[Ibadan Journal of Sociology, Dec., 201 9 , 9 ]
[© 2014- 2019 Ibadan Journal of Sociology]134was not structurally different from its precursor as there were changes
without change. Momoh (2010), talking from the general African
perspective has this to say: ‘the post-colonial state in Africa was
deracialized and Africanized but it was not democratized’. Therefore, all
the apparatuses of repression inherited from the ex-colonial masters were
indiscriminately applied without being dismantled. At independence, the
inheritors of the colonial state, in their race to catch up with their
counterparts in the metropoles, institutionalised state capitalism. This
soon generated its own antitheses. In the first instance, the state became
an avenue for access to wealth and protection and capturing it thus
became a matter of life and death. In the struggle for power, the political
system was polarized into two blocs. In the first bloc was the party in
power and its core gladiators, both at the centre and the regional levels.
In the second bloc are the opposition party and its core gladiators, at the
centre and the regions, as well.
The intra-class struggles to control power for purpose of wealth
accumulation became so intense that police and occasionally the
Judiciary, also got entangle in the crisis. The war-like politics soon paved
the way for the specialists in violence, the military; to come into the
picture (Basiru, 2013:8). Precisely, on 15 January, 1966, the Nigerian
military abandoned their liberal constitutional role of defending the
sovereignty of the nation to fill the vacuum created by the warring
politicians. By their entrance into politics, they became the new
overseers of wealth accumulation (Basiru and Ogunwa 2016:42).
Lacking in legitimacy but imbued with coercive power, the military
while they ruled had to depend on raw force to win the allegiance of the
citizens. To achieve this objective, countless draconian decrees were
made and the police became the major enforcers of these laws. In order
to ensure smooth administration of the country, the military centralized
all coercive agencies in the Federal Military Government. They were
deployed for purpose of intimidation and harassment of individuals and
groups that each regime considered as its enemies.
Interestingly, it was this structure of public order management
that was imposed on the people through the 1999 Constitution. Thus like,
the old order, the police are responsible to the Federal Government and
not to the state governments. The implication of this anti-federal
arrangement is that the party that controls the Federal Government
controls the police. Put differently, the loyalties of members of the
Nigerian police are to the Inspector-General of Police, who in turn, owes
his loyalty to the President of the country. Therefore, in any political
struggle that the presidency is involved, the police had always tended to
ally with the president. For example, few days after Mr. Mbu blocked
the way leading to the Rivers state government house, APC indicted the
presidency. In a reaction to Mr. Mbu’s action, APC’s National Publicity