AIG M.M. Katsina, Promotion Extra Deserved
Sophocles in his Theban Play, Antigone, declared that, “Wonders are many on earth, and the greatest of these is man..., there is nothing beyond his power. His subtlety meeteth all chance, all danger conquereth for every ill he had found its remedy.” Similarly, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, declared “What a piece of work is man: How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties; in form and moving, how express and admirable; in action how like an angel; in apprehension how like a god; the beauty of the world; the paragon of animals”.
These anthropological exaltations certainly concern the universal humanity, but are specifically for selected few men who like extra-terrestrial beings, appear rarely and sporadically in every epoch of humanity, in every sector of social existence, and blessed is the human society that is opportune to harbour them. Nigeria is indeed opportune to have this sort historic legend, especially at this epoch when terrorism, insecurity and insurgence wreck and threaten the harmonious existence of the Nigerian polity and indeed the African continent.
This epochal angel and nature-disguised Superman sits in our mist today, unknown by many, known by some and well known by the very few whom nature gave the privilege to unravel the mysteries surrounding him. The transformed Nietzschean superman- Mr Muhammad Musa Katsina as a youth loved crime fighting and thus answered the call of destiny by joining the Nigerian Police Force, ensuring excellent crime fighting input right from his career climbing posts and positions assigned to. Like the literary icon, Elechi Amadi said, ‘It is only men who are men, men who can drink the wine-with-eagle-feathers can dictate, discern and dispose themselves to appreciate summons of the drumbeats’. Like the Zulu Sofola’s antelope, he heard the “death music and agreed to dance it,” all in service to fatherland.
Mr. Muhammad Musa Katsina’s prowess as one of the most significant Police Officers Nigeria has had, was not consequently built from only simple hereditary and socialization factors, but also from solid formation programmes as well as their internalizations that resulted in his self-remaking into a character of power, of inestimable efficiency in crime fighting. The self-remaking leads to new identity that sets one apart and makes one’s personality a theatrical presence. His outstanding skills for investigations and efficient finishing, which notch-marked his elitist officer personality, were thus acquired from various trainings he had in strategic technical programmes in the Force.
These attitudes have been closely studied, especially since his posting as the Commissioner of Police in Kogi State, where high-class terrorism from men of the under world were witnessed, especially the Okene Killings, the Oil Pipeline vandalism and bomb-factory wrecks in the State. Mr. Katsina believes that justice is without discrimination, and made it his operative principle as observed in Kogi, Imo, Oyo and Kano States where he has served respectively as Commissioner of Police.
One of the greatest challenges Mr. M.M Katsina has had so far in his career in the Nigerian Police Force, is his leadership as Commissioner of Police in Imo State Command- A State that previously was a haven of peace, and suddenly turned into a locality for patchwork of different crimes and offences before his posting there, which spate increased astonishingly. But as the Entrepreneur Expert, Ausbeth Ajagu remarked, ‘the true test of leadership is how well you function in a crisis’. Mr. Katsina poised and fortified with Carl von Clausewitz’ strategic concentration principles of power control, (fully braced for battle, knowing) that, “the best strategy is always to be very strong; first in general, then in the decisive point…, as there is no higher and simpler law of strategy than that of keeping one’s forces concentrated”.
As a man with great passion for his job, Mr. M M Katsina concentrated his force and strategies towards combating crimes in Imo State. The most prevalent crime menaces then were Armed Robbery, Kidnapping, Ritual Killings, Man-Slaughter, Child-Trafficking and Baby-Factory, etc. It was as a result of his marvellous dedicated service in Imo State that led to the publication of the book- Crime in Nigeria and the Role of the Police, CP M.M Katsina as a Role Model (Owerri, 2013) by Prof Protus Nathan Uzorma and Prince Stanley U Okoroji. The legacies he left behind still remain and have helped his successors to maintain same tempo and keep crime-upsurge at minimum base. The memorable structure with which the feats were accomplished was his Special Ambush Squad that fought crime esuriently, speedily and with accuracy as lightening.
A sociological study of his crime fighting policies and strategies shows ethno-methodological crime fighting and policing models. In his view, ethnology is the best action perspective-approach for crime policing, especially where peculiar crimes in specific vicinities are rooted in the people’s culture and thus covered by them. The application of this method- Ethno-methodology for Mr Muhammad Musa Katsina, assists the Police in devising relative methods and devices as well as the practical activities that would facilitate and make such construction effective and reliable.
In this sense, a Police officer posted to a new place of assignment must first study the social environment; uncover the rules of social interactions of the society: How the members of the very society negotiate new social order and values. Herein, the officer undergoes a psychological orientation, training and rehabilitation that is constantly censured by the general functional ideals of the Force. What this further entails is orientation: Socially, culturally and psychologically.
The stress therefore is on the nature, construction and execution of the regular techniques to be used by the Police as a social actor, in order to understand and match fittingly to the challenges of security and order in the given society where one is posted. Active policing is action packed, and only real actors in the field attain efficient delivery and plausible results. Attainment of this activeness is possible when the Police as social actors negotiate ‘relativised’ roles in the new environment they are serving and partaking in order to create that safety-security-peace-ordered living, as well as render their behaviour accountable and imitable to others in the collectivist functional perspective of the Nigerian Police Force.
By ethno-methodological crime policing, Muhammad Katsina understands a three-stepped strategy to ensuring effective operation. Firstly, it permits the Police to internalise trainings received as well as experiences accumulated overtime, all being put as skeletal frameworks upon which every individual Police embodies externally through analysed rules of social interactions of the given society. This strategy has some implications: That periodic training and enhanced professional skill acquisitions be ensured for the Police. What this further implies is that, as crimes generate and have complicating phases, the Force has to modernize its departments, programmes and strategies in accordance with the sophistication of the zeitgeist’s challenges that pose great threat to the aims and objectives of the Force. Secondly, that Police Academy be instituted sporadically where skills in Police operations and strategies in combating new generation-crimes and challenges will be impacted periodically in batches.
The learning of such measures and the acquisition of such skills balances the Police as social actors in their professional dispositions to understand crime procedures and social disorders peculiarities of an area or region where they are. These ideologies of crime-fighting would be best implanted into the Nigeria Police Force if this sort of original thinker, crime fighting-expert and policing-zealot is entrusted the apex leadership of the Nigerian Police after the present IGP Solomon Arase, who has projected his pre-trial detention policies in the Force. It is evident that after Arase AIG Musa Katsina would be the best hand to transform the NPF and help Mr President in his avowal to fight, police and eliminate corruption in the country.
The publishers of Crime in Nigeria and the Role of Poice, CP M.M. Katsina as a Role Model- Protus Nathan Uzorma and Stanley Uwaezuoke Okoroji, noticing these qualities quickly suggested then in 2013 that “this sort of personality- Mr. Muhammad Musa Katsina should be immediately elevated to AIG and DIG ranks before the expiration of the tenure of the present IGP, MD Abubakar, so that he can take up that mantle of leadership as the Inspector General of Police. People like him are found in some other domains of life in Nigeria but quite uncommon in the Nigerian Police Force and as such should be allowed to throw in his wealth of experience in the entire Police Force and impress his mysterious, modern policing ideologies, and excellent crime-prevention skills to the Force nationwide in order to fight terrorism and crime.
This is a task that President, Mohammadu Buhari, has to accomplish for the envisioned betterment of the Nigerian Police Force as the Yusuf report suggested in 2008, and as he has urged and determined to reform the Force under the able leadership of the IGP Solomon Arase, and which this AIG Muhammad Musa Katsina ought to take up in order to accelerate corruption fighting and policing of sundry crimes in Nigeria.