The terrain of the oil region alone is enough hassle to effective policing of the Niger Delta where creeks, swamps and huge bodies of water threaten any upland person. Yet, most of the security operatives especially the police posted in the region are from the Middle Belt and North of Nigeria with huge aqua-phobia.
That apart, the Niger Delta is reeking with armed gangs in the form of militants and cultists who take delight in killing security operatives, especially the police as if to vent their anger on those in uniform as the nearest symbols of the federal authorities. Besides, drug business, illegal bunkering, illicit refining and general acts of damage to the networks of pipelines are rampant in the region with the police as the enemy trying to stop them. Often, policemen are found floating on waters. Many more are never found.
Beneath this threat is the high temptation thrown as baits to security agents in the field as a take-it-or-die offer. Most policemen watch their colleagues grow into rich men from unknown sources and it becomes a problem saying ‘no’.
The most threatening of all however, seems to be the ‘new political normal’ in the region where former political followers or middlemen have grown into lords in the region, eager to dictate the pace of rulership, deciding who gets what. This seems to have transformed elections into a high-wired game of life and death where the winner becomes a king to determine how fast the loser goes down. Desperation has become the new affliction.
This seems to be where the new problem of a police officer posted to the region, especially Rivers State, starts. In a state where the middle ground (neutrality) has since disappeared into two party lines, the ability of any police officer in the state to prove that he is still neutral becomes almost impossible. Like in coup situations in the military, staying in the middle becomes evidence of ‘not supporting us’. Since the days of Mbu Joseph Mbu, any police commissioner sent to Rivers State is in the eye of the storm, always under scrutiny; is he our man or our enemy. Nobody ever would hear that he is in the middle, even when the gladiators would say, ‘We do not ask him to favour us but to be neutral’. Now, ‘neutral’ has acquired a new definition.
The politics of Rivers State turned volatile in 2012 at the take off of the state’s political crisis where a house was divided against itself into the Nyesom Wike/Goodluck Jonathan/Patience Jonathan camp as opposed to the Chibuike Amaechi camp. Mbu arrived as CP at that moment and was accused of coming to oversee a power-shift to the Wike camp. Nothing he did was seen as neutral until the huge outcry saw to his reposting to the FCT on February 12, 2014, to give way to Tune Johnson Ogunsakin from Lagos State to take over.
From then through the short days of Dan Bature, Chris Ezike, Musa Kimo now to Foluso Adebanjo who arrived on June 20, 2016, each of the CPs has been accused of being either too far in the left or right, or too much in the centre, which is an offence on its own. Now, the matter has gone beyond the CPs to focus on the top commanders of sensitive operational commands such as commander of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) or any person in charge of operations (O/C Ops), often an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP).
A CP can hardly go un-accused openly in Rivers State in these hazardous days of elections and rerun elections where each of the two rival political parties must win in a contest where only one must win. In every operation, the police must ‘offend’ either of the two fiercely opposed political parties. When the Department of State Security (DSS) moved to pick up a federal court judge at night weeks ago, it was the CP that went with the Governor to avert it, but the federal authorities frowned at the CP and he seems to remain silent to this day. Rather, the vitriolic attacks of the state governor have shifted to the AC Ops (Steven Hasso) and SARS Commander, Akin Fakorede.
Governor Wike has lined up all sorts of allegations against both men and in the last two days has taken to two-pronged attacks; a state broadcast targeting the police (especially Haso and Fakorede) and a street protest led by him to the state police command, each time demanding for the removal of both officers. That does not seem the end of his actions as he has promised to take further but undisclosed actions to ensure they were removed.
He said: “On behalf of the Rivers State Government and the good people of the state, we have to let the police know that enough is enough. We demand that the Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations, Steven Hasso, and the Commander of Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) Akin Fakorede must leave the state.
“Since you don’t want to protect the state and you want to be politicians, you have gotten the votes you want to get, you have also gotten the seats you want to get, you can now leave the state.”
Governor Wike further stated: “If they don’t leave the state, then we will do all we can to ensure they leave this state. They must leave this state. They have killed innocent people. We have come here peacefully. Communicate this to your superiors in Abuja. I cannot write again, since I have done that repeatedly. Please, I don’t want my people to die anymore”.
Aside Governor Wike, Deputy Governor Ipalibo Harry Banigo, Speaker Dabo Adams, Former Minister of Transport, Abiye Sekibo, former UBA Chairman, Ferdinand Alabrabra, former Deputy Governor Tele Ikuru and Rivers State PDP Chairman, Felix Obuah joined the march. The march was no child’s play as most leaders of the PDP stood to be counted, though the governor called ‘The masses of Rivers State’.
Before that, a direct collision between Hasso and the Wike team had taken place on the day the APC members protested at the Rivers House of Assembly. The governor said Hasso was the one leading the APC protesters to invade the Government House to make attempt on his life.
The APC had countered that it was rather Wike’s chief security officer (CSO) that was found by Hasso in the midst of APC protesters and wondered what such an officer was doing in that spot instead of being close to his principal, the governor. An ugly situation was said to have occurred between both police officers and this led to a query to the junior of the two, the CSO, and his redeployment away from Rivers with prospects of further disciplinary actions.
Police sources believe that most of those who staged a counter protest the day the APC obtained permission to protest at the House of Assembly were from the 22,430 persons just granted amnesty by Governor Wike where he said he recovered 911 guns.
Wike rejected this action in an open protest to the visiting IG, and has moved to demand for equal removal of those who removed his CSO. As the APC launches its own counter-protest, the state is once again back to the status of Baghdad and policing has risen to higher stakes.
As the attacks continue to fly from the Government House in the state against this son of a Adamawa-born officer who joined the Police in 1991 and has served in all the six geo-political zone of the country to make him conversant with the unique policing imperatives of each section of Nigeria, many now realise the risks and hassles of policing in the Niger Delta.
Hasso served at the Police Mobile Force (PMF) for a very long, sign that he must be a reliable hand. He was appointed as O/C Ops while serving as Area Commander, Port Authority Police (PAP), Lagos. This is why eyebrows are being raised in the accusations against some police officers in Rivers State because the likes of Hasso were still serving in Lagos State by the time the governor accused him of receiving N500m from Amaechi to subvert the Rivers election in 2015. Even on the Saturday December 10, 2016 rerun elections, Hasso was said to be rooted in the Police Headquarters as duty warranted. He was not anywhere in the field let alone carrying ballot boxes or snatching results as he is openly accused, an inside source revealed.
A police source said; “Policemen who worked on the Election Day in Rivers State faced danger at various times, yet, they are now facing verbal threats from political leaders. Imagine, a Deputy Superintendent, Musa Alkali, and his orderly were ambushed and beheaded in Omoku area, the hometown of the PDP party chairman. To date, some police officers are still missing. A police sergeant was killed at an APC rally in Okrika before the 2015 elections, yet there seems to be no concern for these officers being killed anyhow in the Niger Delta”.
Some have hailed the massive deployment of policemen (28,000) to the state for the election saying it was the only way the election could hold in such a volatile place, but others have condemned both the deployment of such a huge number and the actions of the policemen and soldiers.
In a highly volatile and totally divided state such as Rivers, the place of a police officer will continue to be disputed and policing will continue to be a thankless job in the swamps full of blood.
Ignatius Chukwu
