AIG Aina, the PSC, and the IGP: The Quiet Erosion of Accountability in a Failing System -By Professor John Egbeazien Oshodi

After public protests forced action, Nigeria’s police leadership must decide whether to continue performing reform or begin living it. To survive its dysfunction, the Force needs a new accountability culture—one modeled on proven U.S. oversight systems and a reimagined state police structure that restores both power and responsibility to the people.

Introduction: A Mirror of National Madness

The Sahara Reporters publication of October 22, 2025, did more than document a single case of alleged misconduct—it exposed a system struggling with moral collapse. The article described how citizens, no longer able to rely on quiet institutional conscience, took to the streets to demand accountability. Before the tall gates of the Police Service Commission (PSC) in Abuja, protesters carried placards calling for an inquiry into Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG) Emmanuel Aina.

Their grievance was direct and damning: that a senior officer, one entrusted with the law, had allegedly participated in actions that violated it. The petition detailed claims of harassment against a lawyer, open disregard for judicial orders, and an unlawful assertion of police authority in a civil dispute. It was the kind of allegation that, in any mature democracy, would trigger immediate administrative suspension and independent investigation.

Yet in Nigeria’s case, no movement occurred until citizens made noise loud enough to pierce institutional deafness. The Commission, empowered to act by the Constitution itself, did nothing until embarrassment replaced duty as its motivator. This pattern—reacting to exposure instead of responding to ethics—has become the psychological signature of Nigeria’s policing system. It reflects a deep cognitive dissonance where legality is understood but not lived, where integrity is preached but not practiced.

It took ordinary Nigerians, standing under the sun, to remind the PSC of its function. It took public outrage—not professional conscience—to awaken official attention. This reactive rhythm of governance reveals a deeper sickness: a system that equates silence with safety and exposure with threat. When institutions only move after protest, it means conscience has died and image has taken its place.

What makes this episode even more troubling is that, despite the gravity of the allegations, AIG Emmanuel Aina reportedly continues to hold office—and, by multiple accounts, has even been promoted to AIG Intelligence. In psychological terms, that is not a correction; it is reinforcement. It sends the message that controversy is survivable, that rank shields one from consequence, and that discipline can wait.

This is not merely administrative failure—it is the quiet erosion of accountability, the slow death of institutional self-awareness. The same police structure that should defend law and order has become trapped in a cycle of reflexive denial, responding to scandal with image management instead of structural introspection.

In this sense, the October 22nd protest was not only about AIG Aina; it was about Nigeria’s larger crisis of enforcement—the moral fatigue that has turned law into performance. When citizens must march to remind a system of its own laws, it is no longer policing; it is theatre. And the actors, though uniformed, are trapped in a script of denial, delay, and decay.

The Issues: When a Dead System Speaks Through Its Officers

The petitioners’ account reads like a tragic diagnosis of a system that has lost its moral pulse. It alleges that AIG Emmanuel Aina, despite being fully aware of an existing court order restraining one Asabe Waziri from trespassing into certain flats—and despite knowing that a Motion for Stay of Execution was pending before the Supreme Court—still “proceeded to break into the flats and restore her possession.”

This single sentence captures the entire crisis of Nigeria’s policing ethos: a serving Assistant Inspector General of Police allegedly using the authority of the state to undo the authority of the law. It is an image of contradiction—an officer sworn to protect judicial orders instead performing a physical and symbolic reversal of them.

The allegations grow even more troubling. The petition further states, “Asabe Waziri is now using AIG Aina and retired AIG Ekeinde Oyakhire to persecute the lawyer. The activities of AIG Aina are totally unlawful, illegal, and a breach of the Police Act and other relevant laws.”

This introduces a darker dimension—the alleged collaboration between a serving AIG and a retired AIG, forming a kind of unofficial network that bridges the active and the past police hierarchy. Psychologically, this is how institutional decay reproduces itself: when retired influence merges with current authority, when yesterday’s impunity becomes today’s operating manual. It becomes less an act of one officer and more the voice of a system still speaking through its survivors.

At the center of the case stands the lawyer, Mr. Victor Giwa, who was reportedly arrested in Lagos and detained unlawfully for several days. His colleague, Mr. Godwin Okey, was allegedly detained in his place when police could not locate him. Such incidents are not errors of procedure; they are expressions of an internal logic—the belief that power may substitute persons, that due process may yield to convenience, and that legal boundaries can be crossed when one wears the uniform.

These actions, if verified, go beyond administrative misconduct. They are a psychological portrayal of a police culture that equates control with justice. When the law becomes flexible in the hands of those sworn to uphold it, society’s sense of fairness collapses into fatalism. Citizens begin to expect disorder, not discipline.

In this kind of institutional environment, defiance of the court is not treated as an outrage but as a demonstration of influence. The higher the rank, the greater the capacity to bend the law. Instead of embarrassment, the result is often elevation. Instead of introspection, promotion follows.

This inversion of ethics has become the quiet doctrine of a decaying system: that impunity can be rewarded if it is performed with confidence. The public learns this message repeatedly, through spectacle and silence alike—that the law is a stage play for the powerless, while those inside the structure operate by a different script.

Every new scandal met with bureaucratic stillness, every investigation without consequence, and every promotion issued amid controversy deepens the wound. Together, they deliver the same message to the Nigerian public: the law is for the ordinary; protection is for the powerful.

This is why AIG Aina’s case feels larger than his name. It is not about an individual officer’s alleged decisions but about a national institution that has turned its reflexes inward. What we are witnessing is a system so burdened by its past that it now moves against its own principles—a police establishment where the living body of authority still acts out the impulses of a dead moral system.

The Diagnosis: The PSC, the IGP, and the Delusion of Order

If the actions described in the petition are the symptoms, then the true disease lies within the very organs of police accountability—the Police Service Commission (PSC) and the Inspector-General of Police (IGP). These two institutions were designed to operate as checks on one another, ensuring balance between oversight and command. Yet, over time, that delicate balance has disintegrated into rivalry, inertia, and confusion.

In a healthy system, the PSC’s constitutional mandate to discipline officers of all ranks, including AIGs, would be a reflex, not a debate. The IGP, as the head of operations, would recognize that the immediate suspension of a senior officer facing grave allegations is not an act of rebellion but of professional hygiene. Both offices would move in tandem, not in tension—each playing its therapeutic role in preserving the integrity of the Force.

Instead, Nigeria’s system behaves like a divided body whose left hand mistrusts its right. The PSC waits for signals from the IGP; the IGP delays out of fear of appearing weak or politically exposed. This institutional hesitation—this self-conscious fear of accountability—turns every act of discipline into a performance of control rather than an exercise of responsibility.

The result is paralysis.

The PSC’s delayed response to the AIG Aina case, coming only after citizens protested publicly, is evidence of an organization reacting not to law but to shame. It mirrors the behavior of an individual in denial: aware of wrongdoing, aware of responsibility, but immobilized by fear of exposure. The system thus confuses reputation with integrity, acting only when silence becomes impossible.

An eyewitness at the Abuja protest captured the public’s fatigue with this pattern: “If we didn’t march, nothing would have happened. They act only when the people push them.”

That sentiment summarizes a national tragedy. Nigeria’s citizens now understand that the institutions meant to defend them will only act when forced to do so. The people have become the conscience of the state, while the state has become numb to its own duty.

Contrast this with the operational logic of the United States or other mature democracies. There, oversight is distributed, not hoarded. If a senior officer is accused of serious misconduct, Internal Affairs, the Civilian Review Board, and the local District Attorney’s Office act almost simultaneously. No single authority can suppress the process. Each component functions as part of a reflexive system of correction—like nerves responding instantly to pain.

In Nigeria, however, accountability moves like a body in coma. The signal travels slowly, distorted by hierarchy and fear. What should be a reflexive suspension becomes a political calculation. What should be a transparent probe becomes a negotiation between offices.

This is why the PSC and IGP appear trapped in what I call the delusion of order—a psychological condition in which institutions maintain the outward structure of discipline while the inner mechanisms of responsibility have collapsed. Rules exist, uniforms are worn, press statements are issued—but nothing truly moves until embarrassment replaces conscience.

The PSC’s behavior in the AIG Aina case illustrates this delusion perfectly. It had the power to act immediately yet waited until protests made inaction riskier than intervention. The IGP, with his own command authority, could have set an example by temporarily relieving Aina of duty pending investigation, signaling that no one stands above scrutiny. But he, too, remained silent—perhaps protecting the hierarchy, perhaps preserving himself. In either case, the silence was institutional, not personal.

And this is the heart of the diagnosis: AIG Aina and the retired AIG are not the disease—they are manifestations of it. They are the echoes of a system that has long taught its officers that loyalty to command outweighs loyalty to law. It is a psychological inheritance passed down from one generation of policing to the next, where defiance of external accountability is misread as strength, and self-correction is mistaken for betrayal.

The PSC and IGP now stand as twin mirrors of this dysfunction—two institutions that still appear functional but whose moral wiring has short-circuited. Their mutual mistrust, their fear of appearing weak before subordinates, and their dependence on political approval have replaced the spirit of professional courage that real reform requires.

The result is what Nigerians now see daily: a police structure that moves only when pushed, a command that punishes whistleblowers faster than wrongdoers, and a public left wondering whether the rule of law still holds meaning inside the nation’s most powerful security agency.

In medical language, this is institutional paralysis. In psychological terms, it is dissociation—the mind of the system refusing to acknowledge its own decay.

Until this delusion is confronted, the PSC and IGP will continue to manage crises like patients treating symptoms while ignoring the underlying disease. And as long as they refuse to confront this truth, the Force will remain what it has sadly become: a uniformed structure without internal conscience, held together by rank, silence, and fear.

The Therapeutic: From Protest Reaction to Systemic Action

Every institution suffering from moral fatigue must reach a point of therapeutic awakening. The Police Service Commission (PSC) and the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) have now reached such a point—not because they wanted to, but because public pressure has made silence unsustainable. Yet, reaction is not recovery. A system that moves only when cornered cannot call itself healthy; it can only call itself surviving.

True therapy begins when accountability becomes instinctive rather than defensive. The PSC and IGP must therefore move beyond embarrassment-driven reflexes and begin cultivating a genuine culture of ethical self-regulation. Without this, the latest investigation into AIG Emmanuel Aina will be remembered not as a turning point but as another episode of moral rehearsal in a long-running institutional drama.

The PSC’s current probe should not be about scapegoating one man or sanitizing a headline. It should be about facing the uncomfortable truth that the entire command structure is misaligned. The repeated cycle of controversy, silence, and delayed action reveals an organization that has lost its proprioception—the ability to feel where its own limbs are. This sensory loss is why the Nigerian police often hurt its own credibility even when it tries to defend it.

The first act of therapy, then, must be temporary suspension pending inquiry—not as punishment, but as institutional protection. No credible accountability process can take place while the accused remains in command or holds access to sensitive information. This principle is not foreign; it is standard professional hygiene across the world. The United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa all apply it as a basic administrative reflex. Nigeria must stop treating suspension as a scandal and begin recognizing it as a safeguard.

But this alone is not enough. The therapy must penetrate deeper into the system’s structure and psychology.

1. Rebuilding Reflexes through Independent Oversight:

The Nigerian police must create and empower truly independent Internal Affairs units that report both to the PSC and to legislative oversight committees. Without external review, self-investigation becomes self-protection. Oversight must be multi-layered, not monopolized.

2. Civilian Review and Public Trust:

Every state should establish a Civilian Oversight Board composed of retired judges, human rights advocates, and civic leaders who can review misconduct cases and audit disciplinary outcomes. When citizens participate in oversight, policing regains legitimacy. The law feels real again because the people can see themselves in it.

3. Transparency as a Habit, Not a Headline:

Each quarter, the PSC should publish an open report of suspensions, disciplinary hearings, and reinstatements. Public transparency does not weaken authority—it strengthens it. A system that hides its wounds cannot heal them.

4. Emotional and Ethical Reconditioning:

Therapy must also address the psychological conditioning within the Force. Too many officers have been trained to equate obedience with righteousness. In a modern democracy, the true test of professionalism is not blind compliance but conscious legality. Officers at all ranks should undergo recurring psychological retraining on emotional regulation, ethical decision-making, and lawful restraint.

5. Structural Renewal through State Policing:

Finally, the most enduring therapy must be structural. Nigeria’s single, centralized police command is too old, too overburdened, and too far removed from the realities of the communities it serves. The idea that one national command can manage 36 states, each with its own social complexities, is no longer sustainable.

The path toward genuine reform requires the creation of state police systems, each accountable to local governments, state assemblies, and citizens. This is not about dividing the country; it is about decentralizing responsibility. It is about allowing policing to reflect the texture, language, and emotional climate of each region. A state police system, properly regulated, would foster internal competition, encourage professionalism, and make abuse harder to conceal.

In psychological terms, decentralization gives the policing system a distributed nervous system—a structure that can feel pain in real time rather than only after national outrage.

Without such reforms, the PSC and IGP will continue acting like therapists who diagnose every symptom but refuse to treat the cause. The police force will remain a patient that resists its own healing.

To heal an institution, one must not only change its rules but also renew its reflexes. The therapy for Nigeria’s policing system must therefore blend structure with conscience, law with empathy, and rank with responsibility.

As the Sahara Reporters story and the ensuing protest made clear, the Nigerian public has already assumed the role of the nation’s conscience. The people have become the external therapist—forcing truth into institutions that no longer feel internally. But a healthy society cannot forever depend on protest to prompt justice.

The PSC, the IGP, and every senior officer must now show that conscience still exists within the uniform. They must prove that accountability can happen without marching, that integrity can function without outrage. Only then will the Nigerian police system begin to recover from its long illness of indifference and rediscover the noble purpose for which it was created—to serve, protect, and uphold the law, even when it is inconvenient to do so.

Conclusion: From Institutional Survival to National Sanity

If the Nigerian Police Force were a patient, its doctors would be too busy arguing to notice the bleeding. The Police Service Commission (PSC) and the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) were created to complement each other—one to guide discipline, the other to lead operations. But what we see instead is open rivalry, mistrust, and institutional fatigue. The PSC debates press statements while the IGP manages optics. Each one tries to outshine the other before the political class, and in that contest for visibility, accountability becomes invisible.

This rivalry is not only administrative—it is psychological. Both institutions now act like estranged siblings living under the same roof but no longer speaking the same language. When this happens in a family, healing requires counseling. When it happens in the police, it requires reform.

Meanwhile, peaceful protesters, journalists, and activists like Omoyele Sowore continue to face the heavy hand of policing. The Force seems more animated when confronting citizens than when confronting its own internal failures. It acts swiftly when a placard is raised but slowly when a petition arrives. It deploys resources to monitor speech online while turning away from credible allegations within its own ranks. This pattern is not discipline—it is displacement. It reflects a system that no longer knows where its true battles lie.

Every protester dragged into custody for speaking truth to power represents a lost opportunity for the Force to face truth within itself. Every hour spent suppressing peaceful demonstrations could be used to enforce internal accountability, retrain officers, or rebuild public trust. But the institution’s energy continues to flow in the wrong direction—outward toward control, instead of inward toward conscience.

The PSC and IGP must recognize this as a form of institutional projection: a defense mechanism where a system externalizes the conflict it refuses to confront within. Arresting critics becomes easier than arresting habits. Silencing others becomes easier than silencing corruption. It is a form of national self-deception—what psychologists call “displacement of pain.”

This displacement also explains why, for months, the long-promised conversation about state policing has gone silent. Not too long ago, government officials and senior legislators spoke with confidence about devolving police authority to the states. There was momentum, there were meetings, there was hope. Then, almost overnight, everything went quiet.

The timing of this silence is not a mystery. Elections are approaching, and the same leaders who once championed decentralization now appear hesitant. The political class understands the advantage of a single, centralized police system—one that answers upward to power instead of outward to the people. The central command becomes not just a tool of law enforcement but a tool of political comfort.

But Nigeria cannot keep policing itself like an empire of the past. The centralized structure is no longer efficient, no longer trusted, and no longer just. It is too far from the people it claims to protect, and too close to those it should occasionally question.

The truth is simple: no one police system can serve a nation as vast, diverse, and emotionally complex as Nigeria. Our states are not identical; their challenges are not interchangeable. A one-size-fits-all police system belongs to another century, not this one.

If we truly seek stability, we must take the bold step of building state police systems—not after the next election, not after another tragedy, but now. Reform delayed is reform denied. Every postponement signals that politics has again been allowed to overpower principle.

A decentralized model, properly designed and monitored, will bring the law closer to the citizen. It will create competition in performance, accountability in conduct, and community trust in policing. It will also release the federal command from the impossible task of understanding every local nuance. A national structure should support, not suffocate, the states.

The fear that state police will be abused by governors is valid—but not final. Abuse thrives in secrecy, not in diversity. When power is spread across many centers, abuse becomes harder to hide. With clear legal boundaries, legislative oversight, and public transparency, state policing can succeed where the centralized model has failed.

The PSC and the IGP should lead this reform, not resist it. They must understand that decentralization is not an insult to their authority—it is a rescue from irrelevance. A centralized command has turned the police into a political instrument. Decentralization would turn it back into a public service.

Let this not be another promise that disappears after elections. Nigerians have waited too long for a police force that truly represents them, that knows their streets, their languages, their fears, and their hopes. The police must no longer be a shield for the powerful or a weapon of convenience. It must become a mirror of justice, fairness, and humility.

Healing will begin the moment the police stop guarding power and start protecting people. The PSC must rediscover courage; the IGP must rediscover conscience. Together they must guide the Force away from rivalry and toward renewal.

State police must happen now—not later, not after campaigns, not after ballots. The nation has endured enough promises. Reform delayed is justice denied, and justice denied is security lost.

Nigeria’s police system can still be reformed, but only if it stops performing loyalty to the powerful and starts performing duty to the people. The time for excuses has passed. The time for healing has come.

About the Author

Prof. John Egbeazien Oshodi is an American psychologist and educator specializing in forensic, legal, clinical, cross-cultural psychology, public ethical policy, police, and prison science.

Born in Uromi, Edo State, Nigeria, and the son of a 37-year veteran of the Nigeria Police Force, he has devoted his career to linking psychology with justice, education, and governance. In 2011, he pioneered the introduction of advanced forensic psychology in Nigeria through the National Universities Commission and Nasarawa State University, where he served as Associate Professor of Psychology.

He currently serves as contributing faculty in the Doctorate in Clinical and School Psychology at Nova Southeastern University; teaches in the Doctorate Clinical Psychology, BS Psychology, and BS Tempo Criminal Justice programs at Walden University; and is a virtual professor of Management and Leadership Studies at Weldios University and ISCOM University. He is President and Chief Psychologist at the Oshodi Foundation, Center for Psychological and Forensic Services, United States.

Prof. Oshodi is a Black Republican in the United States but belongs to no party in Nigeria—he stands only for justice. This writer knows no one on this issue but writes solely for the sake of justice, good governance, democracy, and African development. He is the founder of Psychoafricalysis (Psychoafricalytic Psychology)—a culturally grounded framework centering African sociocultural realities, historical consciousness, and future-oriented identity. A prolific scholar, he has authored more than 500 articles, several books, and numerous peer-reviewed works on Africentric psychology, higher education reform, forensic and correctional psychology, African democracy, and decolonized therapeutic models.