Solomon Arase: His patriotism and intellectual activism
Given the seriousness of writing a column in Nigeria’s revered gem of a newspaper like Daily Trust and the premium the publishers place on each inch of space, this PENPOINT column never profiles ideas, issues and individuals, for the sake of filling space. Rather it lifts into public discourse matters on which contemplations offer positive value to the wider society. That is why the focus of this piece on the recently demised former Inspector General of Police Solomon Ehigiator Arase, CFR, foremost police officer, lawyer and humanist, is not for any other reason but to highlight for emulation, his disposition towards public service, which in his case was the Nigerian Police Force. And when a man perpetually puts up a smiling face as he goes about doing a tough job, (which policing is in every aspect), it tells a lot about his inner disposition.
For such is a man who could keep his cool and have his faculties intact even in the face of the most extreme of circumstances. Also, when such an individual rises through the ranks in the very demanding career of a typical police officer – to the sublime levels of Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), and eventually that of Inspector General of Police (IGP), a cloak of distinction embraces him.
With respect to how Solomon Arase and my humble self crossed paths – it was in 1986 in Karu (FCT), a sleepy satellite town in then nascent Abuja (FCT), when both of us were young dreamy officers with different life and career aspirations and prospects. He was a Deputy Superintendent of Police, and I was a civilian working as a Statistician on secondment from the Federal Office of Statistics (FOS) now National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), to the Federal Ministry of Commerce and industry. Such were the days when the now ever-busy Abuja-Keffi Road was so lonely that you would not count ten vehicles in every five minutes, plying it. Hence retiring from work in Abuja city centre to Karu with the staff bus at the end of each work day, was like embracing the end of the earth as hardly would you be willing to allow any business take you back to the city, until the next morning.
Arase would drive to my house with his white Peugeot car, where along with some other like-minded friends we would banter over life in the country, in a no-holds barred manner. In his frank take on issues, he was a marvel of a police officer. Just as well, something about his passionate disposition to the police establishment as well as his officer colleagues, and his patriotic zeal struck me that the gentleman would go places in his chosen career. For instance, there was an accident along the Abuja Keffi Road which involved some police officers in which a vehicle they were travelling in caught fire and was burnt to ashes, whereby no occupant was recognizable. However, when a surviving piece of burnt cloth was identified as belonging to a police officer presumed to be one of the victims, it was touching to see how Arase shed tears of pain.
Soon after, as upwardly mobile young men, our paths separated only for us to meet in 2016 in his office while he was Inspector General of Police, and I had retired several years earlier, as the Director of Information and Publications in the National Assembly. A few chats like old times spawned the idea of a book titled the ‘Nigeria Police Force (1861- 2016) Establishment Profile’, which would contain the command structure of the institution from formal inception in 1930 to 2016, and feature rare collection of pictures of operational heads and commanders of various formations over the years. This was just at the twilight of his career as a police officer, yet he pressed on that the police service not only needed the book but it had to be done. Consequently, he had to order the release of information by all formations of the force on the history of their command structures – namely their past and current commanders up to the time of the project. Hence was availed the information on the leadership community of the force from its inception in 1930 to 2016, which constituted the content of the work.
This piece would have done a grave disservice without giving credit to the sterling contributions by several other police officers without whose enterprise the project would have failed. I am talking about distinguished officers like then PPRO, ACP Olabisi Kolawole. ACP Idowu Owohunwa PSO to IGP, CSP Sogbeba D West DFPRO, CSP Uko Jameson (then retired), and SP Murtala Bello. These patriotic police officers, along with others who space constraint has denied mention here, deserve a place of honour along with demised Solomon Arase, for their enterprise in illuminating the merits of the Nigeria Police Force, through that book.
Returning to our theme for this piece, the demise of Arase has attracted an avalanche of rave reviews of his life and times in public office, leaving this piece as one of the deserving tributes to him. There have been tributes to him over his reforms in the Nigerian Police Force during his tenure as IGP. There are also reports of how in collaboration with the thematic Human Rights Radio (‘Berekete’) station, he reversed twists in the career progression of some police officers, purely on the merit of their cases. It is also in the public domain how some officers protested their due promotions to higher ranks during his tenure, as they felt dislodged from comfort zones of their making, even as their disposition was detrimental to the cause of the Force.
Was it not the great English playwright William Shakespeare who captured in his classic play ‘Julius Caeser’, the tribute by Mark Anthony to the assassinated Emperor, that “the evil that men lives after them while the good is interred (buried) with their bones”.
For Arase, if eventually all his good is interred with his bones, and so much credit still goes to him in death, then my friend lived an impactful life.
Adieu, Dr Solomon Ehigiator Arase CFR, till we meet again.