subsequent emergence of Akintola as leader of the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP).10 The incarceration of Awolowo during this pivotal period as well as the collapse of the AG, the emergence and domination of the NNDP in the Western Region, and the shifting political alliances forever changed the political landscape of Nigeria and had significant consequences between 1962 and 1966. The Special Branch’s successful case against Awolowo set off a sequence of events that few could have foreseen, and none predicted. John O’Sullivan, an Irishman, led the work of the Special Branch in the Awolowo case. O’Sullivan was not the only Irishman holding a key position in a police force more or less Nigerianized. Leadership at the NPF’s upper echelons comprised English and Irish senior police officers. J. E. Hodge was still head of the force at this time. He was succeeded by Louis O. Edet, the first Nigerian inspector general of police, in 1964. Lynn, a northern Irishman, was head of the CID, as I mentioned earlier. Lynn was the officer who arrested Awolowo.11 In addition to making the case against Awolowo, Lynn was also a key prosecution witness.12 However, this was no ordinary case, and Awolowo was no ordinary man. To make a watertight case against one of the country’s leading elder statesmen, and a much-loved one at that, Lynn needed to ensure that, given the extensive witness statements in court, he did not perjure himself. To prevent such unintentional perjury, Lynn worked with another police officer, Daniel Uwaezuoke, an ace forensics expert and fingerprint analyst at the CID.13 Pretending to be a special reporter, Uwaezuoke recorded, if and when the situation presented itself, verbatim evidence he gave in the witness box, which Lynn, in near-perfectionist fashion, double-checked with the officially recorded court proceedings. Such care in Lynn’s witness statement in court was not, perhaps, amiss. After all, the lead defense counsel was no less than a queen’s counsel (QC) from England, Barrister Shawcross, retained by the AG for Awolowo at the cost of £10,000.14 The amount was so significant that Michael Okpara, premier of the eastern region, said the AG hired the QC “in order to destroy the NCNC” party and was yet another one of the “unfair

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means” the AG employed for that purpose.15 Okpara also alleged that AG followers made an attempt on his life in 1961 and that Awolowo “did not condemn or recognize the need to condemn those believed to be responsible.”16 Okpara’s accusations are noteworthy because it has also been alleged that, contrary to the NCNC’s claims of being victimized by the AG, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) and NCNC government coalition were exploiting the AG crisis of 1962 by using “the police to deal with the recalcitrant opposition.”17 The stakes of the tribunal against Awolowo were certainly high for Lynn, who, in making a case against an eminent Nigerian statesman being defended by a QC, could not afford to make any mistakes. By all accounts, Lynn did an excellent job of presenting a compelling case against the accused. For three weeks, in a treasonable felony case against a brilliant politician and his followers who had also been arrested, Lynn was at the center of objections and counterobjections and never perjured himself. He might well have lived up to his nickname of “Lion Heart” on the strength of his determination during the Awolowo tribunal.18 Unrest in the West and the State of Emergency The scuffle on the Western Region’s House of Assembly floor on 25 May 1962 was the start, or at least a foreshadowing, of a constitutional crisis in Nigeria. On 29 May 1962, Prime Minister Balewa summoned an emergency meeting of the Nigeria House of Representatives. In this meeting, the prime minister made a motion regarding the AG crisis, declaring that “a state of public emergency exists in [the] Western Region and that this resolution shall remain in force until the end of the month of December, nineteen hundred and sixty-two.”19 The state of emergency declaration led to a widespread breakdown of law and order and brought the first major test of the NPF to keep the peace in postindependence Nigeria. On 12 June 1962, the attorney general of Nigeria and minister of justice, Taslim Olawale Elias, told the federal Supreme Court in Lagos that the deputy inspector general of police’s evidence against Awolowo was necessary to emphasize the seriousness of the escalating political situation in western Nigeria. The deputy police chief, in turn, told the court that, based on information made available to him by the Special Branch, “and as a result of events which took place on the floor of the Western House of Assembly on 22 May, it was clear that unless police action was taken to restrict certain people, the widespread disorder might take place all over Western Nigeria.”20 As it turns out, the police were able to take the required action. Order was gradually restored to the Western Region over the state of emergency, which lasted six months.

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In a public broadcast on 1 October 1962, Prime Minister Balewa told the nation that his government had been made aware of a plot to overthrow it by some politicians. On 26 October, the government’s ban on public meetings and processions was extended; it now covered all of western Nigeria. Furthermore, “on November 2, 1962, Chief Awolowo was formally charged with 26 others (including Anthony Enahoro, Sam Ikoku, Ayo Adebanjo, Lateef Jakande, Alfred Rewane, J. S. Tarka, Josiah Olawoyin, Dr. Oladipo Maja, Bisi Onabanjo, James Aluko, etc.) with conspiring to overthrow the Federal Government by force.”21 This information came on the strength of investigation and intelligence-led surveillance by the Special Branch.22 In this instance, the Nigeria Police Force was a central actor in containing unrest and played a role in informing the government of the plot against it (although the opposition denied such a plot). However, when a second constitutional crisis emerged in 1965, there was another near collapse of law and order in the Western Region so bad that even the force had to admit its helplessness in restoring it.23 The question of police impartiality or partisanship emerged in full public view in the postindependence era: the force was deployed by the federal government to restore law and order in the Western Region because the AG was out to destroy all opposition: people being beaten up, people being heavily assessed in taxes, customary courts being used, local government forces being used against political opponents. The Nigerian people find it difficult, because they cannot have anything to do, in the sense of a policeman’s duty, with the customary court, and short of fighting local government police forces in the Western Region, they can hardly be effective.24

However, such utterances from the prime minister appeared to situate the police force as a political actor in opposition to the AG, not just as an instrument to restore law and order per se. Consequently, the “actions of the NPF carried out at the behest of the Inspector-General, reflected political influence on the control and use of the NPF.”25 Indeed, the 1962 crisis was the first major example of police partisanship in postindependence Nigeria.26 The prime minister was not the only senior politician with a tendency to employ the police as a partisan tool, and 1962 was not the only instance. Shifting Alliances and the 1964 Elections

The fragile alliance between the NPC and the NCNC fractured over time and eventually broke up. The NCNC, to shore up its political power base in the South, allied itself with the party it had accused and fought against in the past, the AG. The political party that emerged was called the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA). By contrast, Akintola’s NNDP stayed

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close to the NPC, forming the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA).27 This seemed like a natural political alliance because Balewa was closer to Akintola than he was to Awolowo.28 Political Discontent Across the Regions

Thus, by 1964, when federal elections were held, battle lines had been drawn between the NNA and the UPGA. And in the Eastern Region, there was concern that the elections would be rigged by the federal government, including falsification of numbers. There was precedent in the Census of 1962, in which the population figures for several regions—that were currently registering voters for the 1964 election—were significantly inaccurate. Specifically, the eastern areas were reported with much lower numbers and northern areas with much higher ones. As Obasanjo writes, “The census of 1962 was alleged to be riddled with malpractices and inflation of figures of such astronomic proportions that the Eastern Region refused to accept them. A second census was carried out in 1963, and even then, the figures were accepted with some reservations.”29 There were also other discontents across Nigeria in those years, and many people seemed tired of the incumbent government and ruling parties. In the middle belt, there was widespread intolerance of the NPC and its rule there. Indeed, the Tiv people, who broadly “wanted to rid themselves of Hausa-Fulani domination,” had openly rioted for almost the three years between 1962 to 1965.30 And as for western Nigeria, from the state of emergency and the crisis that followed in 1962 there remained unrest and sometimes widespread crisis conditions. Indeed, “from 20 May 1962, the Western Region knew no peace until 15 June 1966, when the first coup took place.”31 To make things worse, before the December elections there was a general strike. This crippled the economy because hundreds of thousands of workers protested the low living wage.32 After the 1964 federal elections, which the UPGA massively boycotted in the East after an election season marred by “scandalous corruption, malpractices and wild speeches by politicians on both sides,” there were widespread allegations of malpractice.33 In the acrimonious political climate that emerged, the NNA did not boycott elections and consequently ran unopposed in, and won, several districts. The NNA had now increased its parliamentary majority. A furious Nnamdi Azikiwe, still president of Nigeria, “summoned the heads of the army (Major-General Welby-Everard), navy (Commodore Joseph Wey) and police (Louis Edet) to remind them of their oath of loyalty to him in his position as commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces.”34 Thus, there was a power tussle between Prime Minister Balewa and President Azikiwe for the support of the Nigerian Army and NPF.

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Bad Politics Get Even Worse in the “Wild West”

The Western Region had experienced unrest for some time, including widespread rioting and looting. However, the murders were the worst of it. Many political opponents were burned alive in what had become an anarchic society in the most literal interpretation of the phrase. Western Nigeria had emerged during later colonial rule as the nation’s most developed, educated, and even peaceful area. Yet, in just a few years under the rule of Nigerian politicians, it appears as though they managed to contort the region into “a political warzone where thugs and urchins engaged in wanton killings and destruction of properties. The event came to be known as Operation Wet ẹ. And the Western Region was nicknamed the Wild, Wild West.” Wetie, or “wet him or her,” was a violent form of protest and political fighting in the Western Region from 1962 to 1966 that involved dousing each other with gas and setting each other ablaze.35 Between late 1965 and January 1966, the unrest had reached a peak, with widespread anarchy and the ugly scenes from Operation Wetie. The Hausa-Fulani, the political factions including some members of Akintola’s NNDP, disgruntled defeated political opponents, and their supporters were all involved in the violence.36 In Operation Wetie, the violent rival political groups did much of this in broad daylight, in full public view. “Necklacing” was when political opponents accused of one crime or the other would be beaten by crowds and extrajudicially killed by throwing a car tire over their head, which pinned down their chest and arms and created a spectacle when they were doused in gas and set ablaze. Operation Wetie was arguably the worst of the excesses committed in the name of politics in the Western Region between 1962 and 1966. As a gruesome form of mob justice, it was initially only used against those accused as opposition political collaborators (“traitors”), informers, and equally violent political enemies. However, over time, just about anyone could be accused of just about anything, doused in gas, and set afire. This practice, the associated lynching, and the so-called jungle justice has never quite left Nigerian society since. If anything, it has spread to other parts of the country as a popular form of “justice.”37 The 1965 Western Region Elections

In 1965, the Western Region held elections. Yet, if the federal elections were bad, these were even worse. With the NPF helpless to resolve the escalating crisis, and with an increasingly uneasy Nigerian Army trying to steer clear of the toxic partisan environment of the era, allegations of electoral malpractice dominated the period. Akintola’s NNDP, in particular, was

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fingered for election rigging, with Akintola accused of being “the high priest of election rigging.”38 The NNDP was declared winner of the October 1965 election. However, there were so many questions raised about its legitimacy that it was widely viewed as rigged.39 Political violence in the aftermath of the elections was unprecedented.40 Riots broke out, and unrest was widespread as the western people appeared to reject an election many were sure put a man in power they did not vote for and had no desire to see rule them or the region, according to Jackson. As Siollun puts it, “Akintola’s retention of power led to even greater violence in the Western Region. Protests, arson and murders placed many parts of the Western Region into a state of near anarchy, which earned the region the nickname of the ‘wild west.’”41 Likewise, Ojo discusses how “‘Akintola’s betrayal’ of his kith and kin concerned the large-scale violence that attended the 1965 parliamentary elections into the Western Nigeria House of Assembly.”42 There were also growing concerns about why the federal government did not respond to the crisis of 1965 with a state of emergency, like it had in 1962. During a session in the House of Representatives, S. A. Shitta-Bey (representative for Lagos) made a motion that the federal government declare a second state of emergency in western Nigeria because “law and order have broken down in the [Western] Region.”43 The House heard the motion, but Balewa’s government denied the request. The prime minister argued that whereas in 1962 there was no functional government in the Western Region (because of the AG crisis), in 1965 the NNDP was elected and represented a legitimate ruling authority. Under these circumstances, a state of emergency could not be declared by the federal government.44 Consequent to the government’s refusal to declare a state of emergency in the Western Region, rumors were rife that Akintola’s NNDP and the NPC were still too close for the northern-dominated federal government to throw its ally under the bus, despite strong suspicions of malfeasance.45 Indeed, as Ojo puts it, “The prime minister’s refusal to declare a state of Emergency as he did in the Region in 1962 may have been because of his party’s alliance with the NNDP.”46 In response, the Eastern Region’s government was scathingly critical of Balewa and his government. The federal government was accused of a failure to “discharge its responsibility,” despite the hopes the people had placed in it in 1964 to do just that.47 The political crisis was underpinned by the fact that Nigeria now had two governments that came into power under circumstances many questioned, first in the 1964 federal elections, and then again in the 1965 Western Region elections. It was getting to a point where someone had to act to reset the nation’s political compass. The police force remained

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helpless in this regard, and little could be expected of it in terms of political intervention. The military’s political interests and the government interference in promotions and postings meant that it was becoming increasingly compromised, with many senior army officers already too friendly with influential politicians. As examples, Lieutenant-Colonel Abogo Largema reportedly was close enough to Akintola to train him in the use of firearms.48 Likewise, the sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, was said to have an unusually close friendship with Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun.49 How could the army be nonpartisan in this climate? Yet, what good was the army’s partisanship at a time when it could have been the only actor to step in, should things get that bad? As Madiebo writes of this period, some officers “considered a coup d’état the only way of restoring the country’s political and military situation to normalcy.”50 A discussion here of military politics is necessary because as of January 1966, the NPF would be serving at the behest of the army for decades to follow. Police Helplessness and Possible Army Intervention

Between 1965 and January 1966, there was a growing tide of incitement for the army to step in and seize political power despite the fact that the government seemed to be misusing the army to repress the people during the crisis. Additionally, it seemed as though the army was discriminating along ethnic lines in the way it employed force in some regions. One example is in the case of the 4th Battalion in Ibadan, commanded by Largema, a northerner.51 This formation was “deployed to restore order in the anarchic Western Region” after more unrest emerged there in 1966. The issue here was that most of the 4th Battalion troops were of northern origin, and the NPC ruling coalition was strongly allied to Akintola’s NNDP, against which the westerners (most of Yoruba ethnicity) were protesting. Consequently, the “allegedly pro-Akintola conduct during the operation made 4th battalion soldiers unpopular with the local population as some of them were perceived to be biased towards the NNDP.”52 And if this negative response to the government’s use of the army to suppress volatile political discontent in the West were not bad enough, “the NPC government decided to authorize an even more severe and massive military crackdown, crudely codenamed ‘Operation No Mercy,’ to curb the lawlessness in the Western Region.”53 The more politically sophisticated southern officers were sympathetic to the UPGA, the opposition alliance formed prior to the 1964 federal elections, which included the NCNC and the AG. Likewise, Awolowo’s incarceration was a concern for the same officers because he was admired for his intellect and political opposition to the northern-dominated government.

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Indeed, many officers from the South and East, predominantly Igbo officers, “were disillusioned at the government’s corruption and unfailing ability to create, but not to solve, crisis after crisis. Some of them felt that the system had been so thoroughly corrupted that it could not be changed by an election.” One of the coup plotters to emerge in January 1966, Major Chukwuma “Kaduna” Nzeogwu, held that it was “impossible to vote out a Nigerian minister” because “elections are always rigged.”54 Political interference into military promotions eroded the junior Igbo officers’ trust in the legitimacy of their superiors and might have undermined overall esprit de corps. The ejection of Igbos from the Nigeria Railway Corporation and the University of Lagos in 1965 also did not help matters.55 Writing in his biography Nzeogwu, Olusegun Obasanjo points out that the mishandling of the Western Region elections in 1965, the subsequent breakdown of law and order, and the federal government abuse of the army to respond to popular unrest, rather than solving the underlying political issues, was the “last straw” for politically savvy but disgruntled army officers such as Nzeogwu. These officers watched with disappointment and apprehension the emerging Western Region crisis. As events unfolded there after the state of emergency in 1962 and worsened by 1964 and 1965, there was a “total breakdown of law and order which resulted in complete insecurity of life and property.”56 The civil leadership and national military were broken. The initial optimism Nzeogwu had that both would redress the national crisis faded after the 1964 general election. After the elections in the West in 1965, the crisis, and the response to it by the government and army, it became clear to Nzeogwu and a number of other disgruntled officers that it was up to them to act. Notes 1. Ojo, “The Awolowo-Akintola Leadership Tussle.” 2. Oloja, The Yoruba Nation and History Lessons. 3. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 15. 4. Uwaezuoke, The Missing Main Course of a Delicious Dinner reported in This Day, 18 June 2017, 40. 5. Ibid. 6. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 15. 7. National Workshop on the Events, Issues and Sources of Nigerian History, 1960–1970, held at State House, Kawo, Kaduna, 7–9 June 1993, reproduced in Usman and Kwanashie, Inside Nigerian History, 43–44. 8. Uwaezuoke, The Missing Main Course of a Delicious Dinner reported in Vanguard, 23 January 2020. 9. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence. 10. Ojo, “The Awolowo-Akintola Leadership Tussle.”

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11. Uwaezuoke, The Missing Main Course of a Delicious Dinner, reported in Vanguard, 23 January 2020; Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence. 12. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence. 13. Uwaezuoke, The Missing Main Course of a Delicious Dinner, reported in This Day, 18 June 2017. 14. Christopher Shawcross, retained by the AG for Awolowo’s trial, is not to be confused with the Right Honourable Lord Shawcross, the lead British prosecutor during the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, principal delegate of the United Kingdom to the United Nations after World War II, and attorney general for England and Wales. 15. Daily Report, “Foreign Radio Broadcasts,” 13 June 1962, 15. 16. Ibid., 15–16. 17. Balogun, “An Assessment of the Partisan Role of the Nigeria Police Force in the 1962 Action Group Crisis,” 44. 18. Uwaezuoke, The Missing Main Course of a Delicious Dinner reported in This Day, 18 June 2017, 40. 19. Teniola, “How Balewa Declared.” 20. Daily Report, “Foreign Radio Broadcasts,” 13 June 1962, 123–124. 21. Udo, “Brief History.” 22. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence. 23. Anifowose, Violence and Politics in Nigeria, 65. 24. Balewa, Mr. Prime Minister, 171. 25. Balogun, “An Assessment of the Partisan Role of the Nigeria Police Force in the 1962 Action Group Crisis,” 52. 26. Ibid., 33. 27. Uwechue, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War. 28. Ojo, “The Awolowo-Akintola, Leadership Tussle,” 88. 29. Obasanjo, My Command, 5. 30. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 39. 31. Ibid. 32. Jackson, “Nigeria: The Politics of the First Republic.” 33. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 18. 34. Ibid. 35. Akinbode, How Operation Wetie Led to the 1966 Nigerian Coup d’Etat. 36. Ibid. 37. It has also since been observed elsewhere, such as in South Africa during the apartheid riots and in India during the anti-Sikh riots of the 1980s. See Schuster, A Burning Hunger, 453; Harper Broadcast, Tyres. 38. Schwarz, Nigeria, 199. 39. Jackson, “Nigeria: The Politics of the First Republic.” 40. Ojo, “The Awolowo-Akintola Leadership Tussle,” 87. 41. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 19. 42. Ojo, “The Awolowo-Akintola Leadership Tussle.” 43. Daily Times, 12 January 1966; Daily Express, 12 January 1966. 44. Daily Times, 17 November 1965; Morning Post, 17 November 1965. 45. Morning Post, 17 November 1965. 46. Ojo, “The Awolowo-Akintola Leadership Tussle,” 87–88. 47. National Archives, Ibadan: “NAI: CWC2/1/1: Nigerian Crisis, 1966,” 4, cited in Ojo, “The Awolowo-Akintola Leadership Tussle,” 87. 48. Siollun, “The Inside Story of Nigeria’s First Military Coup (I).” 49. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, 12. 50. Ibid.

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51. Largema was later targeted by the coup plotters in the 15 January 1966 coup d’état (discussed in Chapter 10). 52. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 38–39. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., 31. 55. Luckham, The Nigerian Military, 49. 56. Obasanjo, Nzeogwu, 78.

10 Coups, Pogroms, and the Spiral into Civil War

In August 1965 a group of mostly Nigerian Army majors, with largely an infantry background, plotted a bloody coup d’état against the Tafawa Balewa government, although “the idea of a coup” had been discussed for several years, predominantly by Igbo Nigerian Army officers.1 The Special Branch was aware that a coup d’état plot was afoot. At the time of these reports, the Special Branch was headed by Theophilus A. Fagbola, with Albert Korubo Horsfall as his assistant, although the latter, who would later become the director-general of the State Security Service (SSS), was away in the United States taking a course around the time the coup broke out.2 Fagbola was the first indigenous head of the Special Branch after Irishman John O’Sullivan’s retirement and departure in 1963.3 The Special Branch Report The Special Branch police report on the alleged coup was commissioned by the general officer commanding (GOC) of the Nigerian Army, Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi. The report was compiled by the commissioner of police for the Northern Region, Mohammed Dikko Yusuf; the commissioner of police for Lagos, Hamman Maiduguri; Captain Baba Usman of Military Intelligence; and Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon, who at the time was to become the commanding officer (CO) of the 2nd battalion (Lagos), taking over from Hilary Njoku.4 However, the report was mostly put together by the Special Branch, with input from military intelligence.

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That the Special Branch report was able to uncover the plot should not be surprising because it had truly excellent investigators, detectives, and staff. Indeed, only the top three police cadet college graduates were selected for posting in one of three prestigious positions: in “A Department” Force Headquarters, in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), and specifically in the Special Branch.5 By January 1966, Fagbola and his team of crack detectives at the Special Branch had begun forwarding intelligence reports regarding an imminent coup attempt to regional governments as well as to the federal government. The Special Branch investigation around this alleged plot was said to have even included specific names, with Major Emmanuel Arinze Ifeajuna and Major Chukwuma “Kaduna” Nzeogwu as suspects that could have, and probably should have, been detained by the military police. Indeed, Nzeogwu had been on the investigative radar of the Special Branch since he first completed his intelligence training in the United Kingdom.6 Nzeogwu was also known to the Nigerian Army as having quite a rebellious streak; that he was suspected of being a coup plotter should not have come as a surprise. When the Field Security Section (FSS) was established as a counterintelligence wing of the Nigerian Army, Nzeogwu was the first Nigerian officer to head the unit, general staff officer grade two (GSO2 Intelligence) from November 1962 to 1964.7 Indeed, in his capacity as a well-versed intelligence officer, he was invited to participate in the treasonable felony investigations of Obafemi Awolowo and other Action Group (AG) party members. Nzeogwu’s open dislike of the politicians of the day was evident there. In the tribunal against Awolowo and his co-accused followers, as Obasanjo recalls in his biography Nzeogwu, “Chukwuma had some scathing remarks to make about national security, and about those who were being investigated. If he had his way, he said, his treatment of the whole case would have been different” (73). It is likely that attending Special Branch officers, and perhaps even John Lynn himself, took notes of Nzeogwu and his comments during the tribunal. Nzeogwu might not have been substantively tied to the plot by January 1966, but his name must have come up in the relevant police and military intelligence conversations.8 The plot was not a secret to which only the Special Branch was privy. Yusuf would note later that inaction against the coup plot was not because of the Special Branch failing to impress upon the government the urgency of the matter.9 Likewise, in an account attributed to Yusuf by Opadokun in Aristocratic Rebel, Fagbola had cautioned the federal government more than once, “Soldiers are going to strike, but we don’t know when.” Also according to Yusuf, Brigadier Ademulegun, who was close to the Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, had “warned at an intelligence committee meeting that the plotters had fixed, then changed, the date for their coup.”10

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It is surprising that with the information Ademulegun possessed, he did not leverage his friendship with Bello to inform him more urgently of the alleged coup plot. Witness accounts from Colonel David Ejoor, the general staff officer (GSO) at Nigerian Army Headquarters, stated that Ademulegun and Bello were so close that upon visiting Ademulegun on one occasion, Ejoor (who did not recognize the Sardauna) found Bello just sitting on the living room carpet while Ademulegun was nowhere to be found. On being introduced to this person as the Sardauna of Sokoto and the northern premier, Ejoor was said to have given Bello a “trembling handshake” and then “staggered out of the backdoor and disappeared in utter confusion.”11 Minister of Information Ayo Rosiji reportedly tried to get Ademulegun to use his special friendship to urge that Bello take precautions with his security arrangements. It would appear that by 14 January 1966, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, having tried to warn Bello about the Special Branch and military intelligence reports without success, returned to Ibadan and armed himself with a rifle, which he used to defend himself— to no avail—against the coup plotters led by Captain Emmanuel Nwobosi the following night.12 On 14 January, Akintola also dispatched Lieutenant-Colonel Abogo Largema, commander of the 4th Battalion, Nigerian Army at Ibadan, to Aguiyi-Ironsi in Lagos to debrief him of what was now an urgent matter in the alleged impending coup.13 By then, however, it might have been too late because by the next day, 15 January, the coup plotters had struck, and by the time they were done, they had murdered twenty-two people, including Prime Minister Balewa; the premier of the Western Region, Akintola; the premier of the Northern Region and Sardauna of Sokoto, Bello; several of Nigeria’s most senior politicians; a number of senior Nigerian Army officers (as well as their wives); and police and military guards.14 However, a key part of the narrative over the next few days was that the prime minister was simply missing. No one quite knew if he was dead or alive. The police helped resolve that mystery. Table 10.1 is an outline of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) at the point the military took over in January 1966, along with how political and military events altered the landscape of policing at the highest levels in Nigeria. One of the most significant changes to emerge in the aftermath of the 15 January 1966 coup d’état was that Alhaji Kam Salem replaced Louis Edet as substantive inspector general of police. More than just the personnel changes, however (some of which might have happened anyway; for example, there was talk of replacing Edet as early as 1965), the police role in Nigeria would be undermined, with the military now in charge of what the police could or could not do, rather than being constitutionally separate from the NPF.

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Table 10.1 Changes to Senior NPF Postings After the 15 January 1966 Events

Name

Louis Edet Alhaji Kam Salem Hamman Maiduguri Alhaji Mohammed Dikko Yusuf Patrick Okeke Timothy Omo-Bare

Odofin Bello

Position

Inspector general of police (on leave) (Acting) inspector general of police Commissioner of police—Lagos Commissioner of police—Northern Region Commissioner of police—Eastern Region Commissioner of police—Midwest Region

Commissioner of police—Western Region

Circumstance

15 January 1966 coup d’état/due for retirement 15 January 1966 coup d’état N/A

15 January 1966 coup d’état

18 months later: Declaration of Biafra 15 January 1966 coup d’état Convicted of corruptiona

Change

Retirement Promotion to substantive IG N/A

Head of Special Branch

Inspector general of Biafran Police Force (Later) replaced by “Flying Policeman,” Joseph Adeola Retired

Background East: Efik

North

North

North: Fulani

East: Igbo

Midwest: Edo West: Yoruba

Source: Adapted from Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 222. Note: a. Odofin Bello was convicted of corruption and replaced by Joseph Adeola, who was commissioner of police for the Midwest Region when the civil war broke out in 1967. He was incarcerated by Biafra in August that year and only released when the war ended. He returned to the NPF and became the Lagos commissioner of police during the Mobolaji Johnson era. Adeola, who joined the NPF in 1941 was known as the “Flying Policeman” because of his long-jump exploits as an athlete in his younger days. He was the star attraction during the early years of national championships at the Police Ground in Obalende-Lagos. Adeola was champion in 1947, taking the 100-, 220-, and 440-yard races, respectively. He retained his medals the next year in 1948 and again in 1949, except for the 1949 gold. See Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 222; Obasi, “Sport Flakes.”

A Police Case and Discovery These changes, which altered the political landscape and revolutionized the way the civilians and the military in Nigeria would interact going forward, occurred even while Balewa remained missing—whether he was alive or dead was as yet unknown. In January 1966, Ibrahim Babankowa was a Hausa assistant superintendent of police (ASP) serving in Ota, in the Western Region then (but today it is in Ogun). In the early hours of 15 January 1966, shortly after the prime minister was abducted, Babankowa and his team were a special unit deployed to the Western Region to restore order. As some background to Babankowa’s special unit deployment, refer back to the Chapter 9 discussion of Operation Wetie in the Western

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Region as the “Wild, Wild West” of Nigeria, between 1962 and 1966. Attempting to contain the violence and end the gruesome practices of Operation Wetie, the Nigeria Police Force had its hands full for years. In intervening, the federal government “raised an anti-riot unit from the Police Refresher Course School in Kaduna” and posted its officers from Mubi to Kaduna. Babankowa was given command of this special unit, and the unit’s mandate was clear but challenging: it was to help pacify the people of the Western Region and, in particular, the widespread public violence and Operation Wetie.15 Ota, where the special unit deployed, is in proximity to Lagos. In Ota, Babankowa and his team had checkpoint and police patrol duties. As part of the daily routine, they patrolled Ikorodu, Sagamu, and Ibadan. Their return route was different to cover more potentially restive areas, and they came back via Abeokuta, Sango-Ota, Agege, and Ikeja. In these areas, the police special unit often set up checkpoints. At one of these checkpoints, when Babankowa was there, a small convoy of military vehicles drove by and were not searched. The convoy consisted of an army land rover, army trucks, and two Peugeot saloon cars traveling from Lagos to Abeokuta.16 For the NPF at the time, there was nothing suspicious about such a convoy. The government had deployed the 4th Battalion to Ibadan to assist in restoring peace in the Western Region. Nigerian Army patrols traveled far and wide. The same could be said of Lagos, where 2nd Battalion troops were not constrained to their barracks and were often on the move. This was the West, after all, and the army and police were working together to restore peace. Moreover, there was a curfew in western Nigeria, which, by definition, required patrols of military and police personnel to enforce.17 According to Babankowa, the commanding officer at the police special unit checkpoint on the Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta Road, his men waved on the army convoy. The vehicles later stopped some three kilometers away “and diverted into a nearby forest where they shot and killed the Prime Minister. . . . About an hour later this same military convoy came back and headed towards Lagos.”18 How did a convoy containing a few soldiers in a truck and some senior army officers in a land rover get an army-abducted prime minister past a police checkpoint with about fifty-three well-armed mobile policemen and officers? Babankowa and his police special unit were unaware of the abductees. Both the first time the convoy was let through, and even after the convoy returned and drove by again a little while later on its way back to Lagos, no information about the prime minister’s abduction had reached the police special unit. If Babankowa and his team had known—and hindsight creates these hypothetical scenarios—in his own words, “We would have simply

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overwhelmed them. They might kill some of us, but we would have killed all of them.”19 Babankowa only began to put the puzzle pieces together when visiting a clinic for personal reasons on 20 January, five days later. In the previous five days, after Babankowa had learned that the prime minister was missing and that there had been a coup d’état, he and his men joined what was now a wide search. They had no luck by 20 January, the day Babankowa caught a fortunate break. During his visit to the Sango-Ota clinic, which at the time was the only clinic there and which also doubled as a general hospital, Babankowa overheard two female patients speaking in Yoruba about (as he loosely interpreted their words) a mysterious and unpleasant smell they encountered in the bush. Both women came from a village along the Abeokuta Highway. Ordinarily, this conversation and its possible meaning might not have rung any bells. However, combined with his knowledge that the convoy of army vehicles was in proximity to the site mentioned in the conversation, and the fact that the convoy stopped some three kilometers after passing the checkpoint, it all added up for Babankowa. Upon leaving the clinic, Babankowa took the initiative to search the area and divided his anti-riot unit in two. During this expansive search, they found in the forest the “decomposing corpses of the Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Chief Okotie-Eboh, Colonel Kur Muhammad, Colonel Abogo Largema and two others.”20 The stench of the corpses was a factor in helping the police locate them. Some policemen were left to guard the site as Babankowa rushed back to the Ikeja Police Headquarters to report “his macabre discovery” to Chief Superintendent of Police Alhaji Kafaru Tinubu.21 Kam Salem, the acting inspector general of police, was briefed in short order, as was Aguiyi-Ironsi. Babankowa was requested to go to the police headquarters at Moloney Street, Obalende-Lagos, to debrief Aguiyi-Ironsi in person. Incidentally, Aguiyi-Ironsi had changed office buildings and was now temporarily working from the Moloney Street headquarters, later known as Kam Salem House. The coup d’état meant that Aguiyi-Ironsi “no longer felt safe working in army units” such as Dodan Barracks, the Supreme Military Headquarters from 1966. Shortly after Babankowa arrived at the Moloney Street headquarters, the military personnel took his gun and pistol before escorting him to Aguiyi-Ironsi’s office. This was not a one-off security protocol. Shortly after taking over political and government power in January 1966, and in the days when AguiyiIronsi worked from the Moloney Street headquarters, he was demonstrably concerned for his safety. Indeed, “he conducted his first press conference flanked by a guard who kept his hand on a pistol half drawn from its holster.” 22

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Babankowa stepped into Aguiyi-Ironsi’s office, and the supreme commander asked him in Hausa, “Officer, Ka ce kaga gawar Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa da ta wasu mutane?” Babankowa was of Hausa ethnicity. Aguiyi-Ironsi was fluent in the language. Translated to English: “Officer, you said you have sighted the corpses of the Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and others?” Babankowa replied in the affirmative. After Babankowa was marched out of Aguiyi-Ironsi’s office, he was detained at the Apapa Naval Base, but Kam Salem impressed upon the supreme commander the need for a police officer to be detained by the police themselves and noted that Babankowa could always be produced for questioning when the military needed him for that purpose.23 AguiyiIronsi obliged the acting inspector general’s request, and Babankowa was then relocated for detainment at the CID in Panti, Yaba-Lagos. At about midnight, Kaftan Topolomiyo, one of the prime minister’s two aides-de-camp, as well as one of Balewa’s in-laws, the madaki of Bauchi, secured Babankowa’s release. Along with a larger contingent of military and police personnel, military doctors, an ambulance, and a truck with coffins, they all headed to the site in the forest, where Babankowa had left his men with instructions earlier that day.24 On Friday 21 January, the corpse of former prime minister Balewa was identified by the embroidered white gown and slippers he wore when he was arrested by Major Ifeajuna and taken away from his residence days before. 25 The graphic description of the discovery was that the prime minister’s “pure white guinea brocade gown” had already changed color but was used to identify him. However, “as a result of advanced decomposition, numerous worms were coming out from his body.”26 The decent aspects of the discovery were made public, and Balewa was buried in a relatively low-key ceremony at his Bauchi residence. Babankowa was so traumatized by the affair that he was asked to take annual leave, which he did.27 This marked the end of one chapter of democratic rule in Nigeria. However, Balewa’s murder and the way the whole coup happened created an era of uncertainty within the Nigerian Army. Too much wrong had been done against the northerners in the space of a few days. Someone had to be held to account. The questions now were who and where that would lead. The months that followed would provide some deadly answers. The Police-Army Joint Board of Inquiry Promising to get to the bottom of the coup d’état that took the lives of the prime minister and twenty-one others, Aguiyi-Ironsi set up a board of

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inquiry. Yusuf, the Northern Region commissioner of police, was placed on the board to investigate the 15 January coup d’état. To help him in his task, Aguiyi-Ironsi, who now had the power to promote police personnel, promoted Yusuf to the position of head of the Special Branch. Interrogations of suspected coconspirators as well as those arrested from the failed coup were held at the Moloney Street headquarters, Obalende-Lagos. Interrogations were extensive and were conducted by Special Branch personnel, including Yusuf himself. However, other police officers, such as Assistant Commissioner of Police Isa Dejo, British police officers assisting with the case, and even senior Nigerian Army officers such as Gowon participated in the interrogations. Meanwhile, Usman was the liaison officer between the police and army on the board of inquiry and took the coup plotters and suspected coconspirators daily from their cells at Kirikiri, in Apapa to Obalende (the Lagos Island local government area), where the police headquarters were, and back. Usman was also responsible for monitoring detainees and screening their correspondence.28 Gradually, the detainees talked, and a detailed Special Branch police report was compiled. The report’s backbone consisted of the witness statements because the coup plotters had been arrested and were now in custody. Meanwhile, contrary to theories peddled within northern circles that the “Igbo soldiers imprisoned for their role in the January coup were being treated like royalty in prison,” the coup plotters were being badly maltreated.29 Some even had to be taken from prison and hospitalized because of injuries inflicted there. Kirikiri is usually a civilian prison. However, the coup plotters were not going through a regular court-martial. During military rule, the rules about who could go to what type of prison tended to change. Nzeogwu wrote about the appalling prison conditions in Kirikiri to his good friend Obasanjo in a letter: Troops under the influence of the Supreme Comd [Commander], edged [sic] on by certain tribalists, encouraged private soldiers and NCOs to cane and maltreat some of these officers and the men now in Kiri-Kiri whilst they were under detention in the Federal Guard and in 2 Bn. They were beaten with Kobokos [horsewhips] daily, starved, and forced to drink urine at gun point. Nwobosi nearly had his eye poked out with a rifle muzzle and Oyewole who is still admitted to the military hospital had his forehead and nose smashed to bits with a rifle, in the presence of Ekanem, Captain Iwe, Maj Ally and a few other loyalist officers. If you see the men here in prison you will be sorry for them. Koboko and bayonet wounds all over the face and body! It is terrible. . . . One corporal was shot dead and one Sgt Nathaniel badly wounded by tribalist troops of the Federal Guard. . . . Northern officers and troops feel that the coup is aimed against the North. Everyone seems quite jittery at this end and they will fire at anything that moves.30

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Reaction to the 15 January 1966 Coup d’État The era of the military juntas had started in Nigeria, and from that point in the country’s history, the police played second fiddle to the army. Politics, the police, prisons, and society at large were now within the military remit. At no point was this more evident than in the decade after independence, in the civil war period (1967–1970). As for the civil war itself, the coup of 15 January 1966 and the murders of Balewa; the Sardauna of Sokoto, Bello; and several other northern politicians were part of the influencing factors behind a high-stakes countercoup in July 1966. The coup and the installation of Aguiyi-Ironsi, an eastern Igbo, did not go down well with northern officers, politicians, and indeed the northern citizens. The Anti-Igbo Pogroms, May–September 1966 Consequently, northerners interpreted the independent maneuvering of a few Igbo army officers as “a discreet attempt to promote Igbo interests to the detriment of other Nigerians, most particularly the Hausa-Fulani.”31 The northern sentiments against the Igbo festered until 29 May 1966, when anti–Aguiyi-Ironsi riots and violence against Igbos erupted in several northern cities. In Kano, where the first pogroms against the Igbo started, massive demonstrations were staged. By the time the riots ended, 73 people had been killed and 254 wounded. In partial contradiction to reports of Kano policemen killing civilians and leading the riots (which, as it turns out, were student-led), the Kano police arrested suspected perpetrators as well as many Igbos to protect them from mobs. In all, the police arrested 170 people.32 “July Rematch”: The 28 July Countercoup and Its Aftermath As for Aguiyi-Ironsi himself, as head of state, he was targeted and killed along with Lieutenant-Colonel F. A. Fajuyi, the military governor of western Nigeria, while being hosted by the latter in Ibadan.33 Aguiyi-Ironsi’s journey toward death began with his arrest from the State House in Ibadan by mutinying northern elements of the Nigerian Army. It ended with him being beaten up, shot, and left in the bush.34 By the time the Igbo pogroms had subsided, and Aguiyi-Ironsi’s murder had sunk in, the Igbos of the Eastern Region were considerably more united against what they perceived to be a northern plan to dominate the country and to persecute the Igbo. About 100,000 Igbo-speaking people

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fled northern Nigeria to escape the pogroms, which had already claimed thousands of lives.35 There were also reprisals against northerners and Tiv people living in the East as northerners living in the region hurriedly head back to the North, even as Igbos living elsewhere in Nigeria arrived back to the East in massive numbers. All of these events served as a prelude to the Nigerian civil war, in which the Igbo attempt to secede was violently put down by federal forces.36 It is difficult to say whether, by the end of 1966, war could still be averted. If the 15 January coup d’état was a problem, the decisionmaking of the installed head of state, Aguiyi-Ironsi, his effective suspension of the constitution and his plan to abolish regions probably did not help salvage the situation. And, for that matter, the countercoup of 29 July and the antiIgbo pogroms were no “solutions” to the problems at hand in any pacifist or realistic sense of the word, particularly when the nation seemed in a constant state of political crisis. Nevertheless, with Ojukwu as the chief architect, the Eastern Region of Nigeria would first threaten to secede and then eventually carry through with the threat, to form the Republic of Biafra, in May 1967. The civil war of Nigeria had begun, and eastern Nigeria would become the nation’s center of attention between May 1967 and January 1970.37 Notes 1. Siollun, Oil, Politics and Violence, 31. 2. Nation, “Why I Went into Exile”; Nation on Sunday, “National Assembly Not Competent to Amend Constitution,” 2 December 2012. 3. Ibid. 4. Siollun, The Inside Story of Nigeria’s First Military Coup (I). 5. Ibid. 6. Clark, A Right Honourable Gentleman, 747. 7. Obasanjo, Nzeogwu, 71–77. 8. See Opadokun, Aristocratic Rebel; Siollun, Oil, Politics and Violence, 39. 9. Opadokun, Aristocratic Rebel. 10. Siollun, Oil, Politics and Violence, 39. 11. As an example of the close relationship the men shared, see the account in Madiebo, Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, 12. 12. Siollun, The Inside Story of Nigeria’s First Military Coup (II). 13. Lieutenant Colonel Abogo Largema was one of four senior Nigerian Army officers killed during the 15 January 1966 coup d’état, the very next day. The other three were Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari (commander of the 2nd Brigade and most senior northern Nigerian Army officer), Colonel Kur Mohammed (chief of staff, Army Headquarters), and Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Pam James (adjutant-general). 14. Uweuche, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War. 15. Vanguard, How I Discovered Balewa’s Decomposing Body. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid.

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18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Siollun, Oil, Politics and Violence, 67. 22. Siollun, Oil, Politics and Violence, 85. 23. Vanguard, “How I Discovered Balewa’s Decomposing Body.” 24. Siollun, Oil, Politics and Violence, 67. 25. Ibid. 26. Vanguard, “How I Discovered Balewa’s Decomposing Body.” 27. Ibid. 28. Siollun, Oil, Politics and Violence, 93. 29. Ibid. 30. Letter from Nzeogwu to Obasanjo, dated 4 February 1965, reproduced in Obasanjo, Nzeogwuit, 150. 31. Albert, “Violence in Metropolitan Kano,” 91. 32. Ibid. 33. Albert, “Violence in Metropolitan Kano,” 92. 34. See, as an example, Omoigui, Operation Aure (2); also, Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 104–111. 35. Akpan, The Struggle for Secession. 36. Ibid. 37. Uweuche, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War.

11 The Biafra Police Force During the Civil War

What sort of life is this? Nobody is any longer anybody in this Biafra. We are all virtually without mind, without will, without personality as individuals. —Chief Patrick Okeke, inspector general of police of Biafra, on the country rapidly becoming a police state

Why is a book on the role of the police and policing in Nigeria’s history seemingly taking a detour to discuss policing in Biafra—a breakaway secessionist state many people contended was a “sovereign state” already? The answer resides in the importance of Biafra and the geopolitical region and ethnic interests it represented between 1967 and 1970. The history of Nigeria between 1967 and 1970 is, effectively, the history of the events in the breakaway region of Biafra and the war fought there: the civil war of Nigeria. The two key actors in that war were the separatists, predominantly of Igbo origin, who wanted to remain independent from the political control of the federal government, and the federal forces, tasked with reabsorbing Biafra and crushing its supposed monopoly on military force in eastern Nigeria and its representation of wider ethnic and geopolitical interests across the federation. In this sense, minority interests fought the civil war of Nigeria against the majority-mandated political power led by the federal military government from Lagos. However, even during a civil war and even in a war-torn region where courts have nominal control and military “emergency laws” supersede the power of the courts in dealing with the civilian populace, a police force is

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necessary. This was the case in eastern Nigeria between 1967 and 1970. Because Nigeria’s history during that period was centered on Biafra, policing and the police role there become a vital part of shaping the country’s future. The events that unfolded during the civil war of Nigeria are thus often told from political and military perspectives. Although there is no shortage of political and military works about the period, there are virtually no works dedicated to the roles of the police and policing in Biafra, with notable publications often discussing the police role as part of a broader narrative.1 However, the rule of law, the courts, the police, and policing were part of the fabric of society and governance in Biafra as the center of Nigeria’s political and historical attention between 1967 and 1970. Much like the police force in Nigeria during military rule, policing and the police in Biafra during the civil war were undermined and even sometimes publicly ridiculed by the military government. Thus, if the eastern population never quite showed the police and the justice system the same respect accorded to the Biafran Army, a failure of the military government to empower the police was largely to blame. Moreover, this state of affairs was mirrored in Nigeria’s decades of military rule, when the police force was undermined, underfunded, and marginalized during the military interregnum.2 For such reasons, an examination of the police and policing in Biafra between 1967 and 1970 must start with the role of the Nigerian Army in the contentious politics of the period. Despite the fact that the Nigerian Army was smaller than the police force, it always dominated politics and society—with the police at the margins of such influence and largely acting at the army’s behest. As of January 1966, when Nigeria’s first coup d’état occurred (with major ramifications for the rulership of the next four years), the Nigerian Army was just over one-third the size of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), by far the largest of the institutions in Nigeria’s security architecture at the time. The police alone outnumbered Nigeria’s combined armed forces (army, navy, and air force). Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to say the police, rather than the army, were the driving political and security force in the federation. Still, to understand why the police force was always unlikely to collapse from within, as the Nigerian Army was prone to do because of its “coup culture,” it is critical to compare the army’s structure to that of the NPF.3 At the helm of the army’s structure, as of 1966, was its general officer commanding (GOC), Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi, a two-star general and Igbo from the East. At the time, Nigeria was decades away from adopting a continental general staff system (CGSS); indeed, it did not even have a chief of army staff. Rather, seniority in the army was not by substantive appointment, or by protocol, but often by commission numbers, date of commissioning, and date of joining the army. In this regard, following

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Aguiyi-Ironsi were one-star generals in Brigadier Ademulegun (a Yoruba from the West), Brigadier Maimalari (a Kanuri from the North), and Brigadier Ogundipe (a Yoruba from the West). These four officers were the most senior by rank and protocol in the army.4 The officer corps contained around 350 officers, with the highest of the rank of colonel, serving the quartet of Aguiyi-Ironsi, Ademulegun, Maimalari, and Ogundipe.5 The command scheme for the officer corps was pyramid style: one major general, three brigadiers, a few colonels, considerably more lieutenant colonels, then majors, and so on. The Igbos had more officers than any of the other ethnic groups, whereas the Hausas dominated the rank and file.6 The Hausas were more likely to be recruited in the combat units such as infantry, armor, and artillery, whereas the southerners—the Igbos, Yoruba, Edo, Ibibio, Efik, and several others— “took more easily to the technical and clerical jobs.”7 The army’s size of under 9,000 troops strong was surprising on the surface, given that the population of Nigeria was 55 million people. However, the Nigerian Army had never really needed to mobilize beyond its role in the now-disbanded West African Frontier Force (WAFF). Moreover, the NPF had under its jurisdiction domestic security and law enforcement. Thus, it is understandable that the police force has always been around three times the size of the army, or more, even today. In 1966, the police troops numbered around 24,000 under the federal police and the local government police, which came under direct control of the regional government as far as jurisdiction and administration were concerned. Additionally, in a reverse distribution of the army’s hierarchical structure, the police had more Igbo (easterner) police personnel at the lower ranks.8 However, only the Western and Northern Regions had any effective organization and infrastructure for local government police force duties. The Eastern and Midwest Regions lagged badly behind in this regard. Yet both regions oddly appeared content regarding—and certainly did not agitate against—an enduring reliance on NPF units stationed in their regions because the federal police still had a policy of recruiting heavily, though not exclusively, from a region. Thus, NPF units in the Midwest tended to recruit predominantly midwesterners, and so on. This was partially why, after the pogroms of 1966, returning easterners felt far more comfortable with the police forces they encountered back in the East, compared with those operational in the North.9 By 1967, the character of the police force in each region would become an even stronger, and virtually exclusive, reflection of the local ethnicity because, after the pogroms of 1966, Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, the military governor of eastern Nigeria, demanded that northern Nigerian elements of the security establishment in the East be removed, and eastern Nigerian elements of the army and police be repatriated.

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This demand was made via three items within a wider list of points presented to the federal military government, first in Lagos in August 1966 during an emergency meeting and then at the Aburi Accords in January 1967. The first meeting was to reduce tensions between that government and the Eastern Region. The Aburi Accords were more urgent (although even at Aburi all parties might not have conveyed that sense at the time) because they were to avoid what seemed like a looming military confrontation between the nation and the Eastern Region. The specific items regarding the issue of police and army units in eastern Nigeria were: “(3) Armed units in each area should consist of people drawn mainly from the area’s inhabitants. (4) All Northern soldiers in the East to be removed with immediate effect. . . . (13) Autonomy of Regions in police and security measures.”10 Whereas there was no success in several of the other points raised (including the above number 13), the Eastern Region did get a favorable decision regarding items 3 and 4. The eastern security forces could make their way back home at their earliest convenience, whereas “the removal of Northern troops from Enugu [the eastern capital] was the most immediate necessity.”11 On this final point, Governor Ojukwu had been consistent. Indeed, prior to the agreement on the terms of troop redeployment, the fear of the northern troops stationed in eastern Nigeria forced Ojukwu to take asylum in the police headquarters in Enugu between July and August 1966. 12 Such concerns were pertinent after the countercoup of July 1966 and the subsequent murder of the Igbo military head of state, Aguiyi-Ironsi, and several other Igbo army officers by northern officers.13 Ojukwu’s calculation in this relocation of his office and staff to the police headquarters in Enugu was that he would be safer there because the police in Nigeria, unlike the military, had typically recruited heavily from local parts. This meant that the Eastern Police Force was already predominantly populated by easterners and headed by an Igbo police commissioner, Chief P. I. Okeke. Ojukwu’s caution and his calculations around the makeup of the NPF in Enugu, as a better guarantor of his security, served him well and quite likely might have saved his life. In Lagos, Lieutenant Colonel Murtala Muhammed, a July 1966 countercoup leader, “repeatedly sent signals for Northern soldiers in Enugu to extend the mutiny to the Eastern Region. Some Northern soldiers attempted to break into the Enugu armoury but were overpowered.”14 From that point on, Ojukwu would not only insist that northerners be expunged entirely from the military and police in Biafra but also he would come to realize that his “revolution” was unlikely to succeed without a “new” and restructured Biafra Police Force. Indeed, in his Ahiara Declaration, he presented police reform as a top priority for the rebel government.15 At least this seemed to be the case on paper.

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NPF Structure, circa 1966–August 1967 Also on paper, right up until the East seceded from Nigeria in May 1967, regional police forces were answerable to the command at the federal level, in Lagos as the nation’s capital. Indeed, by law, “since the Federal Government had overall responsibility for security throughout the country, it had powers in time of need to requisition the local government police forces which in such cases had to take orders from the Nigeria police.”16 This held as of 1966. However, in practice, by the later months of 1967, because of wartime dynamics, this structure changed, and Eastern Police Force effectively became part of the Biafra Police Force. Eastern and Midwestern Police Forces, shortly after Ojukwu’s rebellion, did not take orders from the central command in Lagos, even though in principle they supported its core objectives of crime prevention, public order preservation, and law enforcement. Indeed, in the months leading into the rebellion, after the pogroms of 1966, there already was a demonstrable pivot in the Eastern Region’s police alliance toward the eastern government rather than the federal military government. A noteworthy arrangement in the NPF organizational structure around 1966 was that “unified as it was in command at the national level, it was nevertheless organized on an essentially regional basis.”17 This influenced police recruitment, which took place largely within regions. As an example, for purposes of recruitment and training, there were two working police colleges. The Southern Police College is in Ikeja, Lagos, whereas the Northern Police College is Kaduna, northern Nigeria. The Northern, Western, Midwestern, and Eastern Regions, in place until 27 May 1967, when the federation was divided into twelve states, each had a police commissioner. Nevertheless, the unifying factor across all four regions, which underpinned the federation’s ability to centralize police force coordination and cooperation was the National Police Council (NPC). Police forces from all four regions and the Lagos Police were represented at the NPC. At the apex of this organizational structure, as a symbol of unified police force authority, was the inspector-general. In 1966, this was Alhaji Kam Salem, only the second indigenous head of the NPF after Louis Edet. Kam Salem, a northerner, was inspector-general between 1966 and 1975 and served opposite Biafra’s Okeke throughout the duration of the conflict. What the comparative organization of the Nigerian Army and the NPF showed, as tensions that led to war started to emerge in 1966, was that the police’s structure seemed “more realistic” than that of the army.18 Yet, perhaps such organizational pragmatism and decentralization were more necessary for the police than for the army because the latter was much smaller

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than the former. Regardless, the nature of the police force structure is such that, unlike the Nigerian Army, the NPF has been shaped in line with the country’s geopolitical restructuring and state creation. On 27 May 1967, General Yakubu “Jack” Gowon, the supreme military commander ruling Nigeria, created twelve new states. This act is viewed as a proximate causus belli for the civil war of Nigeria, which began soon after that year, the main reason I mention this here is that the twelve new states also meant twelve new police state commands were created to conform to Nigeria’s new political structure. Each police command was responsible for security in its respective state. Nevertheless, police funding remained a federal matter. The creation of twelve new states did not mean the corresponding formation of a state police institution in Nigeria. Instead, the NPF headquarters, Moloney Street (later Kam Salem House) at Obalende, in the Lagos Island area of Lagos, remained the administrative center. Indeed, the procurement of uniform, shoes, raincoats, flashlights, whistles, batons, handheld radios, and of course light arms and weapons fell under federal allocation rather than state funding. Little changed in how the NPF functioned—administratively, such as how it paid its salaries, and functionally, such as how it set up roadblocks and represented law and order at all levels of the federation. Nevertheless, with more police commands created, each reflected the ethnic makeup of the regions more closely. At the national level, the NPF had far more Igbos at the lower ranks than the Nigerian Army did. Police at the Front

As Achebe writes in There Was a Country, in the months leading into the outbreak of the civil war, “the Igbos had large numbers in the police force but not in the army, where their numbers were concentrated in the officer corps” (71). Whereas Igbo soldiers were relatively few at the beginning of the war, the small Biafra Army, the rebellion’s backbone, was significantly bolstered by the injection of large numbers of predominantly Igbo policemen as well as a few from the Midwest into its ranks. Moreover, toward the war’s end, police personnel were effectively conscripted to fight at various fronts in the East, with no more fresh troops anywhere. Yet, the police frontline operations themselves began not toward the end of the war but virtually at its inception: shortly after federal troops had captured and moved on from Nsukka into the Opi area in July 1967, before the invasion of the Midwest in early August 1967, and before the fall of Enugu in early October 1967. Perhaps it was the speed of Federal troops’ ingress into Eastern Nigeria, and the speed at which Nsukka fell in July 1967, that startled Governor

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Ojukwu. Or perhaps it was what the governor saw on his first visit to the front line, a few miles from Opi, the same month. Indeed, perhaps it was the batches of civilian volunteers, whose arrival was heralded but probably inspired little confidence in the governor—who might have suspected, even after the opening gambit of the war, that his war was unwinnable. Whatever the case, in July, The Governor ordered that members of the police be sent to the front to fight, particularly those of them who were in the mobile police force. The Commissioner of Police [Okeke] did not like the idea at all, but he had no choice. . . . He wept for several days and would not be consoled. Already under a cloud, he could only protest or plead that his men be trained at least before being sent to the front.19

Ironically, therefore, the fact that so many policemen indeed fought in the war in some capacity meant that Gowon’s declaration of the war being a “police action” was not entirely false, although not in the way he meant it. Moreover, the Biafra rebels were by no means the only side that depended on policemen as recruits. Quite the contrary: “When Biafra troops invaded the Mid-West in August 1967 they were faced by few regular Federal forces. Armed policemen were formed into the Police Mobile Force and were used to bolster the over-stretched Federal Army although they were equipped and trained for crowd control rather than combat.”20 Indeed, this mobilization request came all the way from Gowon as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and head of the federal military government. Around July 1967, some 7,000 ex-servicemen and serving policemen were conscripted. Of these, four more battalions were formed. Moreover, not only was there “increased recruitment from the personnel of the Nigerian [sic] Police Force” but also there was accelerated training of civilians in civil defense duties both for the war effort and for police work.21 The Nature of Police Duties in Biafra Modeled identically after the NPF, the Biafra Police Force was one of the state’s four main arms of law enforcement, along with the judiciary, the civil service, and the armed forces. The police force had the special responsibilities of law-and-order maintenance and internal security. The police were also said to have a monopoly on the use of force against civilians when necessary. In practice, none of this was feasible because the Biafra Police Force only ever got to function in the context of war. In the war-ravaged environment of eastern Nigeria, the police force was not capable of maintaining internal security on its own, and it did not have a monopoly on force. Violent

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offenses increased along with the flow of firearms into Biafra. And soldiering was more popular as a profession than practically any other in the rebel republic. Simply put, the Biafra Police Force, despite its lofty ideals and purported function, was very much an appendage of the NPF. Indeed, the NPF was quickly blamed for the institutional pathologies evident in its protégé. In his Ahiara Declaration of 1 June 1969, Ojukwu, the Biafra head of state, kept referring to a “new order” in which police reform was paramount if the police force was to distance itself from the criticisms of the NPF. Indeed, regarding allegations of Biafra Police Force corruption, bribery, and inefficiency, Ojukwu opined that such “evils and weaknesses can be traced to the fact that the [Biafra] Police Force, like many of institutions of our society, had a colonial beginning and was vitiated in Nigeria.” Much was made of how the police force in Biafra distinguished itself as part of a so-called new order in which “the Biafran Police Force must be a People’s Police, that is to say, a champion of the People’s rights. The Policeman is not there simply to arrest criminals. He is also there to help people avoid going wrong. He must never exploit the People’s ignorance of their civic rights. On the contrary, it is his duty, where such ignorance exists, to teach the citizen his rights.”22 On paper, the Biafra Police Force had the potential to become a formidable actor in both war and peacetime eastern Nigeria between 1967 and 1970. After all, the force was more than 5,000 troops strong at its wartime peak. This was largely a result of enthusiastic volunteers for the police, militias, and army. Like the army, the local police force expanded over the course of the conflict but in terms of overall capabilities had it much worse than the army. Police uniforms were even harder to come by than army issues. And even batons were no longer standard for police because of acute shortages. Makeshift cudgels were wielded by most recruits, who had next to no training by the war’s midpoint. A few recruits were lucky enough to have batons for their policing duties. And only a few units were ever allocated firearms and ammunition, which the army often had to requisition because of its own acute shortages. With regard to a headquarters, each state command—as the Biafra Police Force was structured—had one. Each command had a commissioner who oversaw the command’s divisions. A central police station (CPS) was the most visible symbol of the police, and several could be found across municipalities, in rural areas, and even in remote villages. Nevertheless, the logistics of communicating and administering each CPS meant that the Biafra Police Force later opted to aggregate its police stations into “provisional” central police forces, with only a nominal police presence within the physical station. The rest of the staff were redeployed from their home stations (which many never saw again) to the war front, to urban centers such as Aba where civilian rowdiness and major crimes were more of a concern, or to understaffed police departments supporting frontline towns.

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In hindsight, despite the little good it did the police at the time, it is difficult to fault the logic of this necessary approach of makeshift police stations, compared with the decades-long policy of having fixed police stations even in remote locations. The taxing logistics of administering widely dispersed police units at remote fixed stations—units that had limited duties and that could otherwise have been largely idle—meant that aggregating such personnel, redeploying them elsewhere, and relocating their operations was a sound decision. Within the command structure, the crime department—an administrative structure in charge of criminal investigations, crime records, and crime prevention—tended to be given operational and administrative priority. There was also an intelligence department that worked closely with the office of the Directorate for Military Intelligence (DMI). This worked well in high-profile cases in which suspects were tailed for days before arrests were made or in which crimes tended to relate either to treason (which, therefore, involved the military government) or large sums of money, which again the army wanted to know about.23 Biafra police intelligence also surveilled perceived enemies of the state in other ways. As an example, the chief secretary of the government and head of the civil service, Akpan, pointed out that the police were employed along with other government “agents of terror,” who included “private informants, agents, secret paramilitary organisations and, later, the special tribunal,” to tap telephones and monitor suspected “enemies of the state.” Incidentally, according to Akpan, his own telephone was tapped—so “crudely,” as it turns out, that he found out and lodged a complaint (24). Then there were the homicide squads from the crime department. These were often made up of crack detectives invaluable in supporting the justice system by finding evidence, interviewing witnesses, arresting and arraigning suspects in magistrate courts and the special tribunal, and helping with general law enforcement. Incidentally, these detectives found themselves as occupied investigating nonviolent crimes, such as elaborate fraud schemes—widespread during the war—as they were solving violent crimes, which also significantly increased in the later part of the war. Another type of crime, which drew on local customs, was that of ritual murder and occultism. As the war worsened, human sacrifice ritualists and violent occultists emerged and succeeded in persuading many that blood sacrifices were the solution to their travails. By 1969, in the Aba Province area alone, an estimated 50 percent “of the population were adherents, secret or open, of some spiritualist organisation or another, even though such individuals might also belong to Branches of the Christian church.”24 Occultism and human sacrifice rituals sometimes led to open executions of large groups of people by the government of Biafra, which stated it was strongly against such violent practices. Such public spectacles did not appear to dissuade many people, even well-educated city dwellers,

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from dabbling in the occult and often finding themselves implicated in criminal investigations.25 Still, by mid-1968, crime investigation was often not the same priority expected of a peacetime police force. Air raids by the Nigerian Air Force and the steady advance of federal troops meant that all hands—even those of the police—were required on deck in the war effort. Too often, in the middle of a police suspects parade or execution or court hearing, a federal forces’ air raid would interrupt proceedings. In such instances, police personnel, suspects, and government officials alike would “terminate all engagements and bolt for dear life.”26 This led to police time and resources being redirected from such traditional matters, at first only gradually but then steadily as Biafra’s war effort lost momentum. Indeed, some police commissioners, such as Eze in the Aba Province, were effectively assigned to assist with the Nigerian Army’s operations in the province; specifically, those of the 65th Brigade detached from the 12th Division of the Biafra Army and commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Sam Omerua.27 As a result, the police had to prioritize army requests, with the crime department of the Biafra Police Force, rather than the military police, who were often too engaged in actual fighting at the front, deploying detectives to help solve crime related to Biafran Army personnel.28 Political Intrigue and the Emergence of the Biafra Police Force The Biafra Police Force was formed in June 1967. Initially, the police headquarters was in Enugu. The police had a warm relationship with Ojukwu since his tenure as military governor of eastern Nigeria, when Commissioner of Police Okeke’s units were instructed to work cordially with the Nigerian Army officer commanding Enugu Garrison, Colonel David Ogunewe, who was an Igbo. On occasion, Ojukwu and his staff had stayed with Okeke at the police headquarters. Ojukwu had long wanted each region to have “autonomy” in “police and security” matters, and even before he floated this idea with Gowon during the Aburi Accords, he saw the police force as an institution under his control. As an example, senior postings in the police force were to be vetted and authorized through the Biafran Army.29 These close ties with the army meant that Okeke effectively served at Ojukwu’s behest after Biafra seceded. However, close ties should not be conflated with a warm working relationship between these men. Despite both Ogunewe and Okeke being Igbos, their loyalty was to the federal government, though Okeke certainly respected Ojukwu as Eastern Region governor.

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However, Okeke was not enthusiastic about secession and indeed had refused to support it in August 1966, when Ojukwu first floated the idea to the police and army in Enugu. Okeke only reluctantly went along with Ojukwu’s secession in 1967, when the pogroms in northern Nigeria occurred and the mood in Enugu was quite different. As Akpan observes, when Ojukwu presented an early draft of his secession speech to his circle of close advisers in August 1966, Okeke responded by telling the governor that “his [Okeke’s] loyalty lay with Lagos and he could not do anything without first consulting the Inspector General of Police [Kam Salem]” (71–72). Still, after secession the following year, the Igbos took a more unified posture against the federal military government in Lagos, and Okeke’s police force supported the Biafra cause. However, Ojukwu had a long memory. His relationship with Okeke was never quite the same, and all those who had openly advised him against secession when he first broached the idea in 1966 were not acknowledged. Okeke was excluded from Ojukwu’s inner circle and uninvited from key meetings. Such was the extent of this exclusion that if Okeke attended a meeting called by the governor, those in the know of the rift between the men viewed his presence as “quite unusual.”30 Okeke had it easy, though, because of his stature. The animosity against non-easterners or non-supporters of secession manifested in more violent ways elsewhere. Open demonstrations against Nigeria and harassment of many non-Igbo people had boiled over by the eve of secession, indeed as early as April 1967. This highly charged antigovernment and antinorthern mood was worsened by the rhetoric, lectures, and open exhortations of “extreme leftist” Major Alale, who “was given his assignment to organise the masses of the people of Eastern Nigeria to demonstrate and make demands.”31 Alale and others like him went around making inflammatory broadcasts on Radio Biafra, inciting “hatred and contempt for the Federal Government.”32 They even went to schools to persuade teachers to indoctrinate children with prejudice against Northerners. The police were also affected by the anti-northern sentiment. Because police units typically had personnel from all over the country, most Hausa and Yoruba personnel had already left the Biafra Police Force. However, with secession fever at an all-time high, all non-Igbo residents or those who could not speak Igbo, including police personnel, were targets of the secessionist hard-liners, now mobilized into large demonstrations. As Akpan writes, “Demonstrations were intensified. ‘Civil defenders’ brandishing weapons were menacing people, particularly those who could not speak Igbo. The activities of those people became so out of hand that they started beating up policemen. A young Ibibio man was shot dead in his house as he was having his meal.”33

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After Ojukwu announced secession in the early hours of 29 May 1967, there was an exodus of non-Igbo people from the East. This included police and military personnel whose positions in their units and postings had become untenable. These officers and soldiers could not serve Nigeria from within the Biafra Police Force or Biafra Armed Forces; they had to leave. Indeed, some, working in the Igbo heartland, might have had little choice in the matter.34 By October 1966, the removal of northern Nigerian police and army elements was complete. The army, which had significantly more northerners in its rank and file, was especially affected, although the police force was not left unscathed. In any event, what remained was no longer the NPF; its loyalties lay with Biafra—the new rebel republic. Police Uniforms and Weapons During the Early Civil War The police’s uniform during the civil war of Nigeria, both for Biafra and federal forces, was so peculiar that it deserves some further discussion. To begin with, it was quite usual for noncommissioned officers (NCOs) within the federal force’s ranks to wear a “semimilitarized” standard police uniform in some ways. First, British khaki battledress trousers and jungle boots were issued to existing Mobile Police (MOPOL) who joined the federal force’s ranks to bolster the still-mobilizing Nigerian Army in 1967. Despite now officially being soldiers, they still wore partial police outfits, such as the midnight-blue beret with a silver police badge, and served beside other members of their units who wore M1 or steel helmets copied from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Somewhat unusually, the same former police sometimes had helmets too, in the form of surplus British steel helmets unpainted except for a red band across them with POLICE in white on the front. Such helmets were not in any way modified to be more in line with army issue ones. Indeed, they were the very same helmets worn during “pre-war riot control, along with wicker shields and truncheons.”35 Some signature outfits of soldiers during the civil war were even more of a giveaway of their police backgrounds. Rather than the standard-issue, army-green khaki, some wore the police-issue grey-blue shirts with silver buttons and British-style red rank chevrons on both sleeves, with black leather belts—again issued by the police rather than the army—adorned with the traditional “silver” (stainless steel) police buckle.36 Even the police-turned-soldier-issued firearms were sometimes markedly different from those employed by “true” soldiers of the Nigerian Army in the same units. As an example, the NPF personnel deployed for army wartime duty typically were armed with either L2A3 sub-machine guns, which had

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limited range and were quite inaccurate except in close quarters. These were also carried by military police personnel and were ubiquitous within particular units, such as the 1st Division in Nsukka. Conversely, police integrated into the federal force tended to use the Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk I rifle, which the NPF had employed for quite some time before the outbreak of war. By contrast, the Nigerian Army soldiers carried and were trained to use a broader range of rifles and firearms not employed by the police. Chief examples included the Italian 7.62mm Baretta BM59 semiautomatic rifles, the FN FALs, the West German 7.62mm Heckler & Koch G3, and heavier guns such as the West German 7.62mm M3 machine gun (the recalibrated NATO version of the 7.92mm wartime German MG42).37 By the 1970s, however, Nigeria’s extensive arms importation, including the caches of semiautomatic and automatic rifles and ammunition, had a significant trickle-down effect for the NPF. Indeed, virtually all MOPOL on active duty by 1970 wielded automatic rifles—which the Biafran Army elite commandos would have considered an upgrade at any point in the war. The Midwest Police Force in 1967 During the civil war, the police essentially had to choose a side. The NPF remained in charge in all federal-held areas. The Midwest Police Force is said to have been established on 14 August 1967 by the head of the Midwest Region, Brigadier Victor Banjo, appointed by Governor Ojukwu, the head of the Biafra separatists. In his broadcast after the invasion of the Midwest in August 1967 by Biafra forces, Banjo proposed to form “a Mid-Western Nigerian Police Force, which will for the moment remain independent of the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Police Force, the Biafran Army or the Biafran Police Force.”38 His announcement was backed by the threat of force and was unconstitutional because the Biafra 101st Infantry Division was uninvited and unwanted by the perplexed Midwest Region inhabitants. Of the ten main districts in the region as of August 1967, only two could be classed as Ika-Igbo, or, loosely, Igbo speaking.39 It was not accurate to say that the Biafrans were liberating the Midwest because the Igbo-speaking areas of the region were firmly in the minority. Aside from the fact that Banjo did not have Governor Ojukwu’s authority to create a new Midwest Police Force, it was not needed, and Banjo’s declaration to that effect was somewhat premature. There was, after all, already a police force in the Midwest. However, Commissioner Joseph Adeola, the “Flying Policeman,” its leader, was not a Biafra supporter. Indeed, Adeola’s loyalty to the NPF rather than to Biafra would cost him his freedom.

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In August 1967, shortly after Banjo’s creation of a new Midwest Police Force, the governor summoned Adeola, as the existing Midwest police commissioner, along with Head of the Civil Service Joseph Imoukhuede to Enugu. The governor’s reason was to ensure that the existing Midwest police were not working with Banjo and to deny Adeola his federally appointed police command in the region. Consequently, shortly after the Biafra rebels “liberated” Benin City, in the Midwest Region, Adeola was detained in Enugu. This happened even as the search for Banjo, who was eventually found, went on.40 The Edo-speaking Adeola was later imprisoned by Biafra authorities.41 It is unlikely that Ojukwu would have trusted Adeola, a non-easterner, with a major security role such as police commissioner after his experience with Banjo. Indeed, other Edo-speaking senior government officials, such as Imokhuede and Olu Akpata, quickly fell out of Biafra’s favor. From a rebel perspective, Ojukwu was prudent to be wary of Adeola. Unlike his counterpart, the eastern commissioner of police and later inspectorgeneral of the Biafra Police Force, Okeke, Adeola was a demonstrated loyalist to the Nigerian federal military government. As an example, the Midwest police commissioner in May 1967 began compiling a dossier on Midwest Igbo-speaking personalities (Ika-Igbos) holding a series of meetings and paying nocturnal visits to the Biafra hierarchy at Enugu. Adeola’s intelligence department knew the facts of these treasonous meetings. And rather than waiting for the whole plot to emerge, he tried to expose it as it kept developing. The Midwest Police, on Adeola’s orders, began to feed the warnings and reports to the federal government offices in Benin City and Lagos. Adeola had the right idea regarding the Igbo plot to secede. But quite unfortunately for him, “many of those in authority were the very Ika-Igbos he was compiling intelligence reports on; whom he initially wrongfully believed still owed their allegiance to the Federal Military Government. This too was how he bought his ticket to detention in Biafra.”42 When Adeola got through to his counterpart, Okeke, to protest his being held without reason in Enugu, Okeke promptly “feigned surprise” about Adeola’s detention. Instead, “he blamed everything on the soldier boys,” a story repeated the next day, on 14 August 1967, by the Biafran assistant commissioner of police (Special Branch), Joe Obi, who came to visit Adeola.43 Even Obi, a good friend of Adeola, could only try to reassure the former commissioner but could do nothing to resolve his predicament. Indeed, it was the esteemed Igbo mathematics professor, Chike Obi, who revealed to Adeola and the small group with him—including Joseph Imokhuede, Olu Apkata, and Samuel Umweni—that they were brought to Enugu to be detained. This was when it dawned on Adeola and the other non-Igbos brought to Enugu by the Eastern government that no crime had been committed: they were merely viewed as threats to Biafra. And despite at least one more visit from Okeke

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himself, Adeola was never released and moved to prisons across Biafra over the course of the war. He was only liberated in 1970.44 Professionals such as Adeola in the police and armed forces in eastern Nigeria found themselves in a precarious position. Some, such as Major Fola Oyewole, who eventually fought on Biafra’s side, were persona non grata if they returned to the West. And yet, in fighting for Biafra, their loyalty was always questioned. However, deciding not to support the rebel forces while in such a sensitive position of police or military command immediately put such personnel at risk. It was a difficult position, indeed, to be in during the war.45 Those non-Igbo personnel who did have a choice of leaving Biafra and defecting to other regions of Nigeria, including Colonel R. F. Trimnel and Colonel Alphonsus Keshi, did precisely that.46 After Adeola’s “arrest,” Ojukwu intended to keep the Midwest Police separate from but on the same side as the Biafra Police Force, located in the East and committed to Ojukwu’s idea of Biafra as an independent republic. For both police forces, in the Midwest and East, their task was to support the war effort or otherwise to deal with incidents of petty crime and keep the peace in areas occupied by the Biafra rebels. In practice, the Midwest occupation did not last long, and Ojukwu did not need to worry about policing the region. Moreover, his Biafra Police Force soon had its own problems to worry about. Pathologies of Policing in Biafra For most of Biafra’s duration as a state, the police were involved in summary executions, crime, detentions without due process, and illegal use of their powers. In other words, there was deeply entrenched perversion of justice in Biafra, and the police were a part of it. One explanation for this extrajudicial use of police powers in Biafra was the government’s state of emergency argument. Indeed, Ojukwu’s response to a question about why some individuals were executed summarily for treason during the war, without the police investigations and the due process typically given death-sentence cases, is revealing of the injustice in Biafra during the war. In Ojukwu’s own words, “We were in an emergency situation during the war. During emergency, anything can happen.”47 This state of affairs and the policing mind-set that accompanied it was fraught. English Common Law, as practiced in courts and, in theory, enforced by the police, was not the only law in Nigeria during the civil war. Both sides practiced martial law, and it endured for a while afterward. The implications for policing were negative insofar as a state of emergency “operates so differently from the legal system that [it] is unrecognizable as

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law, or nearly so.”48 In Biafra, the Ojukwu’s “emergency situation” was used to justify martial law, which became the de facto law for most, if not all, of the war. Yes, Biafra still had functional courts, and yes, those courts were meant to be “independent.” However, because Biafra was effectively a military dictatorship, such matters were more theoretical than practical. The reality of the martial justice system was that Ojukwu established the Special Tribunal of Biafra, responsible for preserving order in the rebel republic, under emergency measures. Along with the special tribunal, the Law and Order (Maintenance) Edict of 1967 was proclaimed in the days after Biafra declared independence. The edict set a dangerous precedent that compromised the police role as unbiased and fair like that of the courts, insofar as it “gave Ojukwu wide authority to pursue internal enemies—both real and imagined—and established a bifurcation in the legal system between the ordinary civilian courts and the Special Tribunal.”49 Using the edict as supreme authority, Ojukwu signed detention warrants for suspected enemies of the state. What precisely enemies of the state entailed remained purposely vague throughout the war. The edict gave the police power to “make and unmake their pleasure.” Warrants were not required for searches, arrests, or confiscation of property. Some citizens who could afford it literally bought their way out of jail, paying the police bribes in excess of 500 Biafran pounds in some cases.50 Most inhabitants, however, were not so lucky with the police as a coercive appendage of Biafra State. Indeed, in the absence of a constitution, which Biafra never had, and with more pressing matters of survival at hand, the Law and Order (Maintenance) Edict of 1967 was the de facto guide to the government. This made for a grotesque interpretation and implementation of law. Civilian and military justice blurred, and, as the war worsened in rebel territory, became virtually indistinguishable. Civilian cases were referred to the Biafran Army, and Biafran Army cases were tried in regular courts. Due process was turned on its head; after all, police were inducted into the war effort, and the Biafran Army was on occasion used to resolve civilian disputes, which ideally should have been under the police jurisdiction.51 As Ojukwu put it, “anything can happen,” and the police, the courts, and the military did not always follow the legal protocols. Ironically, in a rebel state that put so much emphasis on the legality of secession, it was worrisome that the state’s institutions—the police, the courts, and the military—where that legality should be reliable in its strictest terms, did not respect it. The police arrested and detained people without due process. The Biafran Army was not exempt from police work —even though it never did this task in a sustained manner or particularly well as a result of its primary, wartime duties (not to mention its lack of

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training in policing). At the same time, and perhaps because of this mixing of police and military roles in wartime, “jurisdictional rules came to mean almost nothing in the climate of the war”; this was a climate in which “soldiers appeared before civilian courts, and resolutely civilian matters like divorce or probate were brought before tribunals. Any jurisdictional port would do in a storm.”52 Even robbery and petty crime, which normally should fall into civilian courts, were brought to the tribunals or in some cases taken to the Biafran Army to resolve.53 And in this legally dubious climate, police powers seemed to be a law unto themselves. Furthermore, “legal niceties like habeas corpus, the right to legal counsel, and various rules of evidence were suspended indefinitely.”54 You were guilty of an offense if the police said you were—or it certainly seemed that way because the legal process to secure bail—or indeed to secure release from detention unless there were legal grounds for arrest—had eroded. As Onwuejeogwu points out in his seminal sociological study of the Biafran Army, “the theoretically clear dichotomy of military– civil law was not maintained in practice.”55 Paranoia, as a Strong Wartime Sentiment, Also Undermined the Rule of Law There was paranoia in the rebel state about treasonous conduct and traitors, even when no evidence was provided and no police investigation was conducted to try to obtain said evidence. The paranoia about treason, in particular, was damaging to whatever role the police force was playing because cases in that category tended to fall squarely within the interests of the Biafran Army and its general staff. As Daly writes, “Ojukwu and his circle of advisors were paranoid about spies, saboteurs, and the allegiances of Biafra’s own citizens. Paranoia took many forms, from concerns about Nigerian spies to fears of palace coups and sabotage from within” (71). The word saboteur, in particular, was often mentioned in the account of Ojukwu’s chief of staff, Madiebo, in his assessment of Ojukwu’s concerns about trust. The police quickly emerged as an instrument of “the law” for Ojukwu’s repressive attitude toward those he considered a threat from within Biafra. Specifically, the police were “given firm instructions to be on the look-out and deal very sternly with any person or persons attempting actions, or indulging in rumours, capable of causing fear and panic, and thereby threatening law and order.”56 In this sense, Ojukwu aligned the traditional police role of enforcing the law with his own concerns about saboteurs and traitors. Biafra was becoming a police state and a dictatorship at that. Ojukwu became known as a man whose long speeches were

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“seasoned . . . with much blackmail and intimidation.” Little wonder, then, that such attitudes were also identifiable in the police force and the rest of Biafra’s security apparatus. Lack of Trust in the Police Undermined Its Authority The paranoia during the war also appeared in legal processes, such as proceedings in the courts. Indeed, the police role and due process were shaped more by the war than by the civil society they were meant to protect. Judges and lawyers, trained legal experts, were all too aware due process and justice were being set aside to obtain police results, which was worrisome. Ojukwu urged an “immediate necessity . . . to look for the enemies in our midst, saboteurs, traitors and agents of the enemy.” Ironically, in taking this stance, Ojukwu seemed to undermine the very security apparatus he charged to root out his enemies and “had a few uncomplimentary words for members of the public services, with obvious insinuations for the police.”57 Later, beyond merely insinuating, Ojukwu also “openly attacked” the Biafra Police Force; he accused the institution of being corrupt, of “eating bribes,” and of being as bad as, or even worse than, the NPF, which it should have left behind according to the governor.58 Ojukwu’s view of the police was a love-hate relationship. To be sure, the police were supportive of Ojukwu’s government, and no one uncovered an institution-wide plot to derail the rebellion. Senior police officers such as Superintendent Madiebo and his boss, Okeke, consistently demonstrated support of Ojukwu’s doomed military campaign. However, police personnel who were even suspected of plotting against Biafra were detained. As an example, Deputy Commissioner of Police Mike Ibekwe, an Igbo who obeyed Ojukwu’s orders (even giving up his own brother, the well-known Nigerian lawyer Dan Ibekwe, for detention), was himself jailed early in the war.59 Likewise, two former chief superintendents of police in Lagos before the war, Mr. Itu and Clement Ikpo, returned to Biafra but were undecided about committing to the Biafra Police Force. Ikpo was jailed under harsh conditions for fifteen months. Itu was held in custody at the Aba and Ntueke prisons until the war ended in 1970. Female police officers were viewed as no less of a threat to the state; they were not exempt from suspicion. Calabar-born Efa Ediae, who held both the distinction of being the most senior Biafran female police officer and the most senior police officer across the federation by the outbreak of war, was thrown into jail while trying to escape from Biafra. She was only released when the war ended.60 Yet, if Ojukwu displayed such broad mistrust of senior Biafran Police Officers and indeed the police force at large, he was not the only one.61

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Over the course of the war, the Biafra Police Force was increasingly sidelined by the army, which in some cases was even hostile toward the institution because soldiers viewed the latter as usurping funding and resources better redirected to the war effort.62 There was growing contempt for the police in eastern Nigeria during the war, as evidenced by an escalation in crime. And even the “intellectuals and professionals” who had won Ojukwu’s confidence and on whom he increasingly leaned “exhibited open contempt and undisguised hostility” and “saw scarcely any good in the existing order of institutions of public administration—the civil service, the police, the judiciary—which they considered as either bad in themselves or badly organised and manned.”63 Perhaps part of the issue here was that Ojukwu, in being so openly critical of the police, undermined their authority and diminished the people’s confidence in an institution already compromised by the war’s impact. In one instance, a senior police officer was openly humiliated and discharged.64 Intentionally or otherwise, Ojukwu also undermined the police in other ways. An example of this was his decision, in October 1969, to form a “third force” in addition to the army and police. This force was to be led by a senior MOPOL commander. However, the inspector-general of police was neither appraised of the governor’s plans nor informed of Ojukwu’s selection, from the police mobile branch, of the third-force commander. Indeed, Ojukwu appeared to make a point of keeping the whole affair secret from the police. The police mobile commander in question, a senior police officer, was summoned to the State House [Governor’s official residence], given instructions and warned not to inform the Inspector General of Police about it, since the officer was not, henceforth, to work under him, but to be directly responsible to the Governor himself. The embarrassed police officer did not know what to do, and did his duty—in spite of the Governor’s instructions to the contrary—to his professional boss by telling him what the Governor had done. . . . Neither the police nor the armed forces were in favour, but were powerless to do anything. The very idea of establishing this third force meant that the Governor had lost confidence in them [the police and armed forces]. . . . Those were the types of tensions and the kinds of measures existing in Biafra when it collapsed.65

Another example of how the police were undermined in Biafra is evidenced in Ojukwu’s infamous The Ahiara Declaration: The Principles of the Biafran Revolution. This manifesto document, among other things, aimed to exhort the virtues of patriotism and clarify what Biafrans had to do—what they must sacrifice—as part of their patriotic duty as citizens.66 On page 29 of the document, it was written that “so often people complain that they have been ill-treated by the police or some other public servant. But the truth very often is that we allow ourselves to be bullied because we are not man enough to demand and stand up for our rights. And

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fellow citizens around do not assist us when we do demand our rights.”67 This section of the Ahiara Declaration was widely abused by easterners who resisted police authority and refused to be “bullied” when facing arrest by the police, openly citing page 29 of the Ahiara manifesto. Poor Policing, Rampant Criminality, and Permissive Court Processes In addition to wartime policing finding few admirers across Biafra, people were concerned that the police force was so distracted with the war effort that it was poor at its core duties of investigation, evidence gathering, law enforcement, and support of the courts in both civil and criminal cases. Indeed, the Biafran chief justice, Louis Mbanefo, was uncomfortable with the police handling of some cases, with the resulting possibility of miscarriage of justice and the intertwining of the military and civil functions in the courts.68 Mbanefo was not the only one concerned. The Biafran attorney general also had to comment personally in some instances where both civil and criminal cases that ordinarily should not have collapsed in court often did so because of police incompetence.69 In one instance, “two men stood accused of subverting Biafra’s economy for purchasing a large bag of salt above the government control price. The special tribunal acquitted the defendants on a technicality—it could not be confirmed that the bag reading ‘British Salt—40 lbs.’ indeed contained salt because the police had not taken a sample of its contents.”70 In another case, concerning the issue of forged passes, the special tribunal ruled that “the police failed to investigate thoroughly the origin of the pass so as to disprove the claim of the accused that the pass is a genuine one.”71 This case, that of the State v. Benson Isaac Jaja, April 10, 1969, is pertinent here because it demonstrates the permissiveness of Biafran courts around the issue of forgery by the war’s end.72 As Daly writes, “Effectively the ruling suggested that a document must be assumed to be genuine until it was conclusively proven otherwise” (134). The precedent set by the courts in this case would ordinarily have been dangerous. However, a breakdown in communications between courts, other pressing wartime administrative issues, and the fact that the war was entering its closing stages all meant that any hope of a legal system of just precedents being established in Biafra was largely illusory by mid-1969. Aside from instances of police incompetence during the war and the fact that cases such as State v. Benson Isaac Jaja were not lent appropriate government resources, the courts and special tribunals continued to function as best as they could despite the fighting. However, whether they were effective in their processes, without the vital organ of the police force to

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support them wholly, is certainly debatable. After all, police investigations were frequently interrupted by the war—the threat of airstrikes; advancing federal troops; redeployed Biafran Army forces conscripting police, which interrupted police investigations; and orders from the Biafran Army to release detained soldiers needed at the war front. The list goes on. For such reasons, police crime scenes were either compromised or in some instances could not even be visited at all. Similarly, “alibis could not be confirmed because witnesses went missing or could not travel to a court to testify. Bailiffs found it increasingly difficult to find people in order to arrest them or to serve them with notices.”73 Police sent to arrest suspects or collect witnesses were similarly unable to do their job. Sometimes, people changed their identities altogether. And as the war raged on and recordkeeping became increasingly patchy, impersonation was not just easier but necessary. Ironically, even early in the war, when the identity forgery issue was not supposed to be so bad, some Biafran policemen forged their diplomas, an entry requirement.74 This meant that miscreants found their way into the police force undetected, which further damaged its operation. Not even the police force itself was immune to identity theft and misrepresentation in some form.75 Even when suspects and witnesses retained their original identities, getting hold of them was hard enough. Hauling them to the courthouse to testify or answer for their alleged crimes was a different matter altogether. In one instance, a police officer was dispatched on a high-risk journey to an area on the war front to bring back three witnesses. Suffice to say the adventure did not end well, with that area being heavily shelled and under attack by federal forces. The officer “returned shaken and empty-handed—all three [witnesses] had been killed since the beginning of the trial.”76 In another instance, a court case ended prematurely because the defendant, Stephen Mbuko, was killed by an air raid that occurred while his trial was taking place.77 The bombing issue is pertinent here because “courtrooms” were often improvised in town squares, village clearings, and classrooms. Furthermore, air raids and artillery fire tended to interrupt proceedings. Even court officials could not always attend court, much less complete all the administrative tasks linked to each case, because of the constant risk of injury or death as federal troops moved farther into the Biafran heartland. A key point to take away from these challenges to law enforcement and the rule of law in wartime Biafra was that this was not a police problem per se. It was much bigger than that, a reflection of what happens when government collapses and institutions that should be stable become malleable. With Biafra’s failure to keep the contiguity of its borders, with those borders constantly changing and constricting, and with the war effort consuming the time and priorities of Biafra’s entire security infrastructure, the “police force” as an institution effectively ceased to exist.

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Time and again, vigilantism, militarism, crime, and Biafran Army interference in civilian affairs came to fill the space evacuated by the police. The police tried to keep the peace, but there was a demonstrable lack of respect for the institution. As an example, there were violent clashes between the police and rogue militias in full public view. In one noteworthy instance, a civilian militia showed utter contempt for police requests that the militia desist from extortion. Indeed, quite embarrassingly, the militia arrested the police rather than the other way around.78 Such incidents were a consequence of the rapid decline of the Biafra Police Force, complete even before the war reached its midway point. In the haphazard law enforcement environment that emerged from and was shaped by the crucible of war between 1967 and 1970, “civil defenders blurred into guerrilla ‘freedom fighters,’ police blurred into soldiers. And with a baton and a loud voice, almost anyone could claim the mantle of authority.”79 However, as it turns out, batons were not the main threat in Biafra; the spread of firearms throughout rebel territory changed that, with ramifications for policing. The Security Dilemma: Firearms and Violent Crime in Biafra Before the war, police forces in Nigeria tended to employ batons, with special units using sidearms and rifles. A culture of few firearms had existed because the crime rate was low and crime was largely nonviolent in the decade leading into independence. The 1958 General Report and Survey on the Nigeria Police Force, for instance, notes that the main “problems affecting the Force” were not crime or equipment but organizational challenges. The baton was viewed as an adequate tool for law enforcement, and little more was said of this matter.80 However, between 1967 and 1970, violent crime surged, driven by the ubiquity of firearms of all calibers. These firearms “passed fluidly back and forth between soldiers, civilians and those who fell somewhere on the spectrum in-between.”81 In prewar Nigeria, there was violence, of course; murders and manslaughter were never entirely absent from the fabric of society, even during the colonial era.82 However, the most common weapons—we could perhaps even refer to them as tools instead—were agricultural and farm hardware. Hoes, machetes, sticks. Crimes committed with Dane guns, mostly manufactured and employed by hunter communities, were not as common as one might imagine with groups of people bearing “firearms.” Poisons also featured in murder crimes; these tended to be associated with women.83 As hostilities escalated during the war, however, the fabric of society in eastern Nigeria gradually collapsed. Crimes became more violent, with

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guns as the weapons of choice. The military-grade sidearms and rifles that gradually circulated in society among people struggling to stay alive, without a robust police presence to maintain law and order, changed for the worse the way civilians interacted. For that matter, it also changed the way in which the police and military interacted with civilians. The CID, Special Branch, Military Police, soldiers, officers, and some ordinary police used firearms—mostly rifles or sidearms. Few were fortunate enough to be issued both. Whereas firearms did not necessarily make Biafrans any more violent than other Nigerians, their circulation in society had a number of adverse effects. First, firearms made harassment easier; that is, they influenced the calculus of coercion and widened the control gap between perpetrator and victim. Second, firearms made theft easier. This meant criminality was now self-sustainable, particularly for those who had access to firearms. Where armed gangs formed, this effect was multiplied. Finally, more firearms meant crimes committed by armed individuals or gangs were more likely to end in death or serious injury. That is, crime became more violent overall. Indeed, one court ruling in 1967 was explicit in its view of the relationship between the presence and use of firearms and the violent nature of the crimes that emerged in society.84 Why did Biafran society become so violent at that time? As guns became more common, more people tried to acquire them because if you had some form of protection—say, a gun—you stood a better chance of defending yourself when gun-toting criminals or a drunk military unit intent on blood showed up at your doorstep. If this sounds a bit like the “security dilemma” debate argued for decades by neorealists, there certainly are comparisons. In his classic text The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict, Barry R. Posen discusses the “special conditions” that emerge when social order breaks down, the state loses its monopoly on the use of force, and “proximate groups of people suddenly find themselves newly responsible for their own security” (27). The situation in Biafra was consistent with these “special conditions.” According to Posen, “a group suddenly compelled to provide its own protection must ask the following questions about any neighbouring group: Is it a threat? How much of a threat? Will the threat grow or diminish over time? Is there anything that must be done immediately?” (27). These are questions many Biafrans asked themselves more often between 1967 and 1970 as things got worse. As civil society collapsed, civilians, the police, and soldiers alike—each now in charge of its own security and fearful they might be unable to secure themselves—got desperate. As one interviewee pointed out, [It was] better to arm yourself with a gun, where possible. Just to be sure. Your neighbour had a gun, and so many people did, it only wanted to

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With such a state of affairs, it was difficult for the police force and the army to exercise their right to a monopoly on the use of force. After all, the state had other problems than the security of a single individual or family. Violent crime, extrajudicial police killings, and violent military interventions in the civilian arena all increased. The civil war of Nigeria brought out the very worst in civilians, the police, and military personnel. A Dark Chapter in Nigeria’s History Eastern Nigeria during the civil war saw a dark chapter for policing in particular and for the country’s history in general. There was not always anarchy; the Biafran state had a semblance of law and order during periods of its existence, especially in its capital. Yet, policing during those periods and in those locations was not normal. On the contrary, generally speaking, the police, policing, criminal justice, and rule of law in eastern Nigeria during the civil war could hardly be framed within the norms of those institutions. There were several reasons for such dysfunction. First, the Biafran government quickly lost its monopoly on the use of force. Second, the Biafra Police Force seldom functioned independently of the army and always danced to the latter’s tune. Third, courts often could not enforce verdicts. Fourth, crime and disorder increased over the course of the war, and the police force was in no position to make gains in its primary objective of serving the public trust. Worse, these shortcomings were common knowledge; everyone could see them, and in the words of Chinua Achebe, the center—represented here by Ojukwu’s administration—failed to hold. Civilians living in Biafra could no longer depend on the government and its institutions for security. Indeed, as Ojukwu’s state gradually collapsed, the government lost its capacity for law enforcement because of more pressing wartime matters. Now, to understand the implications of this collapse, let us refer back to Posen’s views on the “ethnic security dilemma” that emerges in a war context: as society collapses, government abdicates its security responsibility, and people find themselves in charge of their own security. Such groups of people, Posen argues, may take drastic measures to protect themselves.86

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It was to be expected as the social fabric in Biafra between 1967 and 1970 devolved and starving, scared, and desperate people—mainly Igbos in the East of Nigeria—faced the prospect of dealing with their own security. In response, with the collapse of governance and policing, these wartime victims tried securing their lives and livelihoods and often did so in unlawful ways. Use of unlicensed and undocumented firearms, along with the emergence of an armed robbery culture in the postwar period, were among such unlawful manifestations of the civil war’s consequences on society. By the 1970s, the ubiquity of firearms led to “a criminological problem that would become the bane of postwar Nigeria—armed robbery.”87 With civilians, ex-soldiers, and the police all having unlicensed and hence unlawful firearms not entered into the postwar disarmament and demobilization scheme by Gowon’s government, armed robberies increased. By the time the war ended, violent crime had also turned into open shootouts between criminal gangs and the police.88 Armed gangs wielding sidearms, rifles, and assault rifles forced the police to adopt shoot-to-kill policies when faced with armed robberies in progress or when engaging getaway suspects. This violent postwar climate meant that civilians effectively “imitated the protocols of military conflict—which was all around them—and in how they treated one another.”89 Chapter 12 explores the implications of this state of affairs for policing in postwar Nigeria, with its dysfunctional elements under military rule. Notes 1. See, as examples, Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; Njokwu, Tragedy Without Heroes; Alabi-Isama, The Tragedy of Victory; Obasanjo, My Command; Obasanjo, Nzeogwu; Achebe, There Was a Country; Ademoyega, Why We Struck; Uwechue, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War; Akpan, The Struggle for Secession; Daly, A History of the Republic of Biafra. 2. Arase, “Security in Post-Military Nigeria.” 3. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence. 4. Ibid. 5. Uwechue, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War. 6. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence. 7. Uwechue, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War, 101–102. 8. Achebe, There Was a Country, 71. 9. Ibid. 10. Akpan, The Struggle for Secession, 38. 11. Ibid., 37. 12. Ibid. 13. Uwechue, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War. 14. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence, 116. 15. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 212. 16. Uweuche, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War, 102.

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17. Ibid., 103. 18. Uweuche, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War. 19. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 96–97. 20. Jowett, Modern African Wars, 43. 21. Venter, Biafra’s War, 1967–1970, 206. 22. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 212. 23. Gbulie, The Fall of Biafra. 24. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 196. 25. Gbulie, The Fall of Biafra. 26. Ibid. 27. The General Officer Commanding (GOC) 12 Division, in the later part of the war, was Brigadier Eze. Both Brigadier Eze and Division’s Principal Staff Officer (PSO-G) Lieutenant Colonel Ogbo Oji, in charge of operations, were relieved of duty in December 1969. Gbulie, Fall of Biafra. 28. Ibid. 29. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 33, 38. 30. Ibid., 198. 31. Alale was not a regularly commissioned officer and his rank of major in the Biafran Army was honorary rather than substantive. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution, 145. 32. Ibid. 33. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 77. 34. Agwunobi, interviews with author. 35. Jowett, Modern African Wars, 43. 36. This was later downgraded to a cheaper corrodible metal alloy, as the Nigeria Police Force expanded. Jowett, Modern African Wars, 43. 37. Ibid., 43–44. 38. Achebe, There Was a Country, 264. 39. The ten main districts in the Midwest Region of Nigeria were, as follows: Aboh, Afenmai, Akoko-Edo, Asaba, Benin, Ishan, Isoko, Urhobo, Warri, and Western Ijaw. Of these, just one—Asaba—could be categorized as “Igbo speaking.” The Aboh District is only loosely an expression of an Igbo-speaking people, as they are more accurately described as Ukwani. Indeed, such points were vital to the position adopted by the Midwest Region military governor, Lieutenant-Colonel David Akpode Ejoor, at the Aburi Accords. 40. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 101–102. 41. Umweni, 888 Days in Biafra, 7. 42. Ibid., 7. 43. Ibid., 18–19. 44. Ibid., 20. 45. See Oyewole, Reluctant Rebel. 46. Umweni, 888 Days in Biafra, 22. 47. Akingbade, Ilaro, 84. 48. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 68. 49. Ibid. 50. Umweni, 888 Days in Biafra, 195. 51. Onwuejeogwu, A Study in Military Sociology. 52. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 70–71. 53. Onwuejeogwu, Study in Military Sociology. 54. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 68. 55. Onwuejeogwu, Study in Military Sociology, 98.

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56. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 155, 198. 57. Ibid., 113. 58. Ibid., 118, 123. 59. Umweni, 888 Days in Biafra, 194–195. 60. Ibid., 195, 207. 61. That being said, even lower-ranked non-Igbo police personnel were not spared of Ojukwu’s spies’ detention. A case in point is one Police Corporal Emmanuel Okufacho—a midwesterner of Urhobo ancestry detained at the Aba prison, Owerri prison, Aba prison (again), and then Ntueke prison. Umweni, 888 Days in Biafra, 210. 62. Madiebo, Nigerian Revolution. 63. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 117. 64. Ibid., 131. 65. Ibid., 131–132. 66. Achebe, There Was a Country, 148. 67. Akpan, Struggle for Secession, 204. 68. Ibid. 69. NNAE MINJUST 115/1/1, Attorney-General/Commissioner for Justice. 70. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 71–72. 71. Forgery became a prominent crime across war-torn eastern Nigeria because most people wanted to avoid conscription or get by police and army roadblocks quicker. Forged passes and fake identities were a way to do so illegally. NNAE MINJUST 117/1/8, no. ST/16c/69. 72. Ibid. 73. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 73. 74. Biafra Sun, June 17, 1967, 4. 75. Ibid. 76. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 73. 77. NNAE MINJUST 116/1/3, in the Special Tribunal. 78. NWM Uncatalogued Collection, Statement of C. J. Okpara. 79. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 119. 80. Nigeria Police Force, General Report and Survey of the Nigeria Police Force for the Year 1958. 81. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 94. 82. Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria. 83. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 94. 84. Enugu State High Court, Uncatalogued Collection P/28.c/1967. 85. Agwunobi, interviews with author. 86. Posen, “Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict.” 87. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 79. 88. Agwunobi, interviews with author. 89. Daly, History of the Republic of Biafra, 79.

12 Cops, Robbers, and Firing Squads During Military Rule

Armed robbery worsened over the course of the civil war and became a Nigerian phenomenon right after the civil war. This phenomenon was primarily driven by a postconflict setting where an arms race between federal forces and Biafra rebels led to thousands of sidearms, rifles, and magazine rifles remaining unaccounted for after the war.1 This is an enduring challenge in postconflict settings, as other cases in Africa (such as in Liberia and Sierra Leone) indicate. Disarmament and reorientation of former wartime combatants are seldom as comprehensive as the government would like, and violent crime—driven by firearms and disenfranchised ex-fighters—often emerges as a post–civil war issue. By the time the civil war in Nigeria ended in 1970, weapons had remained widely accessible. Not all ex-fighters surrendered their weapons, and many traded them on the black market. This gave rise to criminal gangs with firearms who could not only challenge police authority but in many instances dominated local shootouts. The practice of armed robbery became so rampant that by 1970, the ills of war seemed to be replaced by the constant threat of armed robbery. And “since the 1970s,” the threat underpinned [a] most feared and high-profile genre of a crime surge that seemed all but impervious to remedies. Organized into aggressive syndicates stealing on an industrial scale, robbers grew so numerous and brazen that they plundered the personal home of the Vice President [Alex Ekwueme] in 1983; another band raided currency exchange offices at the Lagos airport in 1993. For everyday citizens, the terror of home invasion, often accompanied by rape or gratuitous murder, horribly taxed material and psychological resources.2

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Armed crime was already high during the civil war, when people had guns and many used them to threaten, harass, kill, and steal. However, by the end of the war, violent crime was a more problematic social phenomenon. On March 28, 1970, the Nigerian Tribune voiced a need for public authorities to take adequate measures to “save us [Nigerians] from the rule of hoodlums.”3 Under Yakubu “Jack” Gowon, a determined federal military government promptly aimed to deter current and would-be armed robbers by decreeing the death penalty for armed robbery in 1970. Decree No. 47 of 1970 legalized the public execution of armed robbers. And the Express “heralded it as a momentous decision.”4 Evaluating Firing Squad Decree Effectiveness The celebrations did not seem to consider that the numbers for robbery cases reported to the police did not necessarily show a decline. If anything, the correlation between introducing the death penalty and the reduction of violent armed robbery is unclear. In Lagos, where crime was highest and where the death penalty was first applied in 1971, robberies increased from 81 in 1970 to 114 in 1971. Murder counts were relatively low compared with armed robbery cases. However, many of the deaths from 1966 and 1967 were not regarded as murders, even though, strictly speaking, they were. As an example, in 1966, two separate coups d’état, in January and July that year, led to dozens of deaths of military and police personnel as well as politicians and civilians.5 And then there were the pogroms, where thousands and potentially tens of thousands of Igbos were also killed.6 However, even though such murders were “unlawful homicides,” ethnically and politically motivated, they were not classed as murders by the police, “overshadowed” by the massive casualties and the dark political cloud that hung over Nigeria in 1966 and 1967.7 It is just as difficult to establish a clear trend in the crime of armed robbery in those years. Yes, marked reductions were reported to the police in 1972 (when fifty cases were recorded) and in 1973 (when thirty-three cases were recorded). However, between 1974 and 1979, the figure again rose considerably. The recorded cases for 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1977 were 144, 343, 656, and 1,051 respectively.8 As the data indicate (see Figure 12.1 for further cases until the end of military rule), armed robbery cases increased more than twelvefold between 1970 and 1978, but, over the next decade mostly declined.9 Beyond 1987, no clear pattern in armed robbery incidents could be established, up until the end of military rule, although overall there were more robberies when firing squads were active compared with when the

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relevant military decrees were abrogated. This casts doubt on the effectiveness of firing squads as a deterrence to robbery. Regarding murders as another category of violent crime represented in the figures, however, there is an identifiable increase in numbers between 1970 and 1978 and then a consistent decline between 1981 and 1989—virtually throughout the 1980s. Given these data, the second half of the 1970s provided perhaps the most useful pattern regarding armed robbery reports to the police, though it failed to indicate a decline in this category of crime. As the years passed, Decree No. 47 was viewed as draconian and undemocratic and revoked by the civilian government of Shehu Shagari in 1979.10 This reprieve lasted until 1983, when the democratic government of Shagari was toppled in a military coup d’état. $

$ The Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act) of 1984

In 1983, General Muhammadu Buhari seized power in a military coup d’état, and his government reinstated the death sentence for armed robbery.11 The decree was to serve as a stern deterrent. Additionally, Buhari’s dictatorship,

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using the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions) Act of 1984, aimed to make armed robbery a dangerous occupation. The act was one of a number of draconian measures introduced by Buhari’s strict and disciplinarian regime. Not all of Buhari’s military decrees were well received, although all were implemented, often with force, by the police. Indeed, some, such as the highly controversial Decree No. 4, left a stain on his legacy or, depending on who you speak to, underpinned his reputation as a strict authoritarian.12 Nevertheless, the act was widely embraced by a Nigerian population in the grip of an armed robbery epidemic. The act was meant to make “comprehensive provisions for matters relating to armed robbery,” and a number of its points are pertinent here.13 The first of these is the punishment for robbery. Now, there was a critical distinction between ordinary robbery, which did not employ firearms, and robbery in which the offender “is armed with any firearms or any offensive weapon or is in company with any person so armed.”14 In the former kind of robbery, the offender “upon trial and conviction under this Act, [shall] be sentenced to imprisonment for not less than 21 years.” This meant that regardless of what was stolen, or the context of that theft, more than two decades of hard labor was the penalty by law for unarmed robbery. By contrast, if the robber employed a firearm or offensive weapon in the crime, or if “at or immediately before or immediately after the time of the robbery the said offender wounds or uses any personal violence to any person,” then the offender received the death penalty. As the decree stated, “The sentence of death imposed under this section may be executed by hanging the offender by the neck till he be dead or by causing such offender to suffer death by firing squad as the Governor may direct.”15 The Buhari regime had made public firing squads legal, and when death sentences were given to notorious criminals, military governors of the respective states would often opt for death by open police and military firing squad. This macabre spectacle was no doubt meant to send a stern message to the thousands watching about the risk of engaging in armed robbery. Some executions were conducted en masse. For example, on 22 June 1995, forty-three armed robbers were lined up against a wall, tied to drums, and shot to death by a firing squad at Kirikiri prison, Lagos. One thousand people watched the execution, at a time when violent crime in Nigeria had escalated to “crisis proportions.”16 Seizing on the public attitudes toward the threat armed robbers posed, the military government of Sani Abacha employed the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act) of 1984 as a “legal” pathway to kill convicted robbers by the dozen. As the Los Angeles Times described this execution, so noteworthy because of the unusually high number of convicts killed at once, “Soldiers dressed in camouflage and with black shoe polish on their faces fired

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semi-automatic weapons to execute the convicts who were tied to stakes in three groups of 12 and one of seven. The executions, which lasted 90 minutes, were witnessed by three doctors, who certified the deaths, an Irish Roman Catholic priest, and a Muslim imam.”17 This was the largest execution carried out under the act and indeed remains the largest mass execution in Nigeria’s history. And there could have been even more prisoners killed that day if Controller of Prisons C. O. Odikpo had not stepped in to say that ten of those sentenced to die by firing squad on that day had been granted stays of execution.18 Whereas firing squads became the preferred response to those convicted of armed robbery, the act stipulated several other harsh sentences. For example, the illegal possession of firearms carried a sentence “of twenty thousand naira or to imprisonment for a period of not less than ten years, or to both.”19 Likewise, there were extremely harsh sentences for aiding and abetting robbery or armed robbery, failing to report armed robbers to the police, keeping weapons associated with a robbery (even if said weapons were not firearms), and/or conspiring with or sheltering those who committed robbery and armed robbery.20 Finally, the act contained the broad phrase “offensive weapon,” effectively any item that could cause injury, including “an air gun, air pistol, bow and arrow, spear, cutlass, matchet [machete], dagger, cudgel, or any piece of wood, metal, glass or stone capable of being used as an offensive weapon.”21 The Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act) of 1984 was not the first law that promulgated the death penalty for the offense of armed robbery in Nigeria. This distinction goes to the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions) Decree 47 of 1970. When Obasanjo handed over military power to Shagari in 1979, Shagari’s civilian government promptly abrogated Decree 47. It was reintroduced in 1984 by the strictly authoritarian Buhari-Idiagbon regime as the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act) of 1984. In 1986, it was amended as Decree 21 of 1986. The same regime, in 1990, changed it to the Armed Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act) Cap 398 of the Laws of Federation 1990.22 The Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act) of 1984 “abrogated the right of appeal that was guaranteed under the 1979 [civilian] constitution. Thus, unless the Supreme Military Council, the highest ruling military organ in Nigeria during the military administrations of Generals Buhari and Idiagbon, in performance of its restricted appellate functions confirmed, reduced or commuted sentences, no other body was empowered to do so.”23 The Babangida military regime somewhat softened the draconian stance of its predecessor by announcing its human rights policy and establishing the Aguda and Bello judicial tribunals “to review cases of persons convicted by some of the special Military Tribunals.” And then in 1986, the

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regime promulgated Decree No. 21, which established substantive appeal tribunals for robbery cases.24 By the standards of the day, the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act) of 1984 was a draconian piece of law. Even in colonial Nigeria, the police did not take such a tough stance on robbery and armed robbery. For example, when in 1942 in Badagry eighteen men were implicated in crimes ranging from robbery to burglary, thirteen were given sentences between one and eight years each at the assizes. The other five were convicted by the acting divisional officer investigating the case, and he sentenced these to a year each in prison.25 This is a far cry from the significantly harsher sentences robbers in Nigeria under military rule were handed. Moreover, in the colonial assizes, in other instances of more serious crimes, it was not unusual and indeed was expected, except in exceptional cases, that even a murder verdict that resulted in a sentence of death by hanging would often come with a “recommendation to mercy.”26 Although the counterargument would be that colonial Nigeria neither had the extent of crime the subsequent military rulers of Nigeria rulers had to deal with, neither did the country before the 1960s have to contend with armed robbery that involved firearms as a widespread threat to stable peace. Indeed, even by the late 1940s and into the 1950s, the main armed robbery cases the colonial assizes had to contend with almost always involved sharp or blunt instruments.27 Some of these ended up in murder, certainly, but the intimacy of such crimes often meant that victims were known to perpetrators, that such crimes were easier to solve, and that such armed robberies cases were fewer and further between. Indeed, of the fifty-nine murder-related executions in the Lagos prisons between 1934 and 1954, only a small fraction involved armed robbery crimes. Moreover, except where ex- or serving soldiers were involved, firearms were not identified as a murder weapon. Most of the emerging murders that led to executions involved physical fights, which eventually may include armed scuffles, between two people who knew each other. Accusations of witchcraft, use of poison, and other local criminal acts were also considerably more common than armed robberies of any kind. This remained the case for most of colonial rule.28 Moreover, despite a lower number of crimes and a smaller population to police in a country whose numbers were rising rapidly each decade, the colonial authorities had their hands full, and “the fight against criminality was a major preoccupation of the colonial government” in the period between 1906 and 1960.29 And because the civil war and poor economy drastically increased the incidence of violent crime, the inexperienced federal military government turned to draconian decrees to deter criminality, violent crime, and in particular armed robbery.

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It might seem as though, with the change from colonial rule, something changed in the social fabric that led to a drastic shift in the calculus of violent crime. And indeed, violent crime and armed robbery in postcolonial Nigeria “assumed wider and fearful dimensions both in its manifestations and in the official and popular responses to it than could ever have been imagined in the colonial period.”30 Attitudes Toward Murder and Armed Robbery in Nigerian Culture However, the fact that the federal military government adopted executions in response to armed robbery, does not mean the practice itself was previously alien to law and order in Nigeria. On the contrary, the death penalty in response to armed robbery was “deeply rooted in Nigerian culture” even before colonial rule, even when firearms were not the main cause of death or injury during robbery.31 The colonialists abrogated many of these excessively violent practices by indigenous Nigerian authorities; but nevertheless, robbery was a vice for which many precolonial societies had zero tolerance. As an example, the Egba Kingdom in the nineteenth century “would either kill or drive robbers out of the community.”32 Indeed, “what the Yoruba call idigun jale, literally meaning ‘stealing in war-like fashion’ is used to describe an act of stealing in which any dangerous weapon—even a razor blade—was used.”33 Whereas the Egba were in western Nigeria, other regions of the country, and the cultures present there, had similar attitudes to murder. As acclaimed Nigerian writer Elechi Amadi notes on this point, The Kanuri and Edo decapitated murderers, the Abuan and Bassa forced them to commit suicide. The Abaja (Igbo) killed the murderer in exactly the same manner and place that he had killed his victim, the Kalabari gradually clubbed him to death. In other places, the family of a murdered man was required to replace the murdered man [as in the story of Ikemefuna in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart].34

And according to Omoniyi Adewoye, in most communities in southern Nigeria, the penalty for intentional murder and witchcraft was often death. However, in many cases in parts of eastern Nigeria, where it could be proven that someone unintentionally caused a death, amends could be made to atone. These reparations might include “the present of a woman or a cow and a piece of cloth to the family of the deceased” in some Onitsha villages, and “payment of compensation to the male next of kin to the deceased sometimes in the form of a marriageable maiden” in OgwashiUku, present-day Delta State.35

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In this sense, the wild cheers of crowds at Bar Beach for the firing squads introduced by the military era could be seen as a return to a precolonial practice of the sternest possible social deterrent to robbers and would-be robbers. Police Restructuring Under the Babangida Military Regime, 1986 Despite harsh sentences, firing squads as public spectacles, and the sweeping powers the military regime decrees gave police and courts to punish offenders, the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act) of 1984 failed to have the intended effect. Robberies continued to be a major challenge, so Buhari’s government was forced to try other methods. Moreover, if by the early 1980s the police force’s “checkpoint culture” was bad before, it was about to get much worse from the mid- to late 1980s and beyond. By the time General Babangida overthrew Buhari in 1985, his military government had increased the number of checkpoints, roadblocks, and police patrols deployed. In his Independence Day broadcast on 1 October 1986, President Babangida announced that the police would be given “necessary equipment” to tackle the armed robbery problem.36 However, former assistant inspector-general of police (AIG) Godfrey Okeke, whom I interviewed for this book, disagrees that Babangida, or indeed Abacha after him, lived up to any police promises. “The military did not want to support the police force or empower it. In many ways it seems as if we were set up to fail—not just against armed robbery and crime, but also against the people, who gradually lost respect for the institution but still respected the Army.”37 The retired AIG gives an example in which, as an officer commanding a police unit in Port Harcourt during military rule, his team showed up without any equipment—well, they did have rifles, but the clips were empty. The police commander had a team meant to fight robbers without any loaded guns. Flabbergasted, he headed to the armory to find the whole place empty, except for two cans of tear-gas. When he later took up this false alarm with his superior, he was advised that the challenges of the force had been taken up by his superiors and that the military governor was aware. Still, nothing changed.38 In fairness to Babangida’s administration, even if the police were denied funds and given only a fraction of what the force required to be operational, the president did embark on some reorganization of the police force. 39 First, the police under Babangida’s rule created five new directorates at national headquarters and seven additional area commands.40 Inspector-General Etim Inyang was replaced by Muhammadu Gambo Jimeta, a confidant, who later became Babangida’s national security adviser.

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Babangida also reorganized the upper police echelons, although such reshuffles are not unusual in Nigeria and typically occur every few years. In this case, in addition to Jimeta’s appointment as inspector-general of police, five new deputy inspector-generals were appointed.41 One of these, Aliyu Atta, would later replace Jimeta in 1990. Seven assistant inspectorgenerals were also promoted as part of Babangida’s much-touted police reorganization and restructuring.42 In Bendel State, which had the highest crime rates at the time, and which Babangida divided into Edo and Delta States in 1991, eighty-one “senior police officers were transferred, being suspected of collusion with criminal elements, and replacements for them were brought in from the northern States.” Indeed, the incidents of violent crime and armed robbery became so frequent in Bendel State by the late 1980s that “three Commissioners were sent in succession from Lagos to take over command of Bendel’s police force.”43 Despite all these changes, by the late 1980s, armed robbery in Nigeria had become part of the social fabric and has never quite been expunged since. As Okeke observes, restructuring a force, “moving people from A to B,” is not the same as equipping the force, training it, and “taking care of police training colleges and police welfare.”44 The police force in Nigeria was in decline. Staffing was low; equipment was lacking; police training colleges were dilapidated; and the vehicles and weapons to combat crime, contain riots without casualties, and secure the federation were lacking throughout the era of military rule for decades. Babangida’s police restructuring approximated little more than “window dressing.”45 Indeed, as Ona Ekhomu observes, despite what was said to be an increase in police budgets in the era of military rule, it was curious that the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) had continued to decline since the 1970s.46 Violent Robberies in the Babangida and Abacha Eras, 1985–1998 By the 1980s, the scourge of armed robbery continued, and any signs the crime had abated because of Decree 47 of 1970 were false positives. Indeed, as Adisa indicates in “Urban Violence in Lagos,” the decade between 1970 and 1980 brought about growth of the armed robbery phenomenon even as the police played catchup. Robbery was no longer a niche activity but was evolving into a wellsyndicated criminal enterprise across Nigeria and beyond its borders. The “influx of weapons into Nigeria from the Nigerian-led ECOMOG peacekeeping operation in Liberia” was one reason for firearms making their way into Nigeria’s criminal underworld.47

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Moreover, despite the draconian military decrees to stem violent crime and resulting executions, it continued to increase. Getting rid of one notorious gang merely opened prime territory for another. Furthermore, with the NPF and the military government’s ruthless counter-robbery measures, armed robbers only became more ruthless over the decades: they knew a decision to rob was potentially signing their death warrant. The only alternative was to become even more violent and ruthless and procure even better firearms and firepower than the police units that hunted them. Armed robbers became even more daring in Nigeria under military rule to the point where they were sometimes referred to as “daredevils” for their operations.48 On 29 June 1995, multiple shootouts with the police across Lagos by the same robbery gang ended in ten deaths including police, army, and civilian casualties.49 It seemed as though the police war against armed robbery, in this sense, was a war of attrition. As for the executions of convicted armed robbers, Etannibi Alemika makes a connection between that practice and the viciousness of the armed robbery threat in Nigeria from the 1970s forward. According to Alemika, the military government refused to graduate punishments, which led to armed robbery reaching new levels by the late 1980s.50 Osifodunrin similarly notes that by the 1990s, armed robberies had turned even more violent.51 Likewise, Abdul Oroh, the executive director of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) observed, “The executions would not curb violent crime.” Further, as Oroh observed, “We [Nigerians] have been executing robbers since the early 1970s and we are still having armed robbery. . . . Executions will make the robbers harder and more violent.”52 And in Adisa’s words, Armed robbery has undergone an amazing transformation from isolated night attacks on lonely highways of the 1970s to daring exploits executed in broad daylight. Robbers no longer go masked. They operate unmasked and wear expensive designer clothes which give them the appearance of successful business executives. Their firepower is impressive. Local rifles and homemade guns have given way to powerful assault weapons and machine guns, like AK-47s and Russian made K-2s.53

Lagos by the 1990s was experiencing more than 200 robberies in some months and more than 300 car thefts in two-week periods. Lagos had unofficially become the armed robbery capital of Africa.54 And for more than a decade, the city’s inhabitants had not felt safe. Indeed, many felt safer during the civil war.55 By the 1990s, more than twenty years after the military government promulgated Decree No. 47 of 1970, armed robberies left people skeptical about the rulers’ power, along with that of the police, to protect them. One Sunday Times Magazine feature on April 26th, 1992, pointed out that “no

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worthwhile result had been achieved” by a military headed by Admiral Nyako and committed to addressing the problem.56 Indeed, “Almost two decades since the promulgation of the first armed robbery decree, Decree No. 47 of 1970, robbers are back in full force with new vigour.”57 And as for the robbers and gangs, a few are worth examining further. Armed Robbery Gangs and Violent Criminals in the Military Era In sentencing a notorious armed robber, Bolade Alade, to fifteen years’ imprisonment for car theft in January 1970, Justice Rotimi George observed that not only had armed robbery increased at a concerning rate, there was now more loss of life linked to it.58 Rotimi George’s words would foreshadow the emergence of the notorious gangs and the epidemic of armed robbery to sweep across the federation from the 1970s forward. And as for Alade himself, he was fortunate to be sentenced in January 1970, before the federal military government introduced harsher sentences for violent armed robbery later that year. Alade was already well known, and one of his previous crimes was when he snatched a bag containing £1,500 (Nigeria used pounds at the time) from a Gabriel Raji Alli, the cashier of Sterling Products.59 These stricter sentences were a direct response to the sheer brazenness and number of notorious armed robbery gangs to emerge right after the civil war. Many of these gangs had central characters that gained notoriety and even admiration in the criminal underworld. And in the telegenic era of the 1970s and 1980s, many of these violent hoodlums came to identify themselves “with the Robin Hood characters of Indian and American movies— Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra or Rambo (Sylvester Stallone).”60 This is not to say “daredevil robberies” had never been witnessed in colonial Nigeria. Quite the contrary—robbery as a phenomenon in Nigeria’s territories is storied. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Nigerian society did not just see the emergence of crime in this category; it saw the evolution of an already existing phenomenon. As early as 1859, even before the annexation of Lagos, its later governor, Captain John Hawley Glover, a merchant based in Lagos, was robbed on one of his trips in the area, within territory controlled by the Egba Kingdom.61 Records also show that, in 1867, burglars apparently undeterred by security measures and armed guards, broke into Supreme Court buildings at Tinubu Square in Lagos and carted off an undisclosed amount of government cash.62 And not even the Government House, where the colonial governor and his top officials worked, was safe. In 1900, according to reports by the Record, a robbery took place there.63

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Nevertheless, a key distinction between these robberies and those that escalated from the late 1960s onward is that in the latter, armed robbers were more violent and more organized and often opted for broad daylight rather than night burglaries. Until 1967, crime had been an issue, especially in larger metropolitan areas such as Lagos, but it was more amateur criminality. Some of these small gangs were broken up, and there was a sense that the authorities could maintain the peace after independence. In the Yaba Magistrate Court in November 1960, the sentencing of a notorious gang of three seemed to validate the authorities’ confidence. Godwin Okwame, Ishola Mirisiu, and Bode Abayomi, aged nineteen, twenty-two, and eighteen, respectively, were small-time robbers who fit the petty criminal category.64 If this was all the criminal underworld had in store for the Lagos Police Force, perhaps its confidence was not misplaced. Unfortunately for the police establishment, there were much worse elements that fit a more professional and violent typology in the criminal underworld. Violent armed robbers and murderers who fell into this category included Alade, sentenced in 1970, and Isiaka Busari, also known as “Mighty Joe.” Two in particular, Babatunde Folorunso (alias “Onilace”) and Ishola Oyenusi, both of whom started as apprentice mechanics in the same workshop, were among the most vicious armed robbers in Nigeria’s history. These men did not emerge overnight—they each had a back story. In general, they and others like them engaged in their illegal occupation for years, sometimes going in and out of jail and gradually becoming more violent. The detectives who investigated their case chased them and were familiar with them for much longer than the wider public was. However, by 1970, these gangs started to be widely notorious and fit Ralph Austen’s “social bandits” and “heroic criminals” who gain extreme notoriety because of their seemingly carefree attitude toward authorities and the inability of the police to apprehend them. Nigeria’s era of violent armed robbery, hired guns, and professional criminals had begun. The Escape Artist: “Doctor” Ishola Oyenusi’s Reign of Terror

One of the most notorious post–civil war armed robbery gangs was led by “Doctor” Ishola Oyenusi—a notorious criminal whose group specialized in bank robberies, carjacking, and illegal roadblocks to waylay unsuspecting drivers in western Nigeria, particularly in the Surulere and Victoria Island areas of Lagos. However, Oyenusi’s gang roamed much farther, too—in Ibadan, in western Nigeria, but also as far northeast as Maiduguri.65 Oyenusi was not a doctor; this was merely how he chose to style himself. A peculiarity of many violent criminals in the post–civil war era was that they tended to adopt a persona. Oyenusi was, however, a prolific thief and murderer—hence his nickname, “Doctor Rob and Kill”—because he

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reportedly never spared any of his victims after a robbery. Oyenusi’s gang was more than ten strong and employed sidearms and magazine rifles, making them more than a match for many police units of the time. Oyenusi was for a time by early 1971 regarded as public enemy number one (L’ennemi publique numero un) because of his exploits.66 Oyenusi was reportedly imprisoned for robbery at least once since the 1950s but escaped. Oyenusi killed his first victim with a blunt knife; he was just eleven years old. When he was released from prison, he was around twenty—in February 1965. He almost went right back to jail because his first robbery was a failed one, at the house of a European. Luckily for him, this was during the civilian rule of the First Republic, and jail terms for robbery were lenient. So, whereas his five-man gang was caught and tried, he was later freed by the court. Undeterred, Oyenusi went back to petty robbery and then carjacking around the Yaba area of Lagos. This time around, he and his gang stole £1,400 at the famous Stationery Stores in Apapa. They got away with that robbery, but police investigations continued—this particular case drew the displeasure of Inspector-General of Police Kam Salem over growing concern about high-profile thefts on the Lagos mainland. Perhaps because of the added police interest, Oyenusi was eventually arrested. This time he was imprisoned by Magistrate Adewale Oshodi at the Apapa Magistrate Court on 16 December 1965. In The Roots of Evil, Christopher Hibbert posits that prison presents an opportunity for criminals committed to the occupation to deepen their knowledge of how to commit crime. This appeared to be the case for Oyenusi because he emerged from jail and again returned to crime. In fact, by his release in 1967, he had emerged as a more hardened and determined criminal with an added distinction: violence was no longer a last resort in his crime but now became his gang’s signature. Initially, at least, crime seemed to pay off for Oyenusi. The police remained one step behind him as he went on a robbery and violent crime spree throughout the civil war, between 1967 and 1970. Oyenusi committed one of his first major robberies just before the outbreak of war in May 1967. He did this at the Standard Bank of West Africa (later, First Bank of Nigeria), on Yakubu Gowon Street, in the Lagos Island area of Lagos. The £14,000 was never recovered by the police, who were also unable “to make any useful arrest in connection with the crime.”67 Oyenusi kept up his crime spree, but in August 1967, at an attempted robbery around the Mushin area, he was caught as he and his gang tried to escape. Quite by coincidence, he again found himself before Magistrate Oshodi, who had previously given him a two-year robbery sentence. Oshodi seemed to lament the lack of available powers to jail Oyenusi for an extended period because in his view, the criminal deserved a long jail term—more than what he had received in the past or what he was about to

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receive. This time, Oyenusi was sentenced to three years in prison, with hard labor. He was also to be given “tea,” which is to say, severely flogged as part of his sentence. This time, Oyenusi would not even go to prison at all—he somehow managed to slip away from detention and once again went back to crime. At the Maiduguri Rest House in October 1967, Oyenusi and with an accomplice made off with £5,700. That same month, both he and his accomplice stole the car of one John Elegbede. Stolen cars were typically used for more substantive robberies and were either dumped after the operation on site (if the police happened to block off egress to the car) or abandoned somewhere randomly if plans for a robbery were foiled. In this particular instance, the car stolen from Elegbede was to be used in the robbery of Elrado Noca, a paymaster for the giant civil engineering firm Cappa and D’Alberto. As Noca made his way to pay the workers at a site, Oyenusi and his gang attacked him and his armed police escort, opening fire on them with pistols and rifles on the Onigbongbo end of Ikorodu Road. In a heroic consideration for human life and a commendable adherence to police protocol, the police escort initially fired warning shots to deter the robbers. When this did not work, as Oyenusi’s gang descended on Noca with a machete, his police escort returned fire and shot two of Oyenusi’s gang dead on the spot: the first was Noca’s assailant, and the second had attempted to grab the box of money. Because Oyenusi had a fiveperson gang in addition to himself, this left four of them and all four, still undeterred, still wanted the cash and revenge for their fallen mates.68 Fortunately for the police escort and Noca, soldiers from the Ikeja Cantonment, a military installation near the Ikorodu Main Road, joined the armed escort and engaged the remaining robbers in a gunfight. There, a third gang member was killed. Oyenusi and the two remaining gang members were arrested.69 This time they were arraigned for trial at the Ikeja Grade “A” Magistrate Court. On 31 November 1967, Oyenusi and two of his gang members were each given a twenty-five-year prison sentence.70 If the trial had been held three years later, they likely would have gotten the death penalty by firing squad. And indeed, the comments of the presiding magistrate, Chief Victor Adedolapo, were both a reflection of the growing weariness of the population toward armed robbery and an indication of what was to come, in the promulgation of a decree in 1970 to apply the death penalty to armed robbery. First, the magistrate was clear regarding the menace posed by armed robbers such as Oyenusi and his gang. Second, he effectively pointed out to Oyenusi and his two remaining gang members that they were fortunate to have escaped the fate their cohorts met during the robbery. “In other words, if they had been killed, it would have been a case of good riddance as no charges of the use of maximum force would have been levelled against the

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armed personnel.”71 Finally, Adedolapo was effusive in his praise of the excellent work of the police and quick-thinking soldiers who joined the gunfight, for what was, in his view, “justice to the three members of the gang by shooting them to death on the day of the incident.”72 This time, Oyenusi was placed in the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison, in the Apapa area. The prison’s name is an homage to the local Kirikiri community resident to the area and was considered the most secure prison installation in Nigeria. Meeting up with Babatunde Folorunso (alias “Onilace”) at Kirikiri, Oyenusi planned an escape, and they both successfully implemented that plan, breaking free in April 1968. That same month, Oyenusi would again be arrested as he unsuccessfully tried to steal an army officer’s car. According to records, this was on Aborishade Street, in the Surulere area of Lagos, on 24 April 1968. Once again in police custody, Oyenusi was charged with escape from lawful custody (he had done less than a year into his twenty-five-year jail term) as well as the attempted robbery. Unluckily for Folorunso, also arrested, they were both jailed again—this time they were moved to a Jos prison. They both escaped again, in 1970. By this time the civil war had ended, and there was a major change to the armed robbery laws in Nigeria: it now carried the death penalty. Oyenusi, too, had changed, having now graduated to magazine rifles and “sprang out of the wreckage of the 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War” as “a charismatic, cocksure gangster whose lordly disdain for the law cast the terrifying portent of social breakdown.”73 After so many brushes with the police, Oyenusi had little regard for them, even when in custody. Reportedly, when he was caught and was being pushed around by a police guard, he thundered down at him, “People like you don’t talk to me like that when I’m armed, I gun them down!”74 Oyenusi’s robbery spree continued. In November 1970, in what was perhaps his largest burglary to that point (he tended to prefer bold, daylight robbery), Oyenusi, along with one Dan Blocker, a war veteran; Lati; Balewa; and Femi George, robbed and killed one Sura Rabo in a house on Ibadan’s Ring Road. The total stolen was £100,000. Furthermore, in Ibadan, the gang robbed a tire store at Feleye.75 Oyenusi and his gang moved back to Lagos and on 27 March 1971, after killing a police constable named Nwi, they robbed West Africa Household Utilities Manufacturing (WAHUM) at Ikeja. The WAHUM robbery was one of Nigeria’s largest robberies to that point, and the gang made away with £200,000. However, Oyenusi would never rob or kill again after that day—he was captured shortly thereafter. One factor that contributed to Oyenusi’s last capture might have been that his core gang members had been killed or imprisoned in the failed robbery of the Cappa and D’Alberto paymaster, Noca, in October 1967. Since

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then, he had had to work with ad hoc gangs, especially with his being in and out of jail. On this occasion, the ad hoc gang members were Phillip Onuora Ogbulumani, Appolus Nlemibe, Joseph Osamedike (also known as Ossai), Ademola Adegbitan, and Ambrose Nwokobia (a gateman at WAHUM). The robbery itself was planned by one Steven Ndubuokwu, alias “Diokpa,” who was related to Joel Amamieye, the WAHUM personnel manager.76 Along with Oyenusi, eight men were involved in the robbery. Unbeknownst to all eight, they would later pay the ultimate price, death by firing squad, for this crime.77 The plan itself was daring: to ambush the police escort of the company’s payroll van and steal the money while the van was en route to the factory. Oyenusi, armed with a submachine gun and additional ammunition, was to keep watch at the company gate. All other gang members had their specific assignments. Oyenusi shot and killed the NPF escort, and his gang stole the police officer’s Mark 4 rifle, took the sum of £10,000 from the van, and made their getaway. After that robbery, for the next two months, Oyenusi retired to Ibadan and kept a relatively low profile. However, the police were on his trail and eventually arrested him on 7 May 1971.78 Oyenusi was supposedly betrayed by one of his new gang members after escaping from the Jos Prison in 1970. The man in question, one Balewa, upon interrogation by the police, gave up Oyenusi’s female confidante, one Jeje Iyabo. On Iyabo’s direction, the police found Oyenusi running a building materials shop and a beer parlor at Gate, Ibadan. Oyenusi tried to run away, but the police shouted “Ole! Ole!” (“Thief! Thief!” in Yoruba), and locals held the suspect.79 Oyenusi’s arrest would be different this time. At all his other arrests, the courts had the final say in armed robbery trials. Things had changed in 1970. The federal military government under Gowon “had set up the Robbery and Firearms Tribunal in Lagos with Mr. Justice John Ojomo as chairman. While the courts under section 402 of the 1958 Criminal Code could only impose long sentences on robbers depending on their nature before 1970, the newly established tribunal was empowered to impose the maximum punishment, the death penalty irrespectively of its nature.”80 For Oyenusi and his gang, the military era changes to the law sealed their fate. In a two-week trial, from 11 August to 26 August 1971, Oyenusi and six others were sentenced to death by firing squad on the final day of the trial.81 The executions of Oyenusi and his gang and Busari, alias “Mighty Joe,” heralded the 1970s “as the decade of the firing squad, public execution or in popular parlance ‘bar beach shows’ in the criminal history of Lagos and indeed Nigeria.”82 The spectacle of public executions was not a colonial creation. They emerged under military rule, and military decrees enabled them to coexist with popular law.

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Oyenusi and his gang of eight individuals were executed by the police to much fanfare from a crowd of more than 35,000 at Bar Beach, Victoria Island, Lagos.83 Oyenusi’s execution was the third public police execution in Nigeria (after Babatunde Folorunso on 24 April 1971 and Mighty Joe on 6 June 1971) and was carried out by a fourteen-man firing squad of police and army personnel.84 The execution took place on 8 September 1971 and shattered the myth perpetrated by Oyenusi himself that “the bullet has no power” over him.85 Lawrence Anini, Alias “The Law,” and Deputy Superintendent of Police George Iyamu

Arguably the most notorious armed robber in Nigeria’s history, Lawrence Anini, whose primary alias was “The Law,” terrorized Benin City and its environs in the late 1980s. Anini’s secondary alias was “Ovigbo,” or “Igbo Man.” Anini initially worked as a commercial car driver. Reportedly, he was exceptional at the wheel. Indeed, at the peak of his reign of terror, Anini’s driving skills had attained mythical status. One police officer noted that Anini was so dexterous behind the wheel that, driving at speed, Anini could reach out of the moving car and pick up a piece of paper off the road with ease.86 According to a former police officer I interviewed for this book, the officer commanding (OC) anti-robbery in Benin in 1992, Anini’s infamy lingered in Benin’s police circles for years after the robber’s death.87 Before Anini became a criminal kingpin, he was respected in the car park and tout circles in which he moved. Indeed, it was then, not when he became an armed robber, he earned his alias “The Law,” because “whatever he said stood then and anything he wanted he accomplished. This was how he became a law to both passengers and touts of the Sapele motor park.”88 Anini’s criminal career originated in his core skill set: driving cars for gangs of robbers while he understudied for the criminal underworld. Eventually, he began developing his own gang, which specialized in carjackings, bank robbery, armed robbery, and hijacking commercial buses to rob all the occupants. 89 By the mid-1980s, Anini had put together a gang of misfits, professional criminals, violent robbers, and informants. At his time of arrest, the gang members numbered more than a dozen. He mostly terrorized the Benin City area but was said to have operated as far west as Lagos, as far east as Enugu, and as far north as Kano. Nevertheless, Anini went on his most prolific crime and killing spree in 1986, and it might well have been inadvertently provoked by the capture and killing of two members of his gang, Prince Kingsley Eweka, alias “Baba K,” and “Kele” (probably an alias). On 23 of August 1986, Eweka, said to be a prince of the Benin royal family or at least related to royalty, was shot dead by a firing squad, having

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been found guilty of armed robbery by a robbery tribunal, one of many set up by Babangida’s government. To understand why this event is so important to Anini, it is first essential to examine the back story to Eweka’s trial and execution. The Eweka case ran contrary to an early informal agreement with the police to destroy evidence against Anini’s captured gang members. Specifically, one George Iyamu, a deputy superintendent of police (DSP), had run his own gang of robbers since he was a police inspector and gave Anini an advantage against the police. This included supplying Anini and his gang with information, suppressing evidence, and even providing arms and ammunition to Anini’s gang in his privileged position as a police officer.90 DSP Iyamu had reportedly agreed with Anini to destroy “all good ingredients of the Prince Eweka case.”91 Under this agreement, Eweka’s case was to be thrown out of court by the police and the suspect released. In exchange, Anini reportedly gave Iyamu ₦50,000, a considerable amount when Nigeria was crippled by inflation and everyone, not least police personnel, struggled to make ends meet.92 However, DSP Iyamu reneged on the agreement. Perhaps Iyamu appeared to double-cross Anini because he did not have the clout as a DSP to get rid of the evidence, or perhaps he simply refused to keep his promise. According to the Nigerian Tribune on 7 December 1986, Anini confronted Iyamu about “why he did not ensure that his friend was spared since he paid the N50,000 demanded from him for that purpose. Iyamu, he went on, sent him away with the threat that the next time he caught Anini he would shoot him.”93 Not only was the loss of his friend vexing to Anini but also the police betrayal led to retaliation by Anini and his gang. Indeed, Eweka seemed to know this, too, when, looking at his executioners even as he struggled to turn his neck with his body firmly tied to the stake, he told them: “My friend and his boys will avenge my death!”94 Few except Iyamu and other detectives on Anini’s case would have known what Eweka meant by those words. Nevertheless, “the whole of Nigeria would soon hear of his ‘friend and his boys.’ And it was indeed very bloody revenge.”95 Anini vowed to kill fifty police personnel in revenge for Eweka’s death and another fifty for Kele.96 He was carrying out this deadly threat when he was finally captured. Starting in August 1986, the month when Eweka and Kele were executed, Anini and his gang wasted no time making good on their promise for revenge. In August, after a bank robbery outside Benin City, they killed another police officer. They killed two children in a house Anini fled to. The same month, Anini and his gang shot and killed two police officers at a roadblock in Benin when the police force tried to stop his vehicle. This eventually led to Benin police personnel refusing to stop and search cars at roadblocks for fear that they might come across Anini. In one of many stories about Anini

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at the time, the police at a checkpoint in a village near Benin took to their heels when a young man in a Peugeot 505 car, a fairly new make and model, pulled up to them. They might have thought it was Anini.97 Also in August 1986, Anini and his gang raided the First Bank in Sabon-Gida (Ora) and made away with ₦2,000. Relative to the kind of money Anini went after, this was a modest sum, so Anini and his gang opened fire on the people in the bank—many were killed in that incident, including at least one police officer.98 On 5 September 1986, Anini and his gang again attacked and this time killed at home the wife of a businessman whose business they had robbed weeks earlier. The same day, the gang shot and killed another local businessman. The next day, on 6 September, Anini and his gang stormed a police station in Abudu, a major township outside Benin, and took off with guns, ammunition, and police uniforms after killing a sergeant at the station.99 Also on 6 September 1986, they attacked a second police station and killed a constable. That same day, Anini and his gang attacked Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG) Christopher Akhigbe Omeben. Omeben was in charge of the “F” Department (Research and Planning) and was critical to Nigeria’s police intelligence. Iyamu, the dirty cop, had betrayed Omeben because his death would undermine police intelligence capability and further shield Anini’s gang’s activities.100 The AIG somehow escaped alive, but his driver was not as lucky. Anini and his gang “not only snatched Omeben’s Peugeot 504 car from the driver, Albert Otoe, but also they killed him and dumped his corpse outside Benin. The driver’s decomposed body was discovered three months later.”101 Relentless in their violent robberies and murders, Anini and his gang continued to terrorize the Benin City area. On 7 September [1986], they shot to death a car-service operator at a major hotel. On 1 October, they machine-gunned to death a police constable walking in Benin City, apparently because Anini happened to be driving along that road. They waylaid a traditional ruler on a busy street in the centre of New Benin, in front of hundreds of witnesses, and robbed him of his Mercedes. Later, in the evening of the same day, they ambushed the newly delegated Commissioner of Police, Casmir Akagbosu, and some of his colleagues on their way home from visiting friends. . . . The police driver was killed in his seat, Akagbosu had the bridge of his nose shot away, and two officers sitting on either side were injured in the legs and hips. Numerous other car thefts and kidnappings, as well as several bank robberies, were attributed to Anini.102

Anini also seemed to thrive on his Robin Hood persona and gave off the false impression that he robbed the rich to give to the poor. For example, “on October 21, 1986, after robbing and killing a medical doctor, A. O.

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Emojeve, along Textile Mill Road in Benin, Anini and his gang stormed the Agbor branch of the African Continental Bank.”103 They stole ₦46,000, proceeded directly to a nearby village market, and threw banknotes into the air for the community. When so many were suffering, such spectacles and the façade of benevolence behind them might have endeared Anini to the poor, although most people were horrified at his violence and murders. Anini’s short career as an armed robber was best captured by the period between August 1986 and 3 December 1986, when he was caught. In that time, he had robbed more than a dozen banks, businesses, and individuals and had killed at least eighteen people, including nine police officers— leaving many others with life-changing injuries. And in what became an embarrassment to the police high command and establishment, Anini started to write notes to his victims, telling them when and where he would show up and doing precisely that, despite the police being aware in advance.104 Indeed, the police themselves were said to be so terrified that, in what must have been embarrassing as reports emerged of the practice, many police personnel stopped wearing their uniforms to work. Instead, according to a Guardian report during Anini’s reign of terror, the police began to “carry a bag in which their uniform is kept. At the end of work, the uniforms find their way back into the bag.”105 More embarrassing was the incident in which Akagbosu, the new police commissioner for Bendel State, had his nose blown off. A robbery attack by violent criminals on the commissioner of police in the same state was unprecedented. Akagbosu had to be flown to the United Kingdom for an operation to fix his nose.106 Akagbosu would also survive a second attack. Anini and his gang opened fire on Akagbosu and his two police aides, Sergeant Ojo and Corporal Ogbe Zechariah, while they were riding in the commissioner’s station wagon. Ojo and Zechariah were badly injured on their limbs and thighs. Akagbosu survived, along with a third, unidentified police escort in the front passenger seat. The commissioner’s driver, Constable Paulinus Oweh, was shot in the head and died on the spot.107 It would later emerge that Anini and his gang did not intentionally go after very senior police officers as their focus was instead on the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and anti-robbery squads that were after the gang. Monday Osunbor, a quick-tempered member of Anini’s gang known for his stuttered speech, was reportedly the main police executioner responsible for six policemen's deaths. Osunbor had only met Anini four months earlier at a “smoke joint,” by his own account.108 Osunbor was captured with three other gang members on 9 November 1986. Following a tip, the police had raided the robbers’ den. Osunbor was injured before being taken away by the police. Anini, too, was present during that raid but escaped. Nevertheless, Anini was finally captured a few weeks later, on 3 December.109

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After his capture, Osunbor appeared to disavow the attack on Commissioner Akagbosu as unintentional. This might seem unusual for a gang intent on killing so many police, except that Anini’s gang was largely unique in the sheer extent of police complicity it was able to secure. Osunbor also seemed to indicate that the police meant to apprehend the gang were also demanding money from its members. In Osunbor’s own words during interrogation, as reported by This Week, 15 December 1986, “We don’t know na Akagbosu dey inside. Lawrence was driving, then I shot him. We wanted to kill men of the C.I.D. Na dem dey come our house come collect money.”110 Osunbor’s accusation of police corruption might well have had some grounds. When Anini was taken into custody on 3 December 1986, at 26 Oyemwosa Street, opposite Iguodala Primary School, in Benin City, one of his legs was almost severed with gunfire, and he had to be taken to a military hospital to have it amputated. When Superintendent of Police Kayode Uanreroro arrested him, Anini was unarmed and in the company of women. All the arresting officer found was “16 rounds of 9mm bullets, a tiny woven pouch of charms, his gold ring, a wristwatch and uniforms of police and the soldiers, including the ceremonial versions.”111 Soon after capture, Anini, who did not speak English and communicated in Bini and Pidgin, began to confess under police interrogation. In addition to several of his own gang members, Anini implicated ten police officers. Of these ten officers, five, including DSP Iyamu, were convicted. In total, eighty members of the police force were suspected of being in cahoots with Anini and his gang.112 Indeed, even the manner of Anini’s arrest, weeks after Osunbor’s suggests that the police commissioner who replaced Akagbosu, Parry Osayande, was cautious about the operation being leaked by police complicit with whom Anini and his gang. As Marenin writes, on Anini’s capture, “a team of mobile policemen had been quietly selected and sent to the address by the Police Commissioner, without informing other high-ranking officers, in order to avoid the by then well-known possibility of leaks being given to the gang” (264–265). As the former officer in charge of anti-robbery in Benin City pointed out to me in an interview, the police in Benin had major internal corruption issues. This was a force in need of reform and struggling with its duties under military rule. Ultimately, some police constables and officers, under the economic pressure of the time, acquiesced to working with armed gangs.113 That Anini had connections at high levels in the police force would help explain why he was such a bold and prolific robber and yet in equal measure so hard to capture. Reportedly, “Anini himself made the whole courtroom go into fits of laughter [during his tribunal] when he declared that he had no

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single supernatural power to disappear, that what they used to ‘disappear’ was the insider police information supplied to them by [DSP] Iyamu.”114 Anini and his gang were merely well informed by corrupt police officers. That DSP Iyamu and so many others worked so intimately with the most wanted armed robber in Nigeria was an indictment on the police. The second Benin Armed Robbery and Firearm Tribunal, held on 9 January 1987, after Anini’s capture, further uncovered the extent of police complicity in Anini’s reign of terror.115 Shortly after Anini’s arrest, after Superintendent Uanreroro had shot him several times in the foot, Anini was taken in a police land rover to Commissioner Osayande at the Bendel State police headquarters, off Sapele Road in Benin City. There to witness Anini’s initial confessions were Donald Ugbuaja and Edward Irabor, both also police commissioners.116 Keen to be taken to hospital to treat his shattered leg, Anini had confessed that DSP Iyamu supplied him and his gang with logistics, police intelligence reports and weapons (Anini claimed he collected between N6,000 and N10,000 per deal for weapons supply). He also confessed as to how Iyamu would join them after their robberies to get his own share of the loot. Anini said they called Iyamu “Baba” and that the palatial buildings that Iyamu had all over the city were from the proceeds of their criminal activities.117

As a result of these confessions, and with further police interrogation of Anini and the rest of his gang members (some of whom, like Osunbor, were at the Military Hospital in Benin City), DSP Iyamu was arrested on 4 December 1986.118 Furthermore, nine more “police officers, all from the Criminal Investigations Division in Benin City, were detained and sent for interrogation to Lagos. President Babangida ordered a speedy trial.”119 Including Iyamu, ten police officers were tried in connection with armed robbery because of the Anini case.120 By the time Anini was arrested, Iyamu had already been posted to the CID at Algabon Close in Lagos. This was part of a mass redeployment of police officers from Benin City. A partial reason for these postings was suspicion, as yet unproven, that many officers within the force command in Bendel State had colluded with Anini and his gang. Iyamu continued “his work as a top anti-crime police officer. Following Anini’s confession, he was arrested on the 4th of December.”121 Anini’s confession was the missing piece of the police investigation that tied Iyamu and other officers to the case. DSP lyamu was tried along with members of Anini’s gang at the second Benin Armed Robbery and Firearms Tribunal on 9 January 1987. The trial, which drew large crowds and nationwide interest, was held at the High Court of Justice, off Sapele Road in Benin City. By the end of the tribunal, Iyamu and four other police officers were found guilty and sentenced to death by public firing squad.122 The sentence was carried out on 14 Feb-

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ruary 1987. After Iyamu was killed, the federal military government confiscated his properties.123 Anini, Osunbor, and the other gang members including Solomon Ihebelua Osemwenkhai (Osemenvkhore, alias “Akpankon,” aged twenty-two), Bernard Obi, and Friday Ukponmwan were found guilty of conspiracy and armed robbery. Their deaths were postponed, and the convicts were remanded in prison for weeks after their trial, until late March. They were executed by firing squad on 27 March 1986.124 It was a day of relief in Benin City as police and police mobile patrols flooded the city to broad applause and wide celebration of the police and their effort in rooting out Iyamu and his ilk and ending Anini’s reign of terror. Even the military governor, Colonel John Mark Inienger, was profuse in his praise for the police and commended their efforts in bringing the case to a close.125 Other armed robbers and gangs after Anini will gain notoriety, but he remains arguably the most notorious in Nigeria’s history. DSP Iyamu held the ignominious distinction of being the highest-ranking NPF officer executed for armed robbery. The public firing squads of Anini, Iyamu, and the rest of the crime syndicate were arguably the most high-profile and widely covered executions under military rule in Nigeria. Anini and his gang significantly raised the bar on the use of force by armed robbers in Nigeria. First, the number of police officers he killed or colluded with during his reign meant “that criminals in the Lagos area and elsewhere became emboldened in their nefarious activities.” Anini’s execution might have deterred some robbers, but it is also likely his approach to violent crime inspired other members of the criminal underworld. A factor here was Anini’s “possession and acclaimed mastery of the use of firearms such as the Sub-Machine Guns (SMGs) and military assault rifles that were considered superior to the ones carried by men of the Nigeria Police Force during this period.”126 For the first time in the history of policing in Nigeria, the criminals could engage and defeat the police decisively. Just as during the civil war, firearms by 1990 had again changed the calculus of violence within Nigerian society.127 Anini himself was not outgunned; he was merely outsmarted. The prospect of armed robbers having several AK-47s and other weapons on any given outing became normalized over the decades that followed. And “by the early 1990s, the use of SMGs had become widespread among the men of the underworld.”128 Assassinations and Hired Killings Under Military Rule The likes of Folorunso (alias “Onilace”), Oyenusi, Mighty Joe, and Anini were far from the only infamous hoodlums to emerge as violent armed robbers in the era of military rule. There were others, including, Shina Rambo, whom

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some still question as a myth, active in the 1990s.129 The threat continued after the military rulers headed back to the barracks and vacated their seats of power. Some of the notable violent crime figures who underpinned the armed robbery spree beyond the turn of the twenty-first century in the Fourth Republic of democratic rule in Nigeria include Okwudili Ndiwe, alias “Derico Nwamama” and Abiodun Ogunjobi, alias “Godogodo.” Moreover, armed robberies were not the only form of violent crime the police had to contend with during military rule. There was also the “spectacular dimension” of hired killings. Sometimes, these were “masked by armed robbery.” However, in many instances, it was clear that some murders might have been personal or political but not necessarily in the armed robbery category. Sometimes, these attempts were unsuccessful, such as in the instance of the ex-speaker of the House of Representatives, Edwin Ume Ezeoke. Armed men broke into his house at 2:30 a.m. on 29 November 1983 and shot him in the stomach and chest.130 Ezeoke survived the attack (never solved by the police), and it was unclear whether those who attacked him were merely armed robbers who happened to choose the residence of a high-profile political figure. Reports at the time seemed to suggest that this was an assassination attempt. Most of those attacked in these suspected hired assassinations during military rule were not as lucky. On the same date, 29 November 1983, Chief Joe Nkpang, the assistant general manager of the Ports Authority, was on his way from Murtala Muhammed Airport when his car was stopped at Iganmu. Armed men gunned him down, and Nkpang died on the spot. Again, questions remained around whether this was “just” an armed robbery or a hired assassination. Also, in early 1983, Senator Girigi Lawan was attacked and wounded by armed men bearing machetes.131 Some killings were not necessarily personally motivated but seemed premeditated. On March 28, 1984, Adeshina Ettu, a policeman, was hacked to death at about 3 a.m. at an address in Agege, a Lagos suburb. Ettu had come from Cross River State to testify in a tribunal for robbery slated for the same date. Mamman Nasarawa, the Lagos State police commander, reacted that “no policeman’s blood will be shed with impunity.”132 Perhaps the most prominent case of hired assassinations in Nigerian history was that of the journalist Dele Giwa, assassinated by a mailed bomb while at his residence on 19 October 1986. As the editor in chief of Newswatch, a major publication in Nigeria, Giwa was one of the country’s foremost journalists.133 Moreover, the sophistication of the assassination marked in a major shift in the threat posed to citizens. This event also led to widespread accusations of military involvement because the technical proficiency to build a device of that nature and the required parts were not available to the public.134 Some narratives on Giwa’s assassination indicate he might have been involved with the military intelligence officers who

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wanted to silence him.135 Although the police investigation into Giwa’s death never led to a substantive outcome, renowned Lagos lawyer Gani Fawehinmi implied that Giwa’s death “was a case of state terrorism, a politically motivated assassination.”136 In addition to Giwa, several other notable Nigerians were murdered during the era of military rule. Suspected assassinations included that of Vice Admiral Muftau Adegoke Babatunde Elegbede, gunned down in front of his wife on 19 June 1994 along the Gbagada/Owonshoki expressway in Lagos.137 Chief Alfred Rewane, a financier of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and openly vocal critic of Abacha’s authoritarian regime, was gunned down on 6 October 1995 at his residence, 100 Oduduwa Crescent, in Ikeja.138 Shortly after his death, Alhaji Ibrahim Coomassie, the inspector-general of police, directed the anti-robbery section of the CID, Adeniji-Adele Division, to work with the Lagos State Police Command in a much-publicized attempt to solve the Rewane case. The investigation was discontinued and then reassigned to a different law enforcement agency. As of this writing, the case is yet to be solved.139 In May 1996, Rear Admiral Olu Omotehinwa, of the navy, was killed in his home by suspected assassins. The assailants left without taking any valuables.140 An exceptionally high-profile assassination case was that of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, a Nigerian prodemocracy campaigner and wife of M. K. O. Abiola.141 M. K. O. Abiola was widely believed to have won the 1993 presidential elections in Nigeria but was detained by the military government. During his detention, on 4 June 1996, as his wife was being driven in her Mercedes-Benz around 7-Up Depot/Bus Stop in Ikeja, she was attacked by men with machine guns. Along with her driver, she died on the spot.142 Alhaja Suliat Adedeji, a popular businesswoman and politician, was murdered by a suspected assassin in her Iyaganku, Ibadan, home on 14 November 1996.143 Then there was the wife of Bisoye Tejuoso. She was then the chief, “Iyalode of Egbaland and mother of a prominent Egba traditional ruler [and] was murdered in Abeokuta on the 19th of September 1996.”144 Toyin Onagoruwa, son of the former federal attorney-general and minister of justice, was also murdered.145 Fragile Safety Police authorities often made much of how those who committed these murders would be brought to justice. And indeed, there were some arrests. Nevertheless, the pattern of these cases tended to be the same: public outcry, public statements by the authorities, and prosecutions that failed to convince many. This was what many came to expect of the NPF in response to assassinations

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during military rule: “a theory of armed robbery attack, followed by a spate of arrests and then a sloppy and half-hearted prosecution.”146 For the general population living under military rule, safety was fragile. Hired assassinations meant that even those in high political office were unsafe. For everyone else, the threat of armed robbery and violent crime was real. Not even the police were spared from this threat; many lost their lives both in the line of duty and in plain clothes outside of work. Armed robbers who could outgun the police meant that Special Anti-Robbery Squads (SARS) were soon explored. Regular police units were neither trained nor equipped to contain the threat of armed robbery. Chapter 14 examines that particular response and its implications for security in Nigeria after military rule. Notes 1. Alabi-Isama, The Tragedy of Victory. 2. Executed Today, “1995: 43 Armed Robbers.” 3. Nigerian Tribune, 17 October 1988. 4. Daily Champion, 14 December 1988. 5. Siollun, Oil, Politics, and Violence; Uwechue, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War. 6. Nixon, “Self-Determination”; Uwechue, Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War. 7. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 224. 8. Oyakhiromen, The Patterns and Trends of Crimes in Lagos, 1967–1996, 180, 196; Nigeria Police Force, Abstracts of Crime and Offences Statistics, 1987– 1991, 3, 12, 16, 20, 24; Nigeria Police Force, Abstracts of Crime and Offences Statistics, 1992–1996, 3, 7, 11, 15, 19; Nigeria Police Force, Abstracts of Crime and Offences Statistics, 1993; Nigeria Police Force, Annual Abstracts of Statistics, 198. 9. Ibid. 10. Adisa, “Urban Violence in Lagos,” 116. 11. Ibid.. 12. Drafted on 29 March 1984, Decree No. 4 was enacted primarily as a punitive order against writers of false or disparaging statements against Buhari’s military government. 13. Federal Republic of Nigeria, Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act), 1. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Obadina, “43 Convicted Armed Robbers Are Put to Death in Nigeria.” 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Federal Republic of Nigeria, Robbery and Firearms, 2–4. 20. Ibid., 4. 21. Ibid. 22. Note the new opening term of the decree. Daily Sketch, 24 November 1997. 23. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 200. 24. Omotola and Adeogun, Law and Development, 312–330.

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25. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 106. 26. Ibid., 142. 27. Ibid., 150–154. 28. Ibid., 152–156. 29. Ibid., 72. 30. Ibid., 187. 31. Ibid., 198. 32. Ibid., 198–199. 33. Ibid., 38. 34. Amadi, Ethics in Nigerian Culture, 15. 35. Adewoye, The Judicial System in Southern Nigeria, 5–6. 36. Daily Times (Lagos), 1 October 1986. 37. Okeke, interview with author. 38. Ibid. 39. As I understand it, this remains the case today. One senior police officer interviewed gave examples of where he was part of a police delegation to the National Assembly to defend the police budget to lawmakers. Despite passionate appeals and statistics-backed analysis of the budget by sound and very senior police personnel in Nigeria, the police never got its budget. 40. Guardian, 5 October 1986; Nigerian Tribune, 18 October 1986. 41. Punch, 31 October 1986. 42. Ibid. 43. Marenin, “The Anini Saga,” 260. 44. Okeke, interview with author. 45. Ibid. 46. Daily Times, 4 November 1992, 17. 47. Obadina, “43 Convicted Armed Robbers Are Put to Death in Nigeria, Africa.” 48. Marenin, “Anini Saga.” 49. Obadina, “43 Convicted Armed Robbers Are Put to Death in Nigeria, Africa.” 50. Alemika, “Criminal Violence and Insecurity in Lagos State, Nigeria,” 82–83. 51. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 187. 52. Obadina, “43 Convicted Armed Robbers Are Put to Death in Nigeria, Africa.” 53. Adisa, “Urban Violence in Lagos,” 113–114. 54. Adisa, Osaghae, Touré, Kouamé, and Albert, Urban Violence in Africa. 55. Nigerian Herald, 6 March 1985. 56. Sunday Times Magazine, 26 April 1992. 57. Ibid. 58. Daily Times, 14 January 1970, 11. 59. The Nigerian pound was the country’s official currency between 1907 and 1973. It was on parity with the British pound and could be readily converted via foreign exchange centers, available widely across the federation by the late 1960s. Daily Times, Wednesday 7 January 1970, 3. 60. Adisa, “Urban Violence in Lagos,” 115. 61. Olukoju, “The Politics of Free Trade Between Lagos and the Hinterland,” 86. 62. Echeruo, Victorian Lagos, 22. 63. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 72. 64. Daily Times, 3 November 1960, 1. 65. This section draws on the now defunct periodical Headlines, no. 3, June 1973. 66. De Montclos, Violence et Seécurité Urbaines en Afrique du Sud et au Nigeria. 67. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 191. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid.

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70. Ibid. 71. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 193. 72. Headlines, no. 3, June 1973. 73. Ibid. 74. Omipidan, The Real Story of Ishola Oyenusi. 75. Headlines, no. 3, June 1973. 76. Headlines, no. 3, June 1973. 77. Public Execution of Oyenusi; the video wrongly identifies the execution as that of Babatunde Folorunsho. This is incorrect. Folorunso, alias “Onilace” was killed at the stake on 24 April 1971. The video shows Oyenusi and his gang, killed by firing squad on 8 September 1971. 78. Headlines, no. 3, June 1973. 79. Headlines, no. 3, June 1973. 80. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 197. 81. Public Execution of Oyenusi. 82. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 198. 83. Headlines, no. 3, June 1973; Public Execution of Oyenusi; Omipidan, Real Story of Ishola Oyenusi. 84. Ibid. 85. Headlines, no. 3, June 1973; Daily Times, Thursday, 9 September 1971, 1. 86. Punch, 22 October 1986. 87. Okeke, interview with author. 88. Sunday Punch, “Etakibuebu, Godwin,” 19 October 1986. 89. This Week, 15 December 1986. 90. New Nigerian (Kaduna), 9 December 1986; Nigerian Tribune, 10 December 1986. 91. Punch, 22 October 1986. 92. Okeke, interview with author. 93. Nigerian Tribune, 10 December 1986. 94. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini. 95. Ibid. 96. New Nigerian (Kaduna), 9 December 1986; Nigerian Tribune, 10 December 1986. 97. Sunday Tribune, 5 October 1986. 98. Oshunkeye, “Wadume, Anini the Robber, and Their Friends in Uniforms.” 99. Marenin, “The Anini Saga,” 262–263. 100. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini. 101. Oshunkeye, “Wadume, Anini the Robber, and Their Friends in Uniforms.” 102. Marenin, “The Anini Saga,” 262–263. 103. Oshunkeye, “Wadume, Anini the Robber, and Their Friends in Uniforms.” 104. Ibid. 105. Guardian, 25 October 1986. 106. Marenin, “The Anini Saga,” 263. 107. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid. 110. Guardian, 19 November 1986, 18. 111. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini. 112. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini. 113. Okeke, interview with author. 114. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini.

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115. West Africa (London), 19 January, 23 February, and 2 March 1987. 116. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini. 117. Ibid. 118. West Africa (London), 19 January 1987; West Africa (London), 23 February 1987; West Africa (London), 2 March 1987. 119. Marenin, “Anini Saga,” 265. 120. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini. 121. Ibid. 122. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini. 123. West Africa (London), 19 January 1987; West Africa (London), 23 February 1987; West Africa (London), 2 March 1987. 124. News Unlimited, Lawrence Nomanyagbon Anini. 125. Colonel John Mark Inienger was the Bendel State military governor between August 1985 and December 1987. Nevertheless, he was on official leave when Prince Kingsley Eweka was sentenced to death. So it was not Inienger, but the acting governor, Captain Salahudeen Akano of the navy, who signed Eweka’s execution papers. All other execution papers of the group discussed here were signed by Inienger. 126. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 213. 127. Sunday Champion, 26 August 1990. 128. Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos. 129. Daily Champion, 1 May 1994. 130. Adisa, “Urban Violence in Lagos,” 117. 131. Ibid. 132. Ibid. 133. Guardian, 20 October 1986. 134. Mbeke-Ekanem, Beyond the Execution, 29–30. 135. Adisa, “Urban Violence in Lagos,” 117–118; Osifodunrin, Violent Crimes in Lagos, 233. 136. Adisa, “Urban Violence in Lagos,” 118. 137. Siollun, “Babangida: His Life and Times.” 138. Vanguard, “Assassination of Pa Rewane.” 139. Ibid. 140. Agbola, “Appendix One,” 121–122. 141. Ngozika, “Politics and Gender Based Violence in Nigeria.” 142. Ibid., 166; Daily Mail (Nigeria), The Brutal Assassination of Kudirat Abiola.” 143. Agbola, “Appendix One.” 144. Ibid. 145. Guardian (Nigeria), Olu Onagoruwa. 146. Abegunde, “Recurrent Syndrome of Brutalization and Human Rights Abuse by Nigerian Police,” 140.

13 Legacies of Military Rule

Whereas public firing squads and the denial of appeal against the judgment of military tribunals are now a relic of a bygone era in Nigerian history, many pathologies emerged from the police institution of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s that remain today. The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) under military rule went into decline. Contrary to claims by the military governments that they would build and reform the police institution, they actually neglected it. As Ebonugwo and Adelaja write, “It is not exactly known when fortunes of the Nigeria Police as a crime-fighting force nosedived, but there is palpable agreement that things took a turn for the worse in the Force following termination of the Second Republic.”1 As part of the reason for this decline, The military authorities who were visibly irked by the overbearing presence of the MOPOL unit of the police simply went out of their way to cut the Force down to size, relegating it in the process to the servile role of only enforcing the law in the breach. This demeaning of the Force continued in successive military regimes such that the police was eventually forced to evolve a process of its own survival in the face of institutionalised neglect.2

Benjamin Okereke Brownson likewise writes on the negative influence of military rule on the NPF: “Under the military, the police gradually deteriorated. It became possible to cite them for the most heinous to the most trivial acts that violate the citizens’ rights whose friend they purported to be. The police were involved in innumerable cases of extra-judicial killings of innocent citizens.”3

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The Undermining Effect of Military-Era Task Forces Ad hoc police task forces added a more sinister dimension to the negative impact of military rule on police practices. In Lagos State, a task force code-named Operation Sweep was established ostensibly in response to the rise in violent crime and the police force’s apparent struggle against violent armed robberies. Colonel Buba Marwa, a governor installed in Lagos by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha, inherited the task force from his predecessor, Colonel Olagunsoye Oyinloa, and popularized Operation Sweep by equipping and funding its operatives. On the surface, the military-created police task force appeared to reduce crime, but a closer look demonstrates otherwise. These task forces comprised men from the army, navy, air force, and police. In Lagos, Marwa’s military government actually funded and supported the task force, so it succeeded in reducing some crime in the state. Nevertheless, interview data indicates that Lagosians were divided on whether the task force was a success or a failure. Some applauded the crime-fighting abilities of the police task force. Some accused it of human rights abuse. Others argued that the police force as a whole would have performed better with the logistical support focused in the task force. The justification for police task forces was that the worrisome levels of violent crime and the increased sophistication of criminals required a drastic response. However, the military government’s establishment of task forces only worsened the police force’s image as an incompetent and inefficient agency with the primary responsibility of controlling and preventing crime at the expense of community relations. Ironically, funding denied to the police went to the military-created task forces. The police force might well have been in a better position to fulfil its role if the money spent on task force creation was, instead, earmarked for improved police salaries, equipment, and logistics. Moreover, some of the task forces were established without legal grounding, or, even if their creation were lawful, they were given immunity against legal proceedings. Such immunity came either through the military governments that formed them or via the prohibition of court jurisdiction to inquire into and rule against task force activity. A case study of this phenomenon is the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force, created during the Ogoni struggle for minority rights. Members of the task force carried out massive human rights abuses without Abacha’s military government sanctioning its operatives despite several cases made public. On the contrary, its first commander, Major Paul Okunmtimo, was promoted to lieutenant-colonel rank, seemingly in reward for the horrendous acts of the task force. Because the task forces usually included police personnel, the police learned bad habits in the culture of impunity the soldiers enjoyed. Combined

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with the fact that the police force in Nigeria was already a coercive institution, these military task forces did the police culture much harm and no real good. Normally, the police force is expected to operate under the law and thus be answerable to the law. But under the military dictatorships, the police were above the law, and this was reinforced by the regimes in Nigeria. In April 1998, a former inspector-general of police, Ibrahim Coomassie, stated that “men and women of the (police) force have been serving under a harsh political environment, torn in between military authoritarianism and civil society so much so that they have lost their civil traditions.”4 This loss of civil traditions can be seen in the negative public perception of the ad hoc security task forces, the poor human rights record of law enforcement agencies in general, and that of the police in particular across Nigeria. Coomassie’s words have to be taken, however, with a pinch of salt considering the prominent role the police played in every military government. The inspector-general sat in the inner sanctum of power and was above ministers and the chief justice of Nigeria in the military order. Therefore, the police leadership was complicit in the loss of civil traditions that Coomassie bemoans. Military rule also damaged the police institution by removing or greatly diminishing police accountability for wrongdoing against citizens. As Brownson observes, “The military pays scant regards for the rights of the citizen. Under the military, the rule of law gives way to the rule of force as backed by decrees, most of which make the police unaccountable for their actions” (75– 76). Some of these decrees, which I discussed in Chapter 12, created draconian legal practices and excuses for human rights violations. The military institution was not the only one at fault here; the NPF employed the decrees in their violation of human rights. Indeed, Nwankwo et al. observe how over the decades, “the perception of the police force by the public has been that of an unfriendly, brutal force. The result is that the expression ‘the police is your friend’ is at best seen by the public as a wicked irony.”5 The NPF came to be viewed as antiheroic in the way it dispensed its security duties. Ironically, the police force in Nigeria under military rule did itself a disservice by feeding the narrative that the institution was unfit for its purpose and in need of reform because of the way it handled cases and convictions. Wrongful Convictions and Perversion of Justice Wrongful convictions in the era of military rule in Nigeria occurred for many reasons. Poor police investigations, weak management of cases, inadequate collection and presentation of evidence, and the presumption that suspects were guilty often came with heavy-handedness during arrest and

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detention of suspects. Perhaps the best way to illustrate these problems of police misconduct in Nigeria is to examine case studies. In one case, two suspected armed robbers notorious for terrorizing a particular neighborhood in the Jos area of Plateau State had to be released without charge by a high court judge because police “inefficiency” led to a lack of evidence. The suspects Mustapha Muhammad and Amos Emmanuel, were released even though one of their accomplices, caught in the act of a robbery in Bauchi, had implicated them. In another instance, Monday Ilada Prosper, a car driver, allegedly abandoned his boss on the side of the road in Edo State. Prosper’s actions were allegedly motivated by his boss’s maltreatment, including not paying his salary for three months. Prosper was sentenced to death for his crime based on two counts of attempted armed robbery. The harsh criminal sentence is in line with the military government’s low tolerance for violent crime. Prosper’s specific crimes were, at the time, punishable under Section 1(2)(b) and Section 2(2)(a) of the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions Act) of 1984. The second count of attempted robbery was withdrawn during prosecution. Nevertheless, even a single count of robbery with violence, under the constitution in the era of military rule, was sufficient to earn the accused a sentence of death by hanging. In this case, the police who investigated Prosper’s case and then handed it over to the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had failed to come up with witnesses who could provide testimony that could be corroborated. Under cross-examination, Prosper’s boss noted that Prosper took a bag of sand from the car and emptied it into his eyes. However, the police officer who supposedly investigated the case contradicted this key witness in stating that the driver took the sand used to commit the offense from the side of the road. The police also claimed that Prosper’s boss, upon being abandoned, made his way to the Etete Police Station to lodge his complaint. Yet, not only did the police fail to produce the said witness statement but also they did not have, or perhaps failed to take, proof that Prosper’s boss had been assaulted or had sand emptied into his eyes. Despite these problematic issues with the police case, and despite Prosper’s claims that he made his confession under duress, the Edo State High Court found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Luckily for Prosper, upon appeal eight years later, after the transition to civilian rule, the court of appeals in Benin identified concerns with the original police investigation. The appeals court overturned the high court’s judgment and threw out the case, setting Prosper free. Both of these cases reveal the heart of the NPF’s issues not only under military rule but beyond. The police force undermined the criminal justice system with incompetence in the way it investigated cases and presented them to the DPP. Also, many suspects were detained for periods far beyond

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that allowable by law and wrongfully convicted because of negligent management of evidence in criminal investigations. The issues identifiable with the NPF under military rule, in the area of wrongful convictions, were highlighted in the Danmadami Report that notes police funding has been deprioritized by governments since the end of the civil war in 1970. This led to shortfalls in police investigative capacity, training, and program and practices that should have been institutionalized, which would have helped police personnel engage in better law enforcement.6 These flaws in the police institution first manifested during military rule, when the integrity of Nigeria’s rule of law was at its lowest ebb, with the governments themselves being illegitimate. Weaknesses in the administration of the criminal justice system occupied an entire spectrum, beginning from the arrest of a suspect, their questioning—which in some cases approximates an interrogation—arraignment in court, and the vital evidence-gathering for court proceedings and the outcomes of criminal cases. And then, of course, come the sentencing and appellate stages. Where one or more of these processes is perverted by police incompetence or intentional sabotage, the trial might collapse; guilty persons might be freed; or worse, innocent people might be wrongfully convicted. The police in Nigeria play such a significant role in the conviction process because of the broad powers they are given under the Police Act and the Criminal Procedure Act (CPA).7 The powers in question include stop and search, arrest, seizure of property, and use of force in specific circumstances. Deadly force can also be employed in certain scenarios, including when a police officer’s life is in danger or another person’s life in the immediate vicinity is in danger, and deadly force is the only way to protect that life. Under military rule, these powers were abused, and their abuse was not properly checked. This led to an escalation of the negative impact on the fundamental rights of citizens. Personal freedoms were already limited under military rule, and policing that leaned toward coercion and abuse of police powers further infringed on those freedoms. Likewise, citizens’ physical and psychological safety were undermined because of this abuse of the police powers to arrest, detain, and interrogate them. Such abuses were particularly prevalent under military rule. Prevention of human rights violations, which should be at the heart of contemporary police training, was merely perfunctory in the police force’s development during this era. Furthermore, in a military bid to increase police force numbers at a time when the police to population ratio was particularly low, training and educational requirements for new recruits had considerably lower barriers of entry. This meant police officer knowledge of powers and duties under military rule in Nigeria was hollow. Moreover, the citizens’

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awareness of any limits to police use of force was undermined when trampling of fundamental rights came from the top down—the illegitimate military juntas. These institutional pathologies of the NPF under military rule resulted in the emergence of a consistent pattern of human rights neglect and abuse in the execution of police duties. In the section that follows, I take a closer look at the main ways by which human rights abuses were perpetrated by the police. This institutional entrenchment of such abuses began during military rule and is far from eradicated from police culture today. Some Arrest and Detention Statistics

In Nigeria, the police have been enabled by the CPA, which empowers police with arrest powers as long as they have a reasonable suspicion that a criminal act has been committed.8 In practice, police officers abused this power particularly during military rule.9 However, on paper, the percentage of offending police officers who arrested and detained people without due process during military rule might seem low. A 1991 study by the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) indicated that in a group of 863 police personnel interviewed, around 93.5 percent of them (807 respondents) claimed that in detaining a suspect they always informed them of the reasons for their arrests.10 The percentage of noncompliant arresting officers (around 6.5 percent by selfreport) might seem small. However, this is actually a problematic number because every arrest not properly conducted is an infringement on the suspect’s rights. All police officers should be clear on the arrest process if they are to invoke the relevant power. And in practice, far fewer suspects are arrested with the due process than such controlled studies imply. Even so, these numbers are an indication of the scale of the problem. Contrary to what appears to be the norm, handcuffing, binding, or subjecting a suspect to unnecessary restraint during arrest is prohibited under Section 4 of the CPA. However, a court order can mandate such restraint (e.g., if there is a reasonable concern a suspect will attempt to escape or apprehension a suspect will use violence against the police). The challenge here is clarifying, in a way that satisfies all involved parties, what “reasonable concern” or “apprehension” on the part of the arresting officer means. Here there is a historic disparity between what the law permits and what police actually practice. Police are often under the impression that their powers of arrest are more expansive than they actually are in codified form.11 Furthermore, in police practices with roots in the colonial era, suspects’ immediate family members and other relatives are sometimes held until the suspect is produced for arrest. The Biafra Police Force used this practice during the civil war. The practice also retained procedural currency in the era of military rule after

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the war. Whereas this particular element of detention is less observable today, the issue of pretrial detention remains problematic. Specifically, the issue of the police incarcerating people before their trial, even in maximum-security prisons such as Kirikiri, remains. Statistics indicate that “72.5% of inmates in Nigerian prisons are serving time without being sentenced.”12 And data from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) suggest that Nigerian prisons between 2011 and 2015 had “up to three-quarters of Nigeria’s prison population serving time without being sentenced.”13 In some instances, time a suspect spent without the due process of a trial has been more than a decade. In one case, one awaitingtrial inmate (ATI) accused of murder spent sixteen years in an Enugu prison in southeastern Nigeria without being tried, according to data from PRAWA, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that promotes the rights of detainees and prisoners.14 In many instances, inmates are detained in prison without trial for misdemeanors and relatively trivial offenses given the amount of time they were incarcerated. More to this point, Local police officers have been known to arrest people randomly for frivolous offences such as “loitering.” To secure their release, family members of those arrested are expected to pay bail fees dictated by the police in an elaborate racket. In other cases, inmates land in prisons only due to the suspicion of having committed a crime, and not an actual conviction. Arrests over petty crime such as shoplifting and traffic offenses also often see people land in maximum security prisons without being charged.15

Still, it is worth balancing out these negatives with some positive news. The data from Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics highlight a useful point for proponents of the notion that the country’s prison system compares well with those elsewhere in the world. Nigeria, officially at least, has an extremely low incarceration rate compared with other countries with large populations such as the United States, Russia, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Indeed, with an official total prison population of 62,260 in 2019, Nigeria’s prison population is less than 1 percent of the country’s total population, according to 2019 data from the World Prison Brief. When compared with countries with populations between 100 and 350 million people, Nigeria has the lowest prison population rate per 100,000 citizens (see Figure 13.1). If occupancy level based on total official capacity of Nigeria’s prisons is compared with the same subset of countries in the population category of 100 to 350 million people, Nigeria sits somewhere in the middle, with overcrowding at almost 150 percent of capacity but still considerably better than some countries on the list (see Figure 13.2).16

208 Figure 13.1 Nigeria’s Comparative Incarceration Rate (per 100,000 citizens for countries with populations between 100 and 350 million), 2019

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