Suleiman Abba: The armoured knight

Monday Column by Emmanuel Yawe

royawe@yahoo.com | 08024565402

The most comprehensive and compelling intellectual work on the Nigeria Police I have ever read in my life is that by Professor Tekena Tamuno.

As a consultant to Chief Solomon Lar, General Sani Abacha’s Minister of Police Affairs, I found ‘The police in modern Nigeria, 1861-1965: Origins, development, and role’ handy as I labored to recommend ways of reforming the Nigeria Police.

Tekena Tamuno was the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan when I graduated there in the late seventies. As an active sportsman in those years, it was from his hand I won the highly priced University of Ibadan colour in sports. Going through the research work on Nigeria police that earned him the doctorate degree in history gave me a sense of history and nostalgia.

The Nigeria Police, even before I went to study at the feet of the great historian from Okrika, Rivers State had always intrigued me. It all started with an incidence in my ancestral village in the late fifties as Nigeria inched her way to independence. On that eventful day, an amateur politician had just mounted the soap box at the market square to deliver his speech. “Tarka, Tarka, Tarka”, he bellowed with an impressive response from his small crowd of supporters. Just then, the bubble burst.

A policeman, (we used to call them “yan sanda”) in those days – moved with strength and pulled aside the table which served as the soap box.

The politician was thrown off balance and fell flat on the dusty floor. The policeman picked him up and was soon joined by three others who proceeded to arrest him. The unfortunate man – if you care to know – was a village school teacher, farmer, hunter, evangelist and an emergency politician. He was popularly known in the village as Teacher Yawe Abo.

He was my father. A fanatic of Joseph Sarwuan Tarka, he never saw anything wrong with his hero. He had been in detention several times in his efforts to preach the ‘Tarka gospel’ to his people. But this present ordeal promised to be his most wrenching.

We followed him as the policemen moved him on the familiar path to the house of the ‘alkari’ – the local judge. As a village teacher, my father measured his steps, moving on with the dignity accorded men of his profession in those days. But the policemen who arrested him nudged on, their sense of speed was not much in accordance with his sense of dignity. We too followed on regardless.

We soon got to the house of the local judge and the policemen did not waste time in announcing that my old man was in their net. The judge was in his bathroom and responded accordingly. “Lock him up for six months until I finish my bath before I look into his case.” From the way he said it, it was as if he was going to enter the Guiness book of records for the most prolonged bath in history. My poor old man who was slammed for six months. His offence? For shouting ‘Tarka, Tarka Tarka’, at a market square, he disturbed public peace in the eyes of the policemen who arrested him and the judge who convicted him from the comfort of his bathroom.

Those were the days in Northern Nigeria when the powers of traditional rulers were absolute and awesome. They controlled among others the police, the courts and the prisons. If you did not tow the line of the traditional ruler, you had yourself to blame.

The powers of the rulers, who used the police to brutalise the citizenry led to the first Tiv riots in 1960, just before independence. The British born colonial administrator and historian, Sir Bryan Smith wrote that more policemen were lost through that single riot than were lost throughout the period of colonial rule all over Nigeria. The Queens personal representative at the independence celebration of that year, Princes Alexandria, the Duchess of Yorkshire was billed to visit Makurdi the provincial headquarters of Benue as part of the ceremony. She was advised and she prudently kept away from Makurdi on security grounds.

At independence in 1960, the Northern Regional government under Sir Ahmadu Bello set up a Commission under Malam Ahmadu Coomassie, an educationist and businessman who became a permanent secretary of the ministry of education in the Northern region to find out the causes of unrest in Tiv land. That committee submitted a report which has not been released till date.

When Major Nzeogwu terminated the First Republic, his first speech made copious reference to police brutalities in Tiv Division. Somebody should tell Suleiman Abba that bad policemen like him can cause the collapse of a democratic government.

I have discussed the Coomasie committee on unrest in Tivland and the problems of policing in Nigeria with my great uncle, Alhaji Ibrahim Coomasie, the longest serving Inspector General of Police in Nigeria and son to the iconic administrator whose honest findings about what led to communal discord in Tiv land were muzzled. That is a story for another day.

Suleiman Abba was a very young police officer when Ibrahim Coomasie was the Inspector General of Police. In those hey days of Abacha’s tyranny, he was detailed to provide security to Maryam, Abacha’s wife.

Coomasie was then the IGP. How did Coomasie, of all the security chiefs under Abacha, walk away without a scratch after the inquisition that followed the horror years of Abacha. Has Abba ever heard the word professionalism? He needs a more careful study of his former boss.

The other day I saw his men lock out House of Representative Members at the National Assembly Complex. They also followed it up with the frightening attack of teargas against the members who tried to scale the wall.

Then, a few days after that, I saw Boko Haram launch an attack on worshippers in a Mosque in Kano. In vain, I searched for Suleiman Abba and his storm troopers to stop the carnage in Kano.

As a literature student in those days, I read about the Knight who kitted himself in a heavy armour and then proceeded to go to war with ants – yes ants – in a neighborhood where elephants constituted a major menace. In our present circumstances, Suleiman Abba looks very much like that foolish Knight