On October 22, around midnight, an audio posted on Facebook reported a crisis unfolding in the Bole district of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. In the audio, a commander in the Ethiopian Federal Police was heard instructing the protective detail assigned to Jawar Mohammed, the Executive Director of the Oromia Media Network (OMN) and a renowned political activist, to vacate their post at their assigned subject’s residence. The security detail who first answered the call refused to accept an order that came at midnight as unlawful. Another told the commander bluntly that they will not abandon Jawar to “nocturnal beasts”, stressing that they are ready to pay the ultimate sacrifice. The incident in the Bole district soon became a conflagration that, according to official estimates, claimed the lives of at least 86 people in the Oromia region.
I took the time to read this piece to see if the Professor also had a similar kind of reaction as I did to the recording that was posted on the internet at the time. I was truly surprised about two things that I heard in the recording.
First, I was surprised that I had been ignorant about constitutional provisions and protocols of security details for private citizens using taxpayers' money. I didn't know that such provisions and protocols of security details existed or that my assumption that Jawar was a private citizen may be wrong.
Second, as much as I respected a member of the security detail's courage to pay the ultimate price for what he believed in, the lack of professionalism in his expressions have baffled me. I heard at least three unlawful acts in the recording.
1. Disobeying an order in the chain-of-command. The professor also confirms that.
2. Potentially false accusation (ብኔንሰት ዺሴ ህን ዴሙ) in the eye of the law. The professor also confirms that.
3. Enacting a law of his own (ነምን ኩን ምኒስቴረ ጫለ ኤገሙ ቀበ, or something to that effect). Roughly translated, it means the man should be protected more than a minister. That assertion is not a member of the security's prerogative.
My reactions are not about the accuser or the accused. It is about the indispensability of professionalism in both civil and military services. I would have thought that the lack of professionalism in that recording could also alarm the Professor. I found none in his piece. If we are preaching about the rule of law, we must all support professionalism in both the civil and military services. I don't expect this kind of wisdom from Jawar. However, I have imagined the Professor to be versed in basic and simple ideas about civil and security services, such as chain of command, innocent until proven guilty, and obey first and ask later. In principle, if the guards had suspicions, all they needed to do was ask for a confirmation of the order, put the confirmation in their pockets one way or the other, and obey the command. That would be sufficient to show who would have been responsible for any action by their commander. If the benefit of disobeying outweighed the cost to these members, discipline should be their cost, if we are to talk about serving a civil society that pays taxes in order to pay their salaries, among others.
If our professors do not impartially teach about these simple and basic ideas among a virtuous civil society, who is going to do it? Then again, was it Jawar himself that once expressed that he had heard an accusation that Africans have the ability to bring down governments but they don't have the ability to lead governments? Maybe they sampled such professors.
On a lighter note, the professor is able to remember the English adjective "assiduously," the name of the small town of Dhummugaa where Jawar was born, and a small town in central Ethiopia where a peaceful demonstration touched off a historic protest movement, and possibly does not remember the name of this town, Ghinchi, where he may or may not have tasted its famous biscuit when he might have passed through it many times on his way to Addis Ababa.