Mbu: A Danger To Himself And Society

THE Nigerian Police is in dire need of intense psychological screening, followed by psychological certification for potential and already-serving uniformed men and women, judging by another set of recent unreasonable words from Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Joseph Mbu, in Abeokuta during an official visit to the Ogun State Police Command headquarters.
The Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba,  remains openly aware of  the way Mbu thinks and acts, yet he posted him to the South West of Nigeria, an area known for people of enlightened, radical,  transformational and progressive minds.
Mbu knows all too well that there are existing  constitutional, presidential and parliamentary principles guiding the nation, yet he makes up his own laws every time he moves around and opens his mouth.
Mbu is an inconvenience to the current police leadership, yet he appears to be increasingly wielding unusual acts of power, as if in the belief, “You can’t touch me; I am protected by the powers that be.”
How long can we continue to allow this man to keep losing  it, a man known for disregarding the law, displaying intemperate demeanor, and abusing the power of policing, especially now that he is advocating possible mass violence, should one officer be killed in line of duty?
From the point of police psychology, if it were not for the reality that our young country remains overly disordered in its institutional arrangements and swims under a  chaotic democracy, someone in the  National Assembly or the Executive Branch  would be asking mental health questions to the Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman, about Mr. Mbu.
His recent posting to the West of Nigeria, Lagos, in particular, is not a blessing in disguise, as he is likely to be easily provoked by a people who are highly enlightened,  have a solid knowledge of their rights and will use the law to aggressively fight against misuse of police power.
Psychologically, it appears that Mbu’s current posting is a set up for him, as it might not end  well in Lagos, in terms of misuse of police power.
At a time the nation is undergoing severely acute electioneering stress, how can anyone defend sending a man like Mbu, reportedly known to have close ties to the present presidential government, into the South West of the nation where political enemies and an oppositional party  to the current presidency remain heavily influential and strong?
In effect, this type of political environment, in addition to the stress of his supervisory role in the West, could possibly make it easier for Mbu to be pushed into stress overload, fatigue, depression or frustration.  Any combination of these factors might have led him to share with officers and men/women of the Ogun State Police Command the inappropriate, awkward, and  infelicitous remarks, such as, “I said don’t touch my policeman. If you shoot my policeman, I will shoot twenty of you, I will shoot a hundred of you because we are coming to you for peace. We are not coming to you to come and kill you. You are not engaging us in gun battle. You are not armed robbers that are engaging us in gun battle…” “…You are having communal crisis, you are politicians, we are coming to settle you and you want to kill us, I say resist, I tell you again, resist. Anybody who fires you, fire him back in self-defence. Anybody who fires you, fire him back in self-defence but don’t fire first. Anybody you see who is firing at other persons, fire him because you are trying to protect that other person because the law permits you. You are empowered to stop that person from causing the harm to the other person…” “…I have come here to restore hope in all of you and to blow air, you know when you just have a male child, you blow air into his mouth and nose so that he can be like you. I love Nigeria Police, I love being a police officer and I’m very proud to be a police officer because only a police officer can do every other job and no other person can do a police job.” “…All the laws of Nigeria, there is nowhere they do not mention a police officer. So, the whole laws empower you. But you don’t know what you are. Do you want to be like pigs who do not know the value of gold? It seems to me that about 60 per cent of us or 70 are trying to behave like pigs who don’t know the value of what they have…” “…It is clearly stated in the constitution that there shall be a Nigeria Police Force for the Federal Republic of Nigeria. There is no other police force. The military can come to us in aid of civil authority. We are the civil authority because we are supposed to deal with harmless civilians. So, we are the civil authorities.” “…Our arms storage is limited because we are dealing with harmless civilians. But we have to use arms when the civilians are armed against us. In aid of civil authorities, we are the one in charge of apprehending offenders before, during or after elections. Every other person that is coming is only coming to help us. We are the authorities, we are the leading agency. So, you are a leading agency and you must take charge of wherever you are posted to.” “…Our duty is to make sure that the elections are conducted freely, fairly and peacefully and violence-free. There must be a code of conduct that you have to uphold to make sure that we actualize our goals. Don’t bring God into this matter because you have to work hard before you now ask God to help you. How do you work hard? You make sure that you prepare.” “…What I have no­ticed is that there is much in­discipline among policemen; they dress anyhow. Come to Lagos, they are more than 50 in my cell…”…They dress the way they like, they wear bathroom slip­pers, they wear mufti and carry rifles, this is not part of the police work. They are in the cell already, they are being punished and I know my men, within the next one month, they will change.”
Let’s just stop now with these examples; unfortunately, there are more of the ill-chosen, odd, bizarre and indigestible comments from Mbu, an Assistant Inspector-General of Police, in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
For a very ambitious man like Mbu, who appears to carry a deep brokenness in him, bent and bruised by both soft and harsh comments from around the country, he could gain from some form of help, as the warning signs are all too obvious at this time.