The Police Inspector General

By Santos Bangura

The Police Inspector-General is a thrilling fictional account of daily occurrences in a typical African police institution. It paints the picture of how social ills like corruption, sycophancy, superstition, greed, intrigues, sexual immorality and more importantly tribalism and partisan politics can rip a

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Jun 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890910783

Santos Bangura

Born in Gandorhun, Kono district, eastern Sierra Leone, Santos Bangura is a retired Chief Superintendent of the Sierra Leone Police. He holds BA from Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. Santos also holds MSc in Peace & Conflict Studies-George Mason University, Virginia: MA in Statecraft & National Security Affairs-Institute of World Politics, Washington DC, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration with concentration in Terrorism, Mediation, and Peace from Walden University, Minnesota, USA.

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The Police Inspector General

Copyright © 2023 by Santos Bangura

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-959165-99-6

ISBN eBook: 978-1-959165-03-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of ReadersMagnet, LLC.

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Interior design by Dorothy Lee

I

The Inspector General of Police Jonathan Kilofo sat in his new office in the early hours of that morning in the Democratic Republic of Kasonko. It was a very large office; the largest office that he had ever dreamt of occupying in his life. The National Police Headquarters which houses the IGs office sits on an elevated ground by the sides of the National Post Office Headquarters and Ministerial building. At a distance from the southernmost part of this building, light sea waves, battered canoes and small boats transporting petty traders and their wares to Freetown markets from Peppel, Barbara, Kasiri, Conakry De and other riverine villages of the Port Loko and Kambia districts could be seen. IG Kilofo was happy with himself; too happy to think of any pessimistic possibilities in his present position in the Police Force. To him, to be the Inspector General of Police, the highest position in the country’s Police hierarchy and the most enviable one, had always been his dream; he had slept with it, been drunk with it and had fought for it in every imaginable way. But in fighting for it, he had over-stepped those obstacles and was now the country’s Inspector General of Police. He laughed loud to himself and nodded with satisfaction for what he termed as a man’s fight. That was Kilofo’s third month in office after the Military coup against the government through which he became the country’s police boss. He was not sure that the impact of his sudden rise on him would diminish so easily. His excitement over it was such that all other policemen down the bottom of the ladder were nothing to him but little ants that crawl on the ground in their daily forage for survival and whom he could step on at will and crush the little lives in them. From the rank of Chief superintendent of Police to the rank of Inspector General was like a school boy getting a double promotion in class and I.G. Kilofo was sure that he had reached his nadir, his stopping point, in the force and he owed much to his wife who had been instrumental in everything and he was quite confident that he would ever remain in his present position of police boss until he himself retired voluntarily. That he was quite sure of. Those who have pessimistic thoughts are always those at the bottom of the ladder.

Then his thoughts ran over the events that led to his meteoric, as he called it, rise to power. He remembered how he had fallen ill because of discouragement and, instead of his boss Mba-Musa encouraging him, a ban was lifted on his forced transfer and he was immediately dispatched to the provinces, a remote area where he had never lived before. That had discouraged him so much so that he decided to commit suicide and leave this world of wickedness, as he called it. To him, his life was really finished and there was nothing he felt could console him. What crowned his misery was the treachery of the wife he loved so much, the wife with whom he had started life from scratch. He had already prepared the rope to hang himself in his room when those young soldier he had rubbed shoulders with knocked rudely at his door in the middle of the night. That was to his greatest disapproval because he did not want any interruption in his set purpose. He did not know that was the knock that would bring good tidings and would turn round his fortunes.

Kilofo laughed lightly to himself when he remembered how the young soldiers entered and told him about the planned coup against the previous government. It was that coup that saved his miserable life and that brought him to the pinnacle of his career. Kilofo was more than happy. The greatest desire in his life had been achieved and he was now the country’s police boss. Moreover, he was now occupying the seat of the boss that had really made his life miserable.

In spite of all those sweet thoughts of the past Kilofo did not stop to keep asking himself what would have happened if the coup had failed. He and those poor soldiers would have been wiped off by the government, but he was happy that the coup had succeeded after all and all those involved were now occupying their own life’s pinnacle.

Kilofo’s mind then ran to his wife, the wife that had helped him so much but who eventually turned round to slap him in the face. She was a real woman as far as he knew; there was nothing she would want and would not achieve it. The word defeat and impossible were never encouraged in her quest to achieve her aims. When Kilofo wanted to enlist in the Police Force after he had left school and had found it almost impossible, Sarah, then his girlfriend, had helped him and he was enlisted without even going through exams and other formalities that his colleagues went through and as conventions required. How she made her moves no one knew, not even Kilofo himself, but it was whispered that she sold her beautiful body to the then Inspector General of Police. Whatever the story was, Kilofo did not stay long in the rank of a constable. He rose rapidly and was made an aide to the then Inspector General. People that knew of what was going on whispered that while the Inspector General was using Kilofo as aide, he was using his aide’s wife as his concubine. But that was not what worried Kilofo; all he wanted was to stay in the Police Force as the blue-eyed boy of the Inspector General and to rise rapidly. Kilofo’s over-looking of what price he had to pay to achieve his ambition paid him some dividends. Everybody in the Police Force, from the Deputy Inspector General down to the lowest man, feared and highly respected Kilofo. Infact he was more feared than the police boss himself. People wanting to see the boss first had to come to Kilofo for the green light; those wanting to seek favors from the Police boss came to Kilofo. All that was not enough for Kilofo; all he wanted was to be the Police boss one day.

Disillusionment came one day when Inspector General Kilofo’s benefactor was suddenly sent on leave to retirement. That was more than a blow to Kilofo. It was like putting stick in the spokes of somebody’s wheel. The man that took the retired Inspector General’s place, the former Deputy Inspector General did not see eye-to-eye with Inspector Kilofo. There was nothing that Kilofo did, no matter how pleasing it was, that would meet with the approval of the new Inspector General. Kilofo would break his head to subserviently please the Inspector General so as to bring himself into the Inspector General’s good books but his efforts were like pouring water on a duck’s back. Few weeks after taking office, the new Inspector General one day called Kilofo to his office for no apparent reason and gave him a thorough rebuke. He told Kilofo in a very unfriendly tone that if Kilofo was aide to the former Inspector General, Kilofo was no aide to him.

My own administration is quite different from the fellow that was here, O.K.? The new Inspector General said sternly. I am not here to compromise with anybody that is against my administration, you being a typical example. You should not under any circumstances enter my office, not even when you have a very serious business to discuss with me. You can use telephone, right?

Yes sir! Inspector Kilofo saluted obediently and went out of the office.

The new Inspector General was suspicious that Inspector Kilofo did not like him for the simple fact that he had taken over from somebody who was so good to him Kilofo. He was therefore afraid that Kilofo would one day harm him by fetish means, something if not common was highly suspected of being common in the country’s police force.

Kilofo became very discouraged. He became so discouraged that he wanted to leave the Police Force once and for all hadn’t it been for his wife who encouraged him to stay on.

I am sure your stay in the Police Force will one day see the sunlight, she encouraged her husband.

However Kilofo’s stay in the Police Force, in spite of all the encouraging words from his wife, was like a fish out of water. He was very uncomfortable. His friends ridiculed him for his quick fall from grace to grass. Even those he had helped through his influence with the retired Inspector General no longer wanted to know whether he lived or not. Some of his colleagues whom he used to serve with drinks until they were drunk in drinking pubs now called him a fool and a lavisher, now that he was penniless and powerless and could not lavish on them any longer. What made him more uncomfortable than everything was the Inspector General of Police who left no stone unturned in order to frustrate him. The man is after me, Kilofo often told his wife. There was nothing he did in the Police Force that the Inspector General would not find fault with and most of his benefits, like his monthly ration of rice, were now as irregular as dry season rain, but he had no guts to complain. Several promotions bye-passed him even though he was quite ripe for them. His wife Sarah tried to play her womanly tactics in order to entice the Inspector General.

But she failed in her endeavours. Had it been a different situation, Sarah Kilofo would have succeeded in seducing the Inspector General for she was not a woman whose advances men easily ignored. People said she was the most beautiful of all police wives. What made the Inspector General ignore her advances was the fact that he was set in his determined suspicion that the many petty clashes between him and the former boss were machinated by Sarah’s husband, Inspector Kilofo. Therefore the beautiful, spotless, soul-catching wife of Kilofo could not neutralize the hatred the Inspector General had for Kilofo.

The new Inspector General stayed in office for only two years and those were trying and tumultuous years for Inspector Kilofo. At the end of the second year in office, the Inspector General suddenly collapsed in his office after he had given a pep talk to some high ranking officers in his office. After the talk, he had dismissed his subordinates, as he often called those below his rank. There was a sudden hustle and bustle in the headquarters of the country’s police force—The Inspector General was seriously ill, the news went round.