Tafa brought a thieving bravura (Fire For Fire). Ehindero invented a dubious incantation (To Protect with Honour & Integrity). Okiro was implicated in the electoral heist of Ido-Osi, Ekiti. Now, it seems Ogbonna Onovo is resolved to further this tradition of infamy with a totally different innovation: clowning.
This is very much in evidence in the deeds and misdeeds, words and silences of the Inspector General of Police since he took over three months ago. From his gaffe in demanding photographic evidence to prove Nuhu Ribadu’s recent visit to Lagos, to ascribing the brutal killing of journalist Bayo Ohu to armed robbery even before investigations, and now his latest putting perceived addiction of Nigerians to movies away as a form of social psychosis, our over-dramatic IG is fast rewriting the rule of engagement in the art and science of policing.
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Obviously, Onovo had cheaply hoped to extract a convenient alibi from the initial failure of the newspapers to publish live photographs while breaking the news of Ribadu’s surprise visit to Gani Fawehinmi’s Lagos home last month. How mistaken he was. Following his tantrums in Abuja, not only did the newspapers thereafter splash images of Ribadu’s consoling Gani’s widow when he was supposed to be the No. 1 ‘public enemy’ on account of running down Yar’Adua abroad (apology James Ibori), a few private television stations generously aired footages of that ‘commando invasion’ as well.
In summary, the charge of official negligence which Onovo tried to deflect ended up being, in fact, compounded after public attention was drawn to the fact that a high-profile police formation actually borders the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ribadu’s last port of call. Not to mention the other notorious fact that the complex of Lagos Police Command itself is only a walking distance away! Alas, the joke was on IG himself.
Indeed, if there is anything Nigeria’s officialdom is adept at, it is a penchant for throwing committee at problems, though as a diversionary strategy. It feeds on our affliction of collective amnesia. Then, in the ensuing frenzied hunt for answer, the original question is soon forgotten. This probably explains why many are not in a hurry this time to buy the ready official assurance of ‘leaving no stone unturned’ in the latest Ohu case. We always heard such line over and again at each murder report in the past.
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But to the reporter’s inquest Tuesday, Onovo had little or progress to report. Rather, he thought he could divert attention from the issue by talking down on the expression of what is otherwise a legitimate apprehension. With his bonhomie defined by a ringing voice and ready dimpled smile, Onovo should, ordinarily, be credited as a humour bag. But putting the now ceaseless inquiries on Bayo Ohu away as a hang-over of an addiction to local home video or James Bond 007 espionage series is, to say the least, carrying theatrics too far. It is not a laughing matter at all.
If public cynicism is mounting, it is partly because Onovo’s police began by declaring the theory of armed robbery here, despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence suggesting assassination. It sounds strange indeed that a gang of five or six would deploy weapons as lethal as AK-47s in killing a newshound merely to dispossess him of a laptop and a phone handset. Coming from an officer who had otherwise pulled off a golden record from his last posting as the anti-drugs czar at the NDLEA, such reasoning and verbiage are clearly even more curious.
At another occasion last week, the IG chose to pontificate on what he considers the chief afflictions of the force: corruption, indiscipline and lack of professionalism. Correct. But the truth is that Onovo’s diagnosis is not new. All the problems of the Nigeria Police have long been identified. Just as we are now also conversant with many prescriptions for cure. What remains is the will, the creativity, to implement the blueprint.
An even funnier twist would be added to Onovo’s new Nollywood theory barely forty-eight hours later with the reported arrest of two pastors in Abuja at the celebration of the nation’s 49th Independence Day for prayers considered too ‘subversive’. That day, the tropical sun had indeed draped Abuja with its tranquillizing effulgence, leaving the air taut with high expectation. Only for a stir to be caused shortly before the FCT minister landed in a blaze of glory, according to Champion reports Friday. The two clerics chose to, perhaps out of ecumenical exuberance, express their own patriotism by not only praying hard for the nation, but also severely invoking divine wrath against iniquitous rulers holding the people captive, ‘unless they repent’.
But the reverend men of God themselves soon turned captives as security agents reportedly swooped on them as they came down. One of them was identified as John Gideon. Thereafter, they were whisked to the FCT Police Command. While Champion did not furnish us with further report of what transpired at the police station that day, of big public worry – if not wild speculation - now is the exact portion of the 1999 Constitution likely to be cited as having been breached on account of the fire-and-brimstone prayers said by the pastors.
Isolated as this may appear, the symbolism will hardly be lost on anyone familiar with Abuja geography. The I.G’s office atop the Louis Edet tower more or less overlooks the Eagles Square!...
Rather than speak so derisively, Onovo should, in fact, salute the Nollywood as helping to defuse social tension occasioned by the failure of politics, its shallow plots and garish costumes notwithstanding. Also neck-deep in such unacknowledged social rehabilitative efforts is the European Soccer Premiership league. They both constitute the new social opium in Nigeria. Worldwide, Nigeria is credited with the highest turn-over of home videos per week. It is quite reflective of the bold efforts at the private-sector level to engage the citizenry. It tells of continued social revelry amid political destitution. Remotely, that should sound like another validation of our Olympian distinction of once being voted the ‘world’s happiest people’.
Indeed, faced by the spectre of ‘zero governance’ in Abuja today, many Nigerians are now surely hooked on home video to dilute their pain and sorrow. Just as it also looks fool-hardy to clamp down on pastors (as happened in Abuja on October 1). When Karl Marx philosophises that ‘religion is the opium of the poor’, it is surely to forewarn secular authorities on the folly in obstructing its traffic.
Without the men of God giving assurance of Paradise tomorrow, without the European soccer match fixtures to distract the teeming army of the unemployed, it is unknown how of many of our politicians and their agents like Onovo would still have had the temerity to appear in the public today without fear of being stoned on account of the pervasive hunger and anger in the land.
Going down memory lane, perhaps it is necessary to enjoin the likes of Onovo to avert their minds to the epic of how Mobutu fell in 1997, if only to realise the folly in violating what the people depend on as their own opium. While political historians may indeed differ on the many historic contradictions that eventuated in that unravelling, there is, however, a consensus that the onset of Mobutu’s trouble had coincided with the inauguration of the ‘authenticity’ campaign. The orchestrated new political correctness not only frowned at natives bearing foreign names, but also attempted to impose a new code of cultural conduct. Once denied pleasures they had been accustomed to like cavorting over beer and gyrating wildly to Makossa, the proletariat soon found their consciousness rudely awoken to begin to ask questions. Only then did it begin to occur to them that, over the years, not all the proceeds from the national mines reached the central bank…
Overall, the more uncharitable are likely to put Onovo’s current predilection to misspeak down to over-excitement at his new office, if not pure diarrhoea of the mouth. We do not know yet. But if truly he desires a less turbulent reign at the Louis Edet House as the nation’s chief cop, it may not be out of place to counsel that he would do himself good and serve public health well by putting his own lips under padlock whenever confronted by a tricky question in the public henceforth.
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