By Segun Ige

WE learn in different ways. Learning becomes easy when we discover a particular appropriate pattern to which we can easily adapt. One of the fountains of learning is experience. Someone said knowledge is power; but I think experience is knowledge.

Experience, first and foremost, is character-formative: it is through experience we discover who we really are, at least, at the individual level. Experience, more often than not, informs our action, reaction, decision and temperaments. The Nigerian experience of political progression, to me, is customarily when something gets out of hand that we become readily responsive and responsible.

Meanwhile, a lot of things have so been decimated and pillaged because of the inimical inclination of always waiting for things to get out of the gear. Before any institutional intervention, we normally observe, of course, that “common-sense” usually prevails.

I didn’t first take anything out of the parcel of incidence that ruptured in Imo on Monday, April 5, 2021, revolving through some civil-disobedience group breaking in on jails, incredibly freeing over 1,500 inmates.

Letting the Imo inmates breathe “fresh” air again, the jail breakers, who tentatively gunpowered the garrisons, making them deconscientised and decapitated, have absolutely demonstrated the during-the-day, especially early-morning, airy dregs of unprocessed humongous materials. The attendant “laying-off” of the Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, by the Federal Government on Tuesday, April 6, ultimately resonates with the groundswells holding sway in the political spectrum.

In a characteristically structured federalist system, the “sub-commanders” are rather held accountable for acts of misdemeanor, mismanagement, or misappropriation. Replacing Adamu with a Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Usman Baba, a month before the former’s extension deadline, is actually obtainable in America and elsewhere. You know, the U.S. House of Representatives was too impatient to run the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump – yes, seven days before his four-year tenure in the Oval Office, resulting from the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill crackdown.

It was argued abundantly that President Trump could have incited insurrection in one way or another. It was, in fact, a distasteful sight watching “Rightly” mob tempting the American basic law of democracy into jumping down from the pinnacle of the temple with Trump’s grandiose promise of the glories of greatness.

The astute resistant of the Democrats – notably Speaker Nancy Pelosi – was, well, a remedy in recovering America from – not just (unsuccessfully!) “cancelling” Trump from running office in 2024 – the psycho-emotional trauma unleashed by Trumpism, on the one hand, and restoring America to its peculiarity and particularity of democratic exceptionalism, on the other hand.

And since our democracy, every which way, is patterned after the similitude of America’s (clearly we operate a two-party system), it’s a fait accompli that the children could not but take after the fathers in matters of removal from office, sanctioning, restriction of power, and what have you.

Coming home, as Chinua Achebe would say, if one finger is soiled with palm-oil, it stains the others. So, it’s not just enough yanking Adamu – considering deep-rooted causes of crime, brazen brigandage, abduction, butchery and other nefarious acts, is far more important.

It’s not just enough pointing accusing fingers to the head on the breakdown of law and order, while the neck, the body and other parts of the body contribute immensely to the pressure, problem and failure of the head. You know, the head could knock off, easily, without solid, supporting, constituent parts. What else could be said of democracy if it’s not division-of-labour driven?

To put it quite differently, it was Confucius who postulated that the roots ought to be taken care of, because if they’re sick, governance will be terribly teeth-gnashing. Tracing the growing unrest in the North to Adamu is not really ideal, and I believe his replacement with Baba should not be consequent upon the gross disservice of this arm of government in the South East state of Imo.

Looking closely, I think we need to fortify our community policing. By default or design, the same sad stories are potentially going to filter, stochastically, during Acting IGP Baba’s bureaucracy. Let’s put on our thinking caps and reason together on the possible solutions to the tragedy threatening to overwhelm the country.

Community-police formations of Shege-Ka-Fasa and Amotekun – in the North and South West, respectively – would have actually gone a long way in curbing the pandemic of insecurity. If those forces had been much vaccinated, particularly in the North where Boko Haram and bandits have technically held hostage, those occupying Northern territories of the country wouldn’t have been perpetually vulnerable to domestic terrorism arising from religio-politico extremism.

I’m, again and again, inescapably metastasised by the ‘legal rebuttal’ of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami; I feel such a rejection should have been ‘resolved’ yet in the corridors or courts of power.

If two elephants fight, the grasses, they say, would suffer.

Ige, a Lagos-based freelance journalist, wrote via: igesegunadebayo5@gmail.com