Nigeria Police Chief Replaced Amid Controversy

The Nigerian presidency has a penchant for polite fiction. On Tuesday, the official word was that Kayode Egbetokun, the Inspector-General of Police, had resigned to attend to “family issues.” The reality is more clinical. Mr. Egbetokun was summoned to the Villa on Monday evening and told his time was up. In the language of Abuja’s power brokers, he was helped to the exit. His departure marks the end of a tenure defined less by the thinning of crime statistics than by the thickening of legal controversy.

The friction began with the clock. Having reached the mandatory retirement age of 60 last September, Mr. Egbetokun remained in office through a legislative stitch-up that granted him a fixed four-year term. This survivalist maneuver did little to quieten critics who viewed his continued presence as a breach of institutional discipline. Public patience, already frayed by a stubborn wave of kidnappings and banditry, snapped under the weight of more personal scandals. Allegations involving his son’s bank account and the questionable promotion of associates turned a security problem into a political liability.

His successor, Tunji Disu, inherits a force that is more often seen as a tool for protecting the powerful than a shield for the public. President Bola Tinubu’s recent order to pull police officers away from VIPs to bolster community safety is a rare admission that the current model has failed. Mr. Disu, a veteran of Lagos’s more high-stakes policing units, must now decide whether to follow the old script of patronage or attempt the more difficult task of reform.