Photo File: Retired Commissioner of Police, Emmanuel Ojukwu

Former Commissioner of Police, Emmanuel Ojukwu, has weighed in on the unresolved case of notorious bandit leader Bello Turji, a year after the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen. Christopher Musa, vowed to eliminate him.

Speaking in an exclusive interview on Frontline, a current affairs programme on Eagle 102.5FM, Ilese-Ijebu, Ojukwu called for a more comprehensive and non-kinetic strategy to tackle Nigeria’s persistent security challenges.

Interview excerpt below:

On the issue of Bello Turji, whom Gen. Christopher Musa vowed to bring an end to, it’s been a year now since the vow. What is your thought on this?

Banditry, as we have it on this scale, started around 2010 with cattle rustling. For Bello Turji and other gangs, there are many groups of bandits operating in the North-West — in Kaduna, Katsina, parts of Kano, Sokoto, Jigawa, and Zamfara, where Bello Turji hails from. This is a young man of about 30–31 years, and he commands troops — boys who are willing to die for money. Their motive is money. We have known that people are greedy; they never get satisfied with money. The Nigerian security forces have been after him for years.

It is true the Chief of Defence Staff made that declaration; it was just a wish. He still wishes that Bello Turji be dead. There are other Bello Turjis all over the place. If he goes down, that is just minus one. We still have more ground to cover. There is no doubt that there is heat on the bandits. The Nigerian security forces — including the police, forest guards, and hunters — have been up against them because of the danger they pose to society. So, the heat is on.

The non-kinetic approach you mentioned is a very good measure. That a cleric approached him and they talked means that the man can be reached. Somebody knows where he is, where his arms are, where his men are, and somebody may know what his next moves are. Every Nigerian, and the security forces, can follow that lead to get the man.

The non-kinetic approach is a welcome development anywhere. What we have seen for the past 15 years since 2011 is that bombs, bullets, and boots are not solving the problem. We need the non-kinetic approach. We need to approach the matter more holistically. So both sides are working now.

Can we outrightly say the Chief of Defence Staff has failed in his vow?

Eleven months looks like a long time, but it is a very short period when you are dealing with issues of criminality. There’s no country in the world that has no crime, no matter the number of boots, bullets, and helicopters. Crime still persists because there are things that fuel crime.

In solving crime, we do what we call problem-solving analysis. If you don’t remove the source of fire, the fire will continue — no matter how many fire brigades you send to remove the smoke. You must remove the source of the fire.

What is fuelling this banditry? Unemployment, bad governance, and the struggle for scarce resources like gold. In Zamfara, the government has not given them good governance. So, Bello Turji and his group provide a form of governance to the people. They collect taxes. They take tolls from them. They extort them. Unless we are able to go there and remove all these problems that the government created but has not solved… eleven months is no time. Boko Haram has been there for nearly 20 years.

If you don’t deal with the issue from the source, you’re going nowhere. The Chief of Defence Staff has not failed, but Nigeria has failed to address the issue holistically. He is just one of the actors. He doesn’t carry arms. He is not on the field. He gives the police strategies. There are people on the ground. What is their welfare like? Do you honour them when they die? Do they have retirement benefits?

How do you think the man should be dealt with when apprehended?

The crimes he has committed include kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling, murder, rape, and extortion. In a land with government, if someone is brought to justice and found guilty, the government may grant him amnesty. It is provided for in the law.

But the issue is to bring him to account for his illegal activities. Until we get him, we have to keep fighting, negotiating, and putting more pressure on the non-kinetic approach. People supply them with commodities; they know where they are. We must carry the people along. It is not about making declarations. As you’re trying to kill him, you kill others. It is not about promises to kill him. It is a collective responsibility. A lot of people have been killed as a result of mishits or misfires. So we should make more effort using the non-kinetic approach.

Do you think we can believe what the cleric has said — that this approach is to bring lasting solution — since the Nigerian military force has not reacted to it?

It depends on the actors on the ground. No information is useless. The cleric declared it and he is a known person. Let’s interview him, not interrogate him. He is not the first cleric to meet with bandits. Sheikh Gumi negotiated the release of kidnap victims. Nobody arrested him. The thing is to cooperate with them.

I believe the authorities on the ground must have made moves to meet the cleric, get more information from him, and understand the modalities of this surrendering. Let him release his firearm. If you have 24,000 terrorists surrendering, it means we may have another 10 million somewhere hiding. They should follow that lead — it’s a lead. If he has begun to release victims without collecting ransom, it shows that he is already getting weary. It’s a matter of desensitisation — not a military move but a psychological one. Now that he has begun that move, we need to follow it more. We need to get more influencers — people he may listen to.

In a situation where a criminal is caught and granted amnesty, is it in any way demoralising for you as an officer to see someone who killed your colleague walk free?

A suspect is not a criminal until the law says so. If the court of jurisdiction says the criminal is sentenced to imprisonment or death, the government may release him based on its wisdom. They have that prerogative. In the heat of battle, you know that if you don’t bring down the enemy, he brings you down.

No Nigerian wants to die. But if the criminal is arrested, there are rules to treating a captive. Whatever grudge I have — that he killed my friend — must be put aside, because if I act on that grudge, it becomes extra-judicial execution. I killed him out of passion, not under the jurisdiction of the law, and I will become a victim myself — executed for killing a fellow human who had already been arrested.

People in the police and military have been trained on how to treat captives. They also are victims of a system that has failed them.

Do you think that so far, within the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, we have recorded some gains regarding security in the country?

Nigeria is a living organism, and it has been growing — in terms of manpower, education, enlightenment, and infrastructure. It’s also growing in terms of crime and how to do things the wrong way.

I can tell you the truth — governance and the perception of governance have improved tremendously. The government may be doing a lot underground. But are they communicating enough?

There is no doubt that the Tinubu administration inherited many ills. The former administration ran down the country. It will take time to revive the economy. It requires communication and good body language on the part of the government. Things are tough, but the government does not act like things are tough, judging by how they are spending money.

What can you say about the protest recently staged by the police and some voluntarily retired soldiers? One of their concerns is the contributory pension scheme.

During Obasanjo’s administration, the contributory pension was introduced in 2004. Workers contribute a certain percentage of their salary, and the government adds a certain percentage to it. That’s why it is called contributory. It wasn’t so before 2004. They got the idea from Chile, but the security forces were not included because of the nature of their job — the high risk involved. People die every day in the NPF.

Ten years later, they removed the army from the scheme but left the police to continue contributing. The police have been victimised. The pay is small, and the pension is also small. That’s double jeopardy. My pension as a CP was ₦78,000 — and I am blessed among others who retired with lower ranks and are earning ₦35,000.

At the age of 60, a lot happens in a man’s life. His health deteriorates and he still has responsibilities as a provider. Some don’t have houses. Some can’t pay their rent. In this country, some people earn ₦2 million as pension. They are not better qualified than I am. They haven’t given more to Nigeria than I have. And someone thinks I should be happy?

Some of us are like the living dead. That protest was timely, and the government has begun to listen. Many of us have done police service almost for free — pro bono. Government should look at it holistically and have regard for the service of the police. You can’t deal with law enforcement in this country when the officers have low morale.

Do you see a timeline to the promises made by the IGP to remove the police from the contributory scheme?

The police pay is not determined by the Police Service Commission. The government — you and the listeners — determine how the police are paid. Nigerian police officers are the least paid in Africa. Meanwhile, there are people in the House of Assembly earning millions.

It is the duty of the government to review the pension scheme because if the police go down, I tell you, Nigeria goes down. Other countries don’t treat their police the way Nigeria does. We further victimise them by calling them bad names. Between football and policing, which is more important? So we should consider our priorities.

The trust gap between citizens and the police seems to be widening. How can this be bridged?

The trust gap is wide and has been that way for a long time. It is a reflection of the trust gap between the government and the people of Nigeria. The police are agents of government that the people see. They are in 7,000 locations across Nigeria.

The EndSARS protest in 2020 was not targeted at the police but at the government. It started from the establishment of the police. The police we had until 2020 were not ours. From 1960 to 2020, we didn’t have our own police. A new Police Act was enacted in 2020. It is better now. We now have our own police. We now have to treat them the way we want them to be treated. We have to dress them the way we want them to be dressed. We need to train them properly.

We don’t train them. We put too much pressure on the police. We promote wrongly. We need to change our philosophy of life and of power in this country. Poor recruitment, poor training, poor welfare — they begin to misbehave, and the people run from them.

Retired police officers and soldiers have staged protests recently. Can the police go on strike to press home some of their demands?

There are terms of employment in this country. You prioritise employment based on niche. You can resign if you don’t like it. Nigerians created the police and can say, “We don’t want the police.” In fact, I’ve advocated that the police be dissolved so that Nigerians can sit down and decide what kind of police they want and the criteria to join.

If the police go on strike for just one hour, you cannot stay in your house. The fear that there is a law enforcement presence somewhere — like a big brother watching — is a deterrent to crime. Police are in charge of internal security in Nigeria. Police are the chief operators in the internal space. That’s why they are everywhere.

About corruption — Nigeria has a corruption problem, we know. We see governors who served just eight years and have ₦80 billion in this same country and they’re not being tried. Is it the police that will try them?

Some were convicted and sent to jail, and the same government says, “Go and sin no more,” and releases them. They go with the money and continue the evil. And we are all watching. And we want to blame the police for corruption?

We should stop seeing the police as the bad guys going to hell when we have bad government. I don’t think it is fair to blame the police for all that.