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Question: Since
democracy through the electoral process is so clearly not going to be
the engine to the progress that we seek, at least in the short term,
should we pin our hopes on a technocracy and just leave the scoundrels
to fight it out? Could it work? Could you have a civil service and
agencies to regulate healthcare, power supply, oil revenue, security
and infrastructure, all the bodies required to manage and administer a
country, functioning on their own insulated from our undisciplined
political process, thus ensuring that worthy servants would be
fortified against the virus that has corrupted the political class?

It might even work
if we got ourselves a savvy president, who had a goal, was committed to
improving the country and enough gumption to realise that leadership
requires strategy and thinking and with the wisdom to surround himself
with those with the smarts to transform his vision into reality.

There’s a whole
tanker load of ifs there. Looking at it more carefully I can see it is
an overloaded tanker, very much like the one I saw two months ago,
sprawled helplessly on its side, giant wheels sticking in the air,
halfway across the Ibadan highway. Too big for man or machine to set to
rights it had caused the mother of all traffic jams on a Saturday
evening.

It was the
explanation for why hordes of people clad in aso ebi, families eager to
get home to start the evening meal were picking their way in between
the stalled cars. Clogging up the nonexistent sidewalks, bumping into
the cramped street hawkers, they wrestled their way through the motor
park touts, drivers, conductors and okadas in a vain effort to beat the
darkness and get home.

It took five hours
to travel a stretch of road that would have taken less than fifteen
minutes. There were gallant individuals, not state traffic officers or
policemen, none of those who you would have thought had direct
responsibility to do something about the situation, who came out of
their cars and attempted to assert some order in the chaos.

Whosai? The grid
was locked and I imagined it to be so all the way up that single feeder
for the fuel caravans going south to north. In simple English that
constitutes a security matter, not so? An accident occurs on the road
that is the vital link for crucial supplies of food and fuel across the
country.

Convoys of tankers
pull to the side of the road, I use this term euphemistically, drivers
lock up and go to find themselves some food and shelter because they
know from experience it is going to be a long wait. Their fellow
Nigerians simply regird their loins because there is no one to call, no
future in waiting for help and life must go on.

There was no
fussing or fighting, yes some cursing and raised voices, but nobody
went crazy with frustration and anger because their day had been
destroyed, a precious weekend of rest ruined, meetings abandoned, hard
earned money down the drain. Women tightened their wrappers, gripped
children harder; men rolled their sokotos and hit the road, walking
where they could find a foothold.

Hence this ramble, wondering what possible interim solution can be found to the Nigerian enigma because we really deserve one.

I remember an
expression of my grandmother’s about being faced with problems. It
went: you have two issues; one is always bigger and more important than
the other. Choices, priorities, action; that is the message.

This week Parry
Osayande, a former deputy inspector general of police and current
chairman of the Police Service Commission announced some changes in
promotion policy in the Force. He said seniority; merit and
availability of vacancies would now be critera for promotion in the
force. Candidates would be tested through written exams on the
responsibilities of modern day policing.

Those who failed
the first time would have just one more chance. Then Osayande said
something even more telling. “There is extra judicial killing in the
Nigeria police. We are involved and engaged in extra judicial killings,
even rape, and other forms of corruption. We use our power unlawfully.
We are brutal. We are involved in torture and intimidation of members
of the public. We are involved in illegal roadblock activities.

“These are the
things we have noticed, and everyday people are laughing at us. How
would your children feel if other children are discussing the corrupt
activities of their parents? We are now talking to ourselves, in order
to change. Before we can change, we have to know what is wrong with
us.”

This is a major
indictment of the police force coming from one who has served at the
very top of it. It paints a picture of a force very much like that
helpless problematic tanker causing mayhem and chaos in people’s lives;
murderers in uniform.

It is a remarkable admission and hopefully heralds the dawn of a new
day Mr. Osayande has seized on the bigger problem and has resolved, if
he is to be believed, on a way to tackle it. More power to him in
putting his words into action.