- Sunday Adewusi, 79, former IGP, exits with sweet-and-sour records. Which one will define him?
He rose to the summit of his profession as a model cop. But as Inspector-General of Police (1981-1983), the police under his command was anything but model, especially in its relations to political partisans of the Second Republic (1979-1983).
That is the sweet-and-sour tale of Sunday Adedayo Adewusi, the Asiwaju of Ogbomoso and one of the most acute minds to have run the Nigeria Police, who died on January 26, at the National Hospital, Abuja.
Chief Adewusi’s rise in the police was well and truly meteoric: Assistant Superintendent of Police (1959), Deputy Superintendent of Police (1962), Superintendent of Police (1963), Chief Superintendent of Police (1967), Assistant Commissioner of Police (1969), Deputy Commissioner of Police (1971), Commissioner of Police (1972), Assistant Inspector-General (1975) and IGP (1981). At 45, he was also among the youngest in his generation to become IGP, just as earlier, he was among the youngest ever to attain the position of CP.
But all of these were well earned and no fluke: for between 1972 and 1975, when Chief Adewusi burst on the public consciousness as boss at the iconic Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Alagbon Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, he was undoubtedly the nation’s No. 1 crime buster. Indeed back then, hardly a week passed without Daily Times, Nigeria’s biggest and most circulated newspaper back then, reporting his exploits. Criminals feared the crack Adewusi and his no-nonsense CID, as they would the plague. The Nigeria Police was immensely richer for it.
So, when in 1981, President Shehu Shagari announced Chief Adewusi as his new IGP, almost everyone agreed it was a near-excellent choice. But that optimism soon dissipated as IGP Adewusi turned the police under his command to one of the most awesomely partisan in Nigeria’s political history.
To start with, the elite Mobile Police (MOPOL) became even more elite and formidable, bristling with arms, muscles and general bad grace. Such dread did Adewusi’s MOPOL evoke that an ever-resourceful Nigeria people, brimming with humour even at the most perilous of times, christened it Kill-and-go! It was tribute to its atavistic instinct to shoot — and kill — only to ask questions later; if ever!
By electioneering 1983, IGP Adewusi’s MOPOL had become the swashbuckling partisan enforcer of the wish and will of the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN); and was part and parcel of the grand heist that was the 1983 general election.
That election awarded the ruling NPN a sickening landslide, procured by sheer force of arm and soulless arm-twisting. But that brazen electoral steal also sent the Second Republic crumbling; and eclipsed Chief Adewusi’s brilliant career, as he was retired, by the new military czars, with the Shagari ancien regime. That was another goodly police officer consumed by the god of politics.
So, which of the two defines the late Adewusi’s police essence: his golden records as brilliant ADC to Nigeria’s first president, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and crack crime buster? Or his rusty record as IGP who unabashedly put his command at the leisure of partisan politicians, with devastating consequences for the organisation’s brand equity and operational integrity?
But whichever way the pendulum swings, Chief Adewusi was sad metaphor for frail state institutions. He was not the first — and certainly, if unfortunately, he would not be the last. The big question, however: how long would Nigeria continue to sacrifice its best minds on the altar of expedient politics? The answer must be in strengthening state institutions, particularly the security segment, where the ethos of absolute loyalty to the state, and not to temporary occupiers of office, is ingrained.
All in all, however, Chief Adewusi served his country to the best of his ability. During and after his high office, he remained, until death, a citizen of high community value, as his Ogbomoso folks, to who he is Asiwaju (Leader), continue to proclaim.
May God rest his gentle soul and comfort the family he left behind.
