By Sunny Awhefeada
I owe the title of this intervention to a video that made the rounds on Facebook and other social media platforms a few days ago. The video depicted a rowdy accident scene with a uniformed policeman grabbing a uniformed Vehicle Inspection Officer (VIO) by his trousers and dragging him to a waiting police van. In the video was a damaged tricycle which apparently was involved in the accident. The maker of the video was the one who provided the voiceover “make una see how police arrest VIO”. It was a hot afternoon and the scene climaxed with the typical Nigerian hullabaloo. The actors were the policemen, about six in number, and the VIO being dragged to the waiting van.
The people, the long oppressed hoi polloi, who are the daily victims of both police and VIO were the audience cheering and gamboling at the sight of their common enemies the police and VIO in something akin to a “tug of war” of a macabre type. The VIO was not willing to go with the police. The latter had to drag him with all the strength he could muster. The people cheered and cursed. The cheers were not for the police. They cheered to the bitter reality that karma caught up with the VIO. The curses were also for the VIOs. Yes, Nigerians daily invoke imprecations on uniformed personnel. You only need to be on the road and at police stations to see and understand why Nigerians see uniformed personnel as public enemies.
The subject matter of the video reflects the ordeal of poor Nigerians in the hands of uniformed men and women. Anybody wearing uniform in Nigeria is a law onto himself. This speaks to the sad irony of those who should maintain law and order becoming the arch-lawbreakers! Yet, Nigeria’s uniformed organizations are legion. It is impossible to number and identify them all. The military, police, VIOs, customs, immigrations, road safety, drug law, civil defence, hunters, forest guards, road transport workers, amotekun, vigilantes, sanitary inspectors, revenue collectors and the multiplicity of task forces set up by state and local governments wear uniforms and display absolute lawlessness. The same can be said of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Department of State Services (DSS). Officials of these uniformed cum paramilitary organizations inflict sadism on Nigerians and violate their rights. Instead of being their protectors these officials afflict the people and this happens daily if not hourly. The ugly plot captured by the video was the consequence of a VIO forcefully taking over a tricycle from the rider, racing away with it and driving against traffic. What ensued was a head on collision with an oncoming vehicle. The owner of the tricycle and onlookers gave the VIO a hot chase and apprehended him as he made to flee the scene. Then came the police who arrested him. This was what provided the video’s voiceover “make una see how police arrest VIO”.
What Nigerians experience in the hands of uniformed men is nothing but man’s inhumanity to man. It makes mockery of “the police is your friend”! An attestation to this slant was the gruesome murder, by the police in Ibadan, of a seventeen year-old boy whose father was taking to school to write the ongoing West African School Certificate Examination on Tuesday. Again, another video captured the tragic scene that was all over the social media. The boy’s father drove against traffic and traffic wardens pursued him. As he made to escape, the notoriously ubiquitous police van showed up. The policemen jumped down and one of them opened fire on the vehicle killing the lad on the spot! Yes, this happened in twenty-first century Nigeria! The policeman, a murder and coward in uniform, fled the scene as they always do! Should a traffic offense attract death as punishment? Why has the police constituted itself into an execution squad? What kind of training do the police receive before and after recruitment? Is bestiality and citizens’ murder part of the curriculum of their training? Growing up, the mobile police unit was nicknamed “kill and go” in reflection of their penchant for killing the people, and Nigerians did nothing about the phenomenon. Now the ‘’shoot at sight” and “kill and go” mentality has come full circle and Nigerians are the victims. Nigerians are daily subjected to the trauma of hearing, “I go fire you”, “I go shoot you”, “I go kill you and nothing go happen” from the police and other security agencies. The Ibadan incident has antecedents. One of such was the killing of a child in kindergarten some time ago in Asaba by men of the NDLEA.
The police arrested the VIO in the first video. Who would arrest the police in the Ibadan incident? The killer-cop was said to have fled into an air force facility, but was chased out. That has always been the case. They shoot and kill citizens and then flee for fear of being lynched. It is the case of the dispenser of death being afraid of death. What uniformed officials are dishing out to helpless citizens has built massive resentment among the populace and I doubt if the uniformed agencies can accurately gauge the level of anger and hate against them. This played out in October 2020 when the youths of Nigeria rose against police brutality in what has become the ENDSARS uprising. Overnight, the police deserted the streets and the roads and the people enjoyed reprieve. Surprisingly, there were no incidents of robbery for the number of weeks the police and other uniformed personnel went into hiding.
There should be ways of arresting offenders without dehumanizing them. Nigeria’s security agencies usually adopt bizarre and barbaric tactics in arresting people even when they are innocent. And the truth is that many people in police custody are innocent. The recent case of two bricklayers that were arrested and detained even after extorting half a million naira from them is a case in point. Men of the EFCC notoriously carry out routine raids on young people and label them internet fraudsters just to extort them. Soldiers who should be decimating terrorists and bandits have also joined in arresting young boys and label them as internet fraudsters. Officials of the NDLEA are not left out in the charade. They befriend young people, set them up, arrest them and extort them. This is not to absolve criminals who deal in drugs and cybercrime. If investigated and arrested, they should be made to face the music. But this hardly happens in Nigeria. Our security officials have turned Nigeria into a huge crime scene. All the noisemaking about bursting crime is mere choreography. The real deal is: commit the crime, we arrest you, you pay and we let you go!
Nigeria is daily becoming a torture site and the dragnet of affliction is spreading to entrap us all. The uniformed men are also not speared. Soldiers often see the police as soft target and “bulala” and brutalize them. The police in turn pounce on road safety officers. There is a hierarchy of oppression. The people when the opportunity offers itself have also paid the uniformed men in their own coins. Besides the ENDSARS palaver, citizens have had cause to also “arrest” security men and “show them pepper”. These ugly scenarios point at nothing, but the reality that Nigeria is failing. The surge in criminality despite the setting up of multiple law and order enforcing agencies speaks to one thing: reason has fled. Let us restore it! And who does the restoration? The people should. How? This is subject for another day. By now the VIO would have offloaded what he extorted before the accident to the master-extortionists and he is home now getting ready for another round of extortion!
