A major sign that Nigeria has
reached virtually the borderline of a failing state is the precarious situation
of the Nigeria Police Force constitutionally assigned with the duty to maintain
law and order.
Just few hours after the reported
bus explosion in the Rivers State capital Port Harcourt on Thursday May 17th
2012, the Rivers State Commissioner of Police Mr. Mohammed Indabawa gathered
journalists to refute the widespread speculation that the incident which
happened at Rumuokoro Roundabout at about 11am in the morning was not after all
caused by the terrorism activities of the dreaded Maiduguri, Borno state- based
armed Islamic fundamentalist Boko haram group but was gas explosion during the
cause of a planned robbery operation by some four armed robbers.
But several persons including this
writer took the statement of the Police chief with a pinch of salt because of
the low level of trust for the Nigeria Police force whose operatives have on
several occasions disappointed Nigerians by their spectacular failure to carry
out their assigned constitutional duty of maintaining law and order.
To demonstrate how bad the image of
the Nigeria police has become, Nigerians even still have some elements of trust
for the political office holders who obviously has the notoriety for being
responsible for the economic devastation of Nigeria much more than the police
operatives who routinely demand and obtain bribes from the citizens before
doing their jobs for which the tax payers' money are used to service their
salaries.
Most Nigerians will rather believe
the highly disreputable members of the political class than trust the Nigeria
police. In most developed societies, the cordial relationship between the
people and the police is responsible for the low crime rate in those civilized
democracies like the United Kingdom and Norway.
But in my fatherland Nigeria, soon
after the Rivers state police commissioner sought to douse the tension
generated by the widespread rumor that the Port Harcourt bus explosion was bomb
blasts by the Boko haram Islamic terrorist, sensing that not too many Nigerians
took the police version of the story of the circumstances surrounding the
incident as true and credible, the State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi went on the
airwaves to debunk the speculated involvement of the armed Islamic militants in
the bus explosion and offered an explanation that the explosion was caused by
gas cylinders packed by some armed robbers while on their way to rob somewhere
within the city and the moment this story was aired, the tension that was
building all across the state significantly reduced.
One thought that flashed through my
mind soon after the Rivers state Governor made the clarification and the people
responded positively was to ask some persons around me in Abuja whether this
was not the same Governor Rotimi Amaechi that not too long ago was severely
criticized for allegedly orchestrating the passage of a dubious bill in the
Rivers state House of Assembly which awarded generous post-retirement benefits
and largesse to all previous holders of the office of the state Governor and
deputy governor?
Besides, the most frustrating aspect
of these obscene post-retirement benefits is that the so-called law-makers of
Rivers State never envisaged the fluid economic circumstances that Nigeria is
facing and how buoyant or otherwise the purse of the Rivers State Government
would look like in the coming years when they proceeded to legislate payment of
these huge post-retirement benefits to all previous holders of the offices of
governor and deputy governor. The total package meant to be delivered to this
category of persons covered by this generous post retirement payments as
recently passed by the Rivers State House of Assembly include but not limited
to two houses in Port Harcourt and Abuja for each of the beneficiaries, chauffeur-
driven special utility vehicles maintained by the Rivers state treasury and
other sundry financial allowances which will cost the Rivers state people huge
amount of money from their lean resources even when several thousands of Rivers
State indigenes are homeless, jobless and are economically deprived because of
the large scale corruption that goes on at every level of government in that
state as well as other states and the federal Government.
Those who heard me asked the
question why the people of Rivers State as well as other Nigerians are prepared
to trust information emanating from these much vilified politicians than
officers of the Nigeria Police, what I got as a collective response was that no
Nigerian was prepared to gamble with his/her precious lives by trusting the
Nigeria Police Force. One of my respondents whose father retired as a police
commissioner pointedly asked me why anyone should trust the Nigeria Police
Force after most of its operatives have perpetrated series of heinous crimes
against humanity including extra-judicial execution of suspects in the police
custody, and even innocent citizens.
Another person simply looked at me
in shock and stated that he is prepared to trust the seemingly corrupt and
inept Nigerian politicians than the grossly incompetent operatives of the
Nigeria Police Force because according to him, the politician robs the citizens
with biro[pen] but the operatives of the Nigeria police force kill, maim and
harass innocent citizens with guns and ammunitions purchased with tax payers'
money. He further informed me as if I am unaware, that most of these indicted
police operatives never get punished because of the fact that the police as an
institution has rightly or wrongly assumed the duty of presuming to be the
prosecutor in all cases and once a matter affects any police officer, other
high profile police officers in the mood of the so-called espirit de corp will
conspire to kill such cases. One is left to wonder whether Nigeria is still a
constitutional democracy so much so that the officers and operatives of the
Nigeria Police Force are allowed to pick and chose which of the criminal cases
it should diligently prosecute or not. Why is the office of the Federal
Attorney General and Minister of Justice and the offices of the 36 state
attorneys general and commissioners of justice not alive to their
constitutional duty by making sure that operatives of the Nigerian Police are
not allowed to play the role of the sole prosecutors of criminal cases as
damaging and extensive as murder involving serving operatives of the Nigerian
Police Force as suspects/accused persons? Why has the Federal Government and
the respective state administrations in the federation and other federating units
including the Federal Capital Territory looked on and allowed this regime of
impunity to continue whereby the hierarchy of the Nigeria Police undermine the
prosecution of police operatives or officers indicted for murder of unarmed
civilians? Why does Nigeria not yet have independent institution to monitor the
use to which police operatives and other armed security operatives put their
weapons to and why is the so-called Police Service Commission so compromised
that it has failed to discipline most of these grossly indisciplined police
operatives? So I ask just like my previous respondent aforementioned, why
should anyone trust the Nigeria Police?
This week alone, there have been
reported cases of nearly ten cases of extra-legal killings of innocent Nigerians
involving trigger happy rogue police operatives and the Acting Inspector
General of Police Mohammed Abubakar does not seem to have any effective
internal mechanism to check the nefarious activities of these bad eggs in the
Nigerian Police Force who have made it their pastimes to engage in
extra-judicial killings of Nigerians. These rogue police operatives and
officers indicted in these killings never really get punished. Bassey Jimi, a
senior Road Marshal, was full of life on Tuesday morning 15th of May 2012 when
he left his family and proceeded to work at the Bayelsa State Road Safety
Commission office in Yenagoa but later that day some men from the special
anti-robbery squad [SARS] stormed his office and one thing led to the other
before they invading police operatives beat the man to his untimely death and
this incident in Bayelsa came barely a month after a policeman allegedly shot
to dead a Prison Warden in the same state. The police operatives who beat the
officer of the Road safety commission in Bayelsa state were said to have
invaded the office to avenge what they called the malhandling of one of their
officers by the officials of the Road Safety commission. In Abuja, an eight
month pregnant female banker Mrs. Doris Okere was gruesomely and brutally
murdered by a trigger happy police operative in Mpape last year but it took the
vigilant proactive activities of some good Nigerians and the National Human
Rights Commission before a case that was filed against the Nigerian Police
Force for the dastardly act of one of its operative was determined whereupon
the Abuja High Court ordered the Nigeria Police Force to pay the immediate
family members of the late Mrs. Okere including her two year old baby boy the
paltry sum of N100 million Naira damages. Sadly, the office of the Inspector
General of Police said it will proceed to challenge the verdict at the Appellate
Court even without telling Nigerians why the indicted police operative who
carried out the criminal act of murder has not yet been charged to court for
this crime against humanity. Only this week, a lady Princess Zainab Chinasa
Uwakwe who was killed allegedly by the then Divisional Police officer in Aba
Mr. Kabbir A. Ishaq was buried and the police officer who allegedly committed
this grave offence of murder has not yet being dragged to the competent court
of law to be charged for murder but what the office of the Inspector General of
police did was to transfer the accused Police Officer to the Katsina Police
command far away from the scene f the crime in Abia State and the family
members of this young woman killed in her prime are persistently facing threats
of attack by some senior police officers at the Force Headquarters who vowed
never to charge the said police officer to court. The other police operatives
who were privy to the alleged killing of Miss. Uwakwe by the Divisional Police
Officer Mr. Kabir Ishaq were also mass transferred out of Aba, Abia state to
muddle up any evidence that could sustain a charge of murder against this
'sacred cow' in the Nigerian Police Force. Just a few days back, in a night
club in Lagos, three well armed police operatives who escorted a club patron to
a disco at the night club got soaked in heavy drinking and became drunk so much
so that they released several shots of live bullets in the air which
unfortunately hit and killed two persons around the vicinity and the Police
Inspector General has not uttered a word to tell Nigerians what he intends to
do to end this vicious circle of extra-legal killings of Nigerians by armed
police operatives and their incompetent and grossly indisciplined senior
officers. Who then can trust this Policing institution in Nigeria? This is a
worrying signal of a failed state?
Mohammed Abubakar or whosoever is in
charge of the Nigerian Police Force should be told in black and white that it
is dangerous for them to allow trust in the Nigerian Police Force to decline to
zero-level because of the apocalyptic consequences that this total loss of
trust of the Nigerian Police Force by the Nigerian People. If this catastrophic
loss of faith and trust in the operatives of the Nigerian Police Force is
sustained progressively, it will get to a time that ordinary police operatives
who in any case live among the people because of dearth of barracks could become
targets of popular lynch mobs as ways of avenging the high rate of extra-legal
killings by the Nigerian police operatives of innocent citizens and persons in
conflict with the law. For now only members of the armed Islamic group in the
far North have openly stated their intention to attack and kill any police
operative as a revenge for the killing of the founder of Boko Haram in 2009
Sheik Mohammed Yusuf, by the police in Maiduguri, Borno State. If care is not
taken to bring all perpetrators of extra-legal killings in the Nigerian Police
Force to effective trials, then the victims' friends could take up arms against
the Nigerian Police Force as an institution because impunity breeds anarchy and
anarchy in a nation- state breeds failure of state apparatus and failure of
state apparatus breeds instability and destabilization of the sovereign nation-
state. Nigeria as a constitutional democracy must effectively and quickly round
up all known murderers in police uniform and quickly and efficiently bring them
to justice in the competent courts of law to save Nigeria from imminent failure
of its statehood.
+ Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, Human Rights
Writers' Association of Nigeria, writes from www.huriwa.com.
19/5/2012
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