42—Vanguard, MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2012
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Y young nephew stared at me with the earnestness of inquisitive youth seeking answers to adult puzzles. He has just completed his final year examinations in the university and is at the departure lounge to the world without the protections provided by school and home life. There is obvious trepidation about the prospects of National Youth Service when sections of the country have become death zones with indiscriminate explosions of improvised explosive devices that leave tears of sorrow and blood in their wake. Perhaps to gauge my thoughts on the state of insecurity in the nation, he started with the question about state police and the position of the Northern governors. I knew this was delicate and I had to pick my words carefully. “I find it somewhat discomfiting that people oppose state police on the grounds that Nigeria is not ripe for it,” I said. This flies in the face of the historical fact that we once operated with local police in all parts of Nigeria. Even today, in states in Northern Nigeria that have implemented sharia laws, there exist local police calledHisbah that are used
The concept of state police or community policing, as some have rightly called it, goes beyond the mere control of the Commissioner of Police by the state governor
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union. This allowed the federating regions to largely take control of their affairs and determine how to run their lives. As a consequence, there was healthy rivalry between the regions and economic growth was impressive. Had we continued with the negotiated system, it is not debatable any longer that we would not be where we are today in the underdevelopment ladder.
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he military threw away the constitution and at the end of the long period of their dictatorship, left us with a decree nicknamed a constitution that was supposedly copied from the American system. What they did however, was to copy the letters of the American constitution but omitted the fundamental structures and cultures that make
On Makoko demolitions BY ADEWALE KUPOLUYI
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T last, Makoko has been levelled. But what continues to raise dust is the propriety or otherwise of the action of the Lagos State government. Just about a fortnight ago, the state government began on a good note when it met with representatives of Makoko and Iwaya communities through the Commissioner for Waterfront Infrastructure Development, Prince Adesegun Oniru, who intimated the people about government’s decision to pull down structures on the lagoon. As expected, the outcome of the meeting was thorny. While the government insisted that it will go on with the demolition, most ‘ of the inhabitants, on the otherhand, prefer a stay of execution, or at best more time, to enable them find an alternative before the exercise. In a jiffy, the government’s notice, dated July 12, 2012 and signed by Mr. Akin Tijani, Head of Operations, Kick Against Indiscipline, KAI, gave its verdict that the shanties violated the designs of its megacity project and that the residents had continued to occupy and develop shanties and illegal structures on the waterfront without authorization and thereby, constituting environmental nuisance, security risks, impediments to economic and gainful utilization of the waterfront such as navigation, entertainment, recreation, among other excuse. “Therefore, notice is, hereby, given to you to vacate and remove all illegal developments along the Makoko/Iwaya Waterfront within 72 hours of receipt of this notice”, the statement said. On a bad note, the government hurriedly demolished the structures. The State Commissioner for Waterfront Infrastructure Development, Prince Adesegun Oniru, justified the demolition by saying that it was done to protect the environment and the lives of affected residents. He said the persistent thunderstorm and attendant rise in the water level, occasioned
by climate change could result in needless loss of lives in the area in addition to the existing power infrastructure, like poles and power lines around the shanties, which could collapse. “There is an electrical pilot that goes across the shanties on the water, and we don’t want disasters to happen around that area, that was why we acted fast and took the action. The reason for our action is to clear the environment and the entire vicinity of the danger that is looming in that area”, he stated. Mixed feelings have trailed the demolition. Hundreds of residents marched down to the Lagos State Governor’s Office, to protest against the demolition as well as the killing of the Otun Baale of the Egun Community, Timothy Hunpoyanwa, who was said to have been shot dead by the police. Hunpoyanwa was said to have been killed while trying to make peace between task force officials, who were demolishing shanties, and the protesting youths. The angry protesters expressed their displeasure to Governor Fashola over the issue and that they were not reaping the benefits of democracy, promised them. The government had promised that the demolition of shanties on the waterfront, which started on July 16, would affect only structures within 100 metres from a power line installed on the lagoon but the joint taskforce extended the demolition beyond the structures and this angered the residents. The lagoon under contention is reportedly under the control of the National Inland Waterways’ Authority. A prominent Makoko community leader, John Maotin described the demolition exercise as “callous”, considering the short notice issued to them. He alleged that thousands of people had already been rendered homeless. He added that the fishing community ought to be provided with alternative places to live and work. A Senior Advocate of Nigeria and human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana in an interview in the Premium Times, lashed out at the Fashola administration, saying it is “promoting murder, orchestrating a
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BY CLEMENT OFUANI
to enforce the code. In various parts of the South, we have official and unofficial security organs that go by the name of vigilante services, but the nation strenuously refuses to accord them constitutional recognition. Quite intriguing, however, was the logic of the Northern governors who oppose constitutional recognition of state police but seek powers to control the Commissioners of Police in their domains. Trying to deconstruct this seeming illogicality throws up the fact that what they seek is benefit without the burden of responsibility. Essentially, they are asking for the continuance of the existing national police force structure where the cost of running the force will be borne centrally, while they enjoy the benefits in their domains. In effect, they are not opposed to the concept of state police per se but they are opposed to being made to fund the policing of their own territories. This logic or illogic is typical of how we have been running Nigeria since military intervention in 1966. Every effort is made to transfer cost of living to a third party in the name of common services. At independence, the founding fathers of this country negotiated a federal system as a basis for our
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Security and state police
the American system so admirable. So, ours today is a poor imitation or copy of the American system. In the US, they have city, county, state and federal police with clear jurisdictions. That is not to say that this operates seamlessly but there are clear rules in place to deal with conflicts among the various police agencies. The first advantage is that there is greater accountability as the city police chief is chosen at the local level and is accountable to the people in a good position to assess his performance. The regular police on daily beats are drawn from the locality which reduces the cost of intelligence gathering and analysis and increases efficiency in service delivery. In our own case, the police on the beat are drawn from outside their areas of operations which invariably mean that they are essentially in strange environments and the cost of gathering intelligence and utilizing it where this is done is disproportionately higher and therefore efficiency in service delivery suffers. The concept of state police or community policing, as some have rightly called it, goes beyond the mere control of the Commissioner of Police by the state governor. Take the security challenges in the North for instance. If Boko Haram sect members are meeting in their places of worship, how can police men posted from the South and largely Christians infiltrate them? Sometime back before all
What government appeared to be doing is to capitalise on the poverty of the Makoko people by confiscating their marsh land and developing it with public funds with a view to redistributing it to the elites
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massive internal displacement of citizens through forceful eviction, and waging a war of impunity against poor people”. He said the act amounted to a “violation of the State Rent Control and Recovery of Premises Law that have criminalised the forceful ejection of any person resident in Lagos State without an order issued by a competent court and executed by the Sheriff and Bailiff of the court”. he legal luminary observed that what the state government appeared to be doing is to capitalise on the poverty of the Makoko people by confiscating their marsh land and developing it with public funds with a view to redistributing it to the elites. The Environmental Rights Action/Friend of the Earth Nigeria, ERA/FoEN, has described as insensitive, anti-poor and undemocratic, the demolition. ERA/FoEN alleged that the 72 hours notice and commencement of demolition of the Makoko waterfront is a violation of the rights of the people to shelter as guaranteed by the Nigerian Constitution. It insisted that the plan to use the site for the megacity project is a ‘calculated attempt to seize the space for the convenience of the mega rich at the expense of the urban poor’. Similarly, the Executive Director, Social and Economic Rights Action Centre, SERAC, Mr. Felix Morka, described the eviction notice as “wrong and in total violation of the rule of law”. Morka said although SERAC had previously enlightened Makoko residents on the danger of building houses in unauthorised areas, but issuing the residents
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this terrorist madness, I was having a discussion with a friend of mine from Katsina and I told him that I was curious to understand how the Caliphate managed to police the vast geographical North in pre- and colonial times without the complex information systems that we have in place today and yet exerted significant order and his reply was instructive. He told me that the political arrangement was such that each village head was responsible for the peace and security in his domain and that if a person received a visitor, he was duty bound to inform the local chief. In other words, without an identity management system in place, they devised a means for the authorities to know who was where at any point in time. What this further ensured was that investigation of crimes was aided by the information system in place. It is therefore strange that the Northern governors who have this history behind them would shy away from it because they do not want to bear their own expenses. Clearly, they do not want to take responsibility for the security and well-being of the people in their domains and my nephew and I have serious reasons to view with trepidation the prospect of a National Youth Service call up where his life will be entrusted to people who will not take responsibility. •Mr. Ofuani, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Asaba, Delta State.
such a short notice was wicked. He said: “We condemn the action taken by the Lagos State Ministry of Waterfront and Infrastructure Development; it was done without proper notice. Therefore, giving people 72 hours to vacate their homes, under any circumstance, is difficult and shows lack of understanding”. Makoko was established in the 18th Century primarily as a fishing village. About half of the fish consumed in the state are said to come from there. Most of its structures are constructed on stilts above the Lagos Lagoon and for decades. Makoko and Iwaya land communities are built close to the lagoon and had served as shelter for the urban poor and other low income earners. This class of people flocked to Lagos in search of greener pastures and took advantage of the waterfront to build their own type of home that was made up of plank and bamboo by covering them with various kinds of iron sheets, cardboard and tree leaves. The area used to be swampy before the inhabitants built houses after filling their portions of land with refuse and rubbles. They live in these ‘houses’ on the lagoon like other people living on the land, bearing more children and expanding their frontiers close to the Third Mainland Bridge. As the people expanded their frontiers, the Lagos State government, in its bid to redevelop metropolitan Lagos, as a megacity, decided to pull down all structures that were allegedly built illegally, including those that constitute an eyesore. Since the mid-2008, the government has engaged in demolition of structures it perceived as shanties across the metropolis. Demolition of such structures has taken place in Mile12, Illubirin, in Lagos Island and the Ilaje community in Bariga. The Lagos State government, just like the Makoko case, in July 1990, ordered the demolition of Maroko community. This was carried out after a-seven-day quit notice announced over the radio, which led to the forced eviction of an estimated 300,000 people from their homes of several decades. Continues tomorrow
Mr. Kupoluyi, wrote from Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State.