Legal luminary and public intellectual, Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare (alias Kwaku Azar) has explained that colonial authorities in the West African sub-region kept the police service ( then a police force) to basically ensure that the people did not constitute a political threat in whatever way to their authority.
This, he notes, was the reason why the police were quick to unleash violence on peaceful protesters with the approval( tacit or explicit) of the ruling elite.
He asserts that even though colonialism has been done away with, the thinking and structure of the police service have not changed, accounting for the violent conduct of the police service after independence in West African countries.
For him the ruling elite or class who benefit from the violence of the police service and who manipulate them for their own ends are unable to criticise other politicians who use the police to achieve their aims.
His assertions follow reports of violence and highhandedness (including the killing of peaceful protesters) in Nigeria and the apparent silence of Presidents in the West Africa subregion.
Prof Azar stressed that the ruling elite is happy to replace the colonial masters but not the “structures, mindsets, perks, and privileges”.
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Understanding why the police, throughout the sub-region, is so eager and willing to unleash violence on peaceful demonstrators is key to explaining why the leaders, individually and collectively, are slow to respond to such violence and why the response, when it comes, is rather tepid.
Historically, the colonialists structured the security service, and its intelligence, to focus on political policing of the domestic population.
The people were enemies and any and every manner of political activity deemed a potential focal point for organized opposition to the colonial authority had to be crushed.
Regrettably, not too much has changed even after independence. This mindset of the people are the enemies remains alive throughout the region. The colonialists left but left behind their colonial structures and privileges.
Thus, most, if not all, of the leaders have misused the police against their own people and cannot come to the condemnation table with clean hands. Even those who have clean hands do not want to deplete their reserves in case it becomes necessary to call the police to duty.
To be sure, the violence in Agege must be condemned in no uncertain terms.
But the violence also presents an opportunity for us to rethink, reengineer, retrain and restructure our security services and their relationship with the people.
This opportunity will go to waste if we expect the people who are the beneficiaries of the colonial structures and mindsets to be agents or drivers of change.
They are happy to replace the colonialists but not the colonial structures, mindsets, perks and privileges.
Da Yie!
