Lady ‘bully’ and her orderly

She could well have been a new pointsperson of the antipolar themes of the 18th Century fairytale about ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ She is a scholar of high standing – a professor at that. And she is a lady, with all the delicate virtues typically associated. She is also said to be a lawyer and human rights activist. But now she stands accused of the most egregious violation of human rights, learnedness in law and scholarly enlightenment put together. She allegedly assaulted and battered to pulp a police orderly attached to her for refusing to do menial household chores meant for personal domestic staff, not assigned auxiliaries like a security orderly. 

Professor Zainab Duke Abiola is presently in police custody and awaiting prosecution along with her housemaid, said to have joined her with another household staff – a male who is at large – in battering her police orderly, Inspector Teju Moses. A video clip showing the orderly in uniform, bleeding while seated on the floor and asking to be taken to hospital for medical attention had gone viral on the social media. The police, last week, said Abiola grievously assaulted her orderly in company of the accomplices on Tuesday, 20th September, at her residence in Garki, Abuja. The orderly crossed her principal, according to the police, because she refused to breach professional ethics by carrying out domestic chores at Abiola’s house. Force spokesman Muyiwa Adejobi, a Chief Superintendent of Police, announced the arrest of Abiola and her complicit housemaid. He disclosed in a statement that Police Inspector-General (IGP) Usman Alkali Baba took strong exception to the orderly’s manhandling. “The IGP has directed express prosecution of the arrested suspects who are currently in police custody, as preliminary investigation shows overwhelming evidence of culpability on the part of the professor and her domestic staff,” Adejobi said, adding that the police boss also “tasked the investigative team to ensure that the fleeing suspect is arrested and made to face the wrath of the law.”

 News had made the rounds that the ‘learned professor’ is highly connected in the police top echelons. But the Force spokesman said she only “name-drops the IGP, his family members and other officers in the top hierarchy” whereas she “has no acquaintance with the police in any form.” You could sense a faint ring of the police merely throwing her under the bus for convenience in that statement, but that would have been just by the way. Only you couldn’t help confronting the suspicion even when you tried, because if you thought Inspector Moses was the only police personnel assigned to wait on Abiola, you were dead wrong. Adejobi said the IGP had ordered the withdrawal of all police personnel – only God knows how many! – attached to her and voiced his disappointment that an individual who claims to be an advocate for human rights violated the rights of another person. 

Hapless Inspector Moses belongs to the police’s Special Protection Unit (SPU), which is a special unit of the Force set up avowedly to provide dedicated security for high-risked persons including political actors, diplomats as well as expatriates working on sensitive government projects and foreign direct investments in Nigeria. The unit is a creation of the 2009 Police Reform Agenda of government, although it didn’t commence full operations until 2011. At the opening of the SPU Base 25 complex in Asaba, the Delta State capital in September 2019, then Police Inspector-General Mohammed Adamu was reported saying the SPU was established to “fortify security around VIPs and diplomats who, by all ramifications, must be protected and guarded against any unforeseen attacks.” He added, however, that the unit also provides support for general anti-crime efforts of the Nigeria Police.

“What could have qualified a private citizen…not just for a security orderly but also a retinue of police aides now being ordered withdrawn by the IGP?”

The merit of using the national police institution to provide dedicated security for some persons – not just top political office holders – and not for other persons is debatable. Government has always resisted decentralising security provisioning and allowing private security services to thrive as could meet the needs of people who may need their services. At the upper end, debate has for long raged on the necessity of state police, with government reluctant to effect changes in the legal framework that would devolve security provisioning to the sub-nationals. While the debate lasted, states have gone ahead to establish quasi formations like Amotekun in the Southwest and Ebubeagu in the Southeast. But these are hamstrung by the central government’s reluctance to allow them bear arms needed to equip them with firepower against the high-grade weapons of criminals.  At the lower end, private security guards aren’t an effective option because of a governance framework that makes them effete and merely symbolic in security provisioning. Consequently, persons in need of dedicated security cannot but take recourse to the police.    

Even then, it is highly moot the founding vision of the SPU is what governs its operation currently. Take the case of the Abiola woman, for instance. What could have qualified a private citizen like the Madame Professor, not just for a security orderly but also a retinue of police aides now being ordered withdrawn by the IGP – other than being highly connected in the top police hierarchy, perhaps? The Police Service Commission (PSC), in its statement condemning the assault on Inspector Moses, alluded to this systemic dysfunction. Among other things, the PSC urged police authorities to review the operations of the SPU, noting that this was necessary to ensure that only few Nigerians who genuinely deserve dedicated protection get rendered the service. “The commission frowns on the abuse of police orderlies by Nigerians who now use them as status symbols or convert them to house helps who clean, cook or do menial jobs. With the security problems ravaging the nation, there is an urgent need to free (up) many police officers loitering in private houses and following big men around,’’ the PSC statement said, advising police authorities to devote efforts to policing and protection of vulnerable citizens.

Let’s just say the matter at issue can’t be better laid out than the PSC has done. Police aides have become a status symbol for affluent Nigerians, such that private citizens who by no means should be regarded as high-risked flaunt them in the public to show off privilege. People familiar with the workings of the arrangement say the serviced citizens, of course, pay the wages of their police aides and treat them to other benefits, like funding their quest for further education among other pecuniary advantages. For that very reason, the syndrome has in turn rubbed off on the police aides themselves as they openly savor their ‘juicy’ posting in comparison to other contemporaries, almost like boasting among themselves to the effect that ‘My boss is bigger than yours.’ Meanwhile considering the cultural challenge we have with corruption in this country, it isn’t beyond contemplation that some incentives go under the table for police aides to get assigned to ‘juicy’’ principals.

The catch to all these is: the police establishment is estimated to have under 400,000 personnel to service Nigeria’s about 200million population. It is owing to presumed under-staffing of the Force that President Muhammadu Buhari in 2018 gave approval for recruitment of 60,000 constables over a six-year period, translating to 10,000 constables to be recruited yearly. The procedure for the yearly recruitment of the constables has been a running battle between the operational leadership of the police under the IGP on one hand and the Police Service Commission on the other, which is yet to be resolved. On the whole, the percentage of the entire police workforce tied up in special protection services is uncertain. But if the little crowd dedicated to Madame Professor alone is a pointer to the model on which the SPU is operated, there must be extremely few left for the rest of us.