Fool me twice

There is no place in the world that is totally free from insecurity and violence, but the levels in Nigeria are abnormal. What is really frightening is we have lived with these abnormal amounts of violence and insecurity for so long that we have acclimatized to them. In other words, abnormality has become normal, and we no longer notice or realize just how abnormal the situation truly is. In fact, I daresay if we had a single year of real normality, we might take more than a while to adjust to it, because we are not used to such things; we would probably keep our mental and practical defences on alert, assuming as we do that the period of quiet was just an interlude, an interruption, before the noise restarts.

We have an urgent need to reform the Nigerian Police Force, but that is only one point on a very long list of things we need to do to improve security for the average citizen. Constitutional reforms, political reforms, societal reforms, economic reforms, each of these is just a heading under which there are an even longer list of necessary reforms that have direct and indirect effects on insecurity, violence and crime.

Yet here we are in what is supposedly an election year, and all I hear is people talking about names, personalities and ethno-regional geopolitics.

No one is analytically discussing what any of these empty names will do about police reform or any other security-related reforms.

Note I said "analytically discuss", not "mention". I bet if you asked the leading candidates or their supporters, they would all say the same bland, meaningless things about how they will "tackle" the problem. I am not an old man, but I am not a young man either, and I have heard every one of these standard promises hundreds of times over every decade of my life. I don't know if they attend a class where they are taught a list of useless promises to continue making.

I have never heard a [u]believable[/u] strategy. And even if one is produced (which it won't be), there is the even greater question whether the person making the promise will actually carry out the promise thus made.

None of them has done anything in their careers that would give a rational man confidence that they would keep their word to reform law enforcement and improve public security. Most of them are beneficiaries of the current state of affairs, and would be subject to arrest and prosecution the instant our judicial and law enforcement systems became properly functional; to believe these sorts of people when they promise reform, you would have to believe they were suicidal.

The rest of them are perfectly willing to be the servants and errand-boys of the mega-corrupt, so long as they get to wield a modicum of political authority and get to keep a few crumbs that drop off their masters' table. Do you have any idea the political upheaval that would occur if any Nigerian government or leader truly and seriously fought corruption, and/or reformed the police and law enforcement? Based on their record, none of the candidates have the balls (pardon my language) for that kind of fight. They don't. It is why they seek the easy path of serving a corrupt power-broker over the difficult path of rallying ordinary citizens into a movement that would forcefully press for real change.

And yes, I include in this criticism that leading candidate who is the most experienced of the group. He has been around since the middle of the 1960s, and served as a minister in the very corrupt regimes of the 1970s. More to the point, after 45 years as a presence in Nigerian politics, he has had no effect at all on the status quo and has not advanced the cause of reform. Yet he has supporters who will insist that he will do this and do that, even though he has not done any of those things in 45 years....

.... and the same applies to the rest of the major and minor candidates. If we gave all of them 45 years, none of them will do any of the things their supporters say they will do. Hearing them talk about what they will do in office is like hearing lions and leopards promise to be vegetarians if given political office.

Why do we believe them?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Use the same ridiculous ruse to fool me thousands of times in a row, and I must be one of the supporters of any Nigerian politician.