Boma Alabi was the first female to be elected as the president of Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CWLA). She occupied the enviable position from 2011-2013. Boma is currently the senior partner of Primera Africa Legal, a law firm based in Lagos and Abuja. In this interview with NGOZI OKPALAKUNNE, she spoke about community policing, challenges facing the judiciary and other issues of national interest. Excerpts:
Many Nigerians have been calling for state police given the rising insecurity in the country. What is your take on this?
From my experience as a lawyer working with criminal justice system, it is important that we move forward from where we are to accommodate this suggestion of state policing. Take for instance, as a legal practitioner who goes to court, currently, I prosecute and I defend law matters. On either side, the police must be involved. So, there’s an Investigating Police Officer (IPO) who will normally have investigated an alleged criminal incident; he prepares a report and also if witness statements are taken while the suspect is in custody, that IPO is the person who is likely to have taken the witness statement, perhaps, as part of the team. Usually, there’s a witness statement whose name and rank is written in the statement. Again, if it’s a situation that involves armed robbery, it then moves from the divisional police station or local police station to Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) which is the investigative arm of the Nigeria Police. They again, will take statements; they would carry on further investigation. At the end of all these, when it goes to the office of the Attorney-General, the director of public prosecution will make a decision either directly or through delegated authority with one of the lawyers working with the ministry of justice.
That decision probably to prosecute is what then takes the case to court. When the case goes to court, the witnesses are called, one of the crucial witnesses is the IPO because invariably they get to the scene of the crime, they are the ones at hand and their testimony is crucial to establishing the case. Habitually, that officer by the time the case gets to court has been posted to a different place.
And for this officer to come to the court to give witness becomes difficult because he has been transferred to another state and it has to be him who tells how he investigated the matter.
This leads to delay and seeking of adjournments, in a bid to get the officer transferred back to where the incident occurred.
So, the delays in the justice system, a significant portion of it can be laid at the door of the federal police. It then birth the question, do we really need the federal police to investigate localised issues that affect the everyday man, such as shop burglary, domestic violence, fight between neighbours, landlord/tenant issue that gets out of hand? These are the sorts of things that the day to day citizen is faced with. So, it is the community police that is best equipped to investigate such matters, because they live among the people, they know where the bad boys and drug dealers are and when something happens, they know those who are involved. It’s easier to solve these crimes faster. When it’s time to go to court, the police will be available to go to court. There is speedy dispensation of justice.
There is fear that when you give them guns, the politicians will use them. That argument to my mind is already defeated by the fact that politicians have been known to use the federal police as well and other armed forces for their political objectives. They should define the scope of their work.
Just the way we have concurrent list for legislators, there is one designed for federal and the other for the state, similarly they should break it down in the same way. This aspect is for community policing, the other aspect is for federal. It is just to set up policies that will enable the community and the federal police to work together.
The Americans are doing it, they have different layers of law enforcements and security, so if we say we are copying them, why can’t we look at that. They have 50 states, we have 36 states. They run a federation, same as we do. There’s a define scope for the state police there’s a define scope for the federal police. There are areas where they have to work together.
If the community police come to stay; what challenges do you think they are likely to encounter?
We have gone down the root of ill-funding policing of our communities because there’s a gap. The federal police are not equipped to properly police our community. There is need for us to have local knowledge to police locally. Take for instance, when someone from Igbo land is posted to Sokoto, he does not speak Hausa, he does not understand the language, culture or the traditions, he has a different mindset and orientation. It’s going to take him time to understand the community where he is in order to begin to even see those things that you find in investigation. Investigation is not a black and white thing. You have to understand the body language and you have to understand instinctive and that comes with deep local knowledge. Because our federal police have never been in a position to really properly protect communities from these sorts of things, you find out that communities on their own will set up vigilante groups from the local people. Those groups are usually local men in the community tasking themselves in turns to watch over their homes and their farms to keep to the security of the areas. What has happened in our recent history is that politicians have also hijacked the local policing concept and turned them into their own personal armies for good and for bad or even ugly. They use them to terrorise other politicians. Take for instance, the case of Bakkassi, O’dua People’s Congress (OPC) and a host of others.
I’m glad that the Federal Government is now in support and it’s before the National Assembly. When that happens, you will find that in local vigilante groups there may be an initial challenge in integrating and working with them. I don’t see any reason we couldn’t recruit from there.
Look at what happened in Borno State when the army was working with the local hunters, they were getting better results. It’s a matter of approach. Then there is of course the issue of educating our people and orientation of the mindset of the community police. It will keep them far away from the Nigeria Police as much as possible because the Nigeria Police, the mentality is to protect government officials against the people. Not to protect the people. The mindset is to victimise the people. When community police come to stay, they should understand that their first and primary duty is to the people, the citizens of the country and that mindset and orientation should be ingrained in them from the beginning. Every step they take would be from that perspective.
How would you assess the justice system in Nigeria?
The justice system is under a lot of pressure because it’s chronically underfunded. Our judges are working under very difficult conditions. I have to say that I doff my hat to the judiciary in Nigeria. Not many of their colleagues in other jurisdictions will tolerate the kind of environment they have to work under. When you go to court, on the table of one judge is about 30 cases in one day out of which there are six or seven for hearing and yet there is no constant power supply. No air conditioner, no fan, no nothing. There is no research assistant because there is no money to pay and the judges will be the one to do the research. They have to sit all day, hearing cases in uncomfortable surroundings, handwriting the proceedings; not many judges in other jurisdiction would tolerate such in-human working conditions. Nonetheless, what they are doing even with those constraints is trying to expedite the ways of justice.
Recently, we paid a courtesy visit to the Chief Judge of Lagos State when the current president of Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CWLA) visited Nigeria, and the Chief Judge briefed us on the activities of the Lagos judiciary. One of those was to actually go through all those old cases, find which ones need to be settled, any case above 5 years, so they are taking very active steps to ensure those cases are settled or closed off one way or the other.
Do you think that women are well represented in this present administration?
None of the administrations has done well. In the course of this democracy none of the administration has given women their due. You can talk about elective positions where we contest, those positions the women are naturally disadvantaged because of the cultural norms; the fact that political meetings tend to happen late at night, its capital intensive to run for these elective positions, etc. You can’t blame any administration that women are not coming out to run for any election, but you can certainly blame the executive that is appointing. You appoint 30 ministers you cannot find 15 women. We are 50 percent of the population of this country. There are many competent women and there are competent men. Look at the President of France, Macron; he made sure it’s 50/50. We are coming out of the university same as the men are; women are achieving in all fields so you cannot tell me you cannot find a competent woman to appoint to any position in the country. From the Obasanjo regime, to the Jonathan regime, to the Buhari regime- they have all failed women and they can all do better.
