By Sunny Awhefeada
The uniform in Nigeria confers on the wearer two unpalatable and destructively inhuman features namely: cruelty and impunity. This character is not a new phenomenon. It has been around from the earliest moment uniformed services took off in Nigeria with the constabulary in 1820. That was how the colonial enterprise over two hundred years ago, recruited natives into the constabulary and used them to suppress and oppress their own people. When the West African Frontier Force took off in 1900 it also took on the character of subjugation. It was conceived as a mechanism for oppression, suppression and repression. So, the DNA of cruelty and impunity was always there among the uniformed services. Unchecked, that character has gone full cycle and it is tormenting helpless citizens. General Olusegun Obasanjo twice ruler of Nigeria in one of his hagiographies narrated how he disciplined soldiers who were leaving the barracks to physically assault civilians in Ibadan while he was commander of the area command. The military coups of January and July 1966 also attest the the cruelty if not the bestiality of men in uniform. The marauding majors who conducted the January coup killed political leaders in a most merciless and gruesome manner. They also slaughtered their fellow officers with whom they ate and drank and danced at a marriage party a few hours before midnight. The newly married brigadier who lavishly feted them was also killed by the officer he flagged down for help after escaping those who attacked his residence. Some of those they murdered were their immediate bosses that placed so much trust in them. The July countercoup was even more horrendous in magnitude. What followed the bestial killings was the nightmare of a civil war that led to needless bloodshed and loss of lives. J. P. Clark has, in a telling poem that memorialized the war, proclaimed “we are all casualties”.
The end of the civil war did not end the bestiality of uniformed men. Cruelty accompanied by mindlessness sauntered into the serene campus of the University of Ibadan one day in February and ended the life of Kunle Adepeju. A mild students’ protest over food and policemen, perpetually envious of undergraduates, gamboled into the campus, trained their guns on students and by the time they left, Adepeju, a student of the Faculty of Agriculture had become the first student martyr in Nigerian history. A few years down the line, the killers of state in uniform reenacted the bloody episodes of 1966 by assassinating the head of state and others on 13 February 1976. The assassinated head of state was a leading mutineer in the July 1966 revenge coup. The same subalterns he led to execute that coup were the ones who shot him ten years later. The participants of the February putsch were arrested, tried and executed by firing squad. Sadly, there is a strong thinking that some of those executed were innocent. That was cruelty and bestiality at work. The decade of the 1970s did not end without what has come to be known as the “Ali Must Go” riots which again led to the shooting and killing of students in Nigerian universities. The same year Danjuma’s soldiers, although they were called unknown soldiers, invaded Kalakuta Republic, threw Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti from the first floor of a storey building and burnt down the premises. Mrs. Ransome-Kuti, famed nationalist whom fought for Nigeria’s independence and mother of Fela the great musician did not survive the brutality.
Nigerian students of the 1990s sang a dirge woven around the fate of Dele Udoh an American based Nigerian champion athlete that the police killed during one of his visits to Nigeria. The brutal murder of a Colonel Israel Rindam by the same “kill and go” police dominated the news in the early 1990s. The police frame up innocent citizens, lock them up, torture and extort them. The kick to write this piece came from a story making the round in the social media about a police officer who was so cruel that everybody who commented on his sudden demise pronounced curses on him even in death. In this part of the world, one of the things we are taught is not to speak ill of the dead no matter what. But the case of this police officer violated that code. All the commentaries that trailed his death since it occurred a few days ago have been tales of horror that made readers to shudder. He framed up victims, arrested and tortured and extorted them. There were claims of innocent people he not only detained endlessly, but executed extra-judicially. A woman narrated how he beat and kicked her after collecting a bribe of five hundred thousand naira from her on the ground that the amount he demanded for was more than that. The woman was pregnant when the policeman brutalized her. The questions that should be asked are: could it be true that none of his victims reported his gross misconduct to his superiors? What did his superiors do to him? How did he stay in the force without reprimand or being sacked? That the said officer remained in the police force despite all the atrocities he committed reflects the truth about the Nigeria Police as public enemy number one!
The uniformed services are habouring too many criminals in their ranks. Was it not a few years ago that a police officer that was praised as a “super cop” and hailed as a “crime burster” was discovered to be a criminal? Yet, for many years he was applauded and garlanded as an effective crime burster not knowing that he was a reincarnation of DSP George Iyamu. Our “super cop” and “crime burster” deceived the nation and carried on in borrowed robes until the veil fell off and he was revealed as a capomandomento! Customs and immigrations men and women also number among rogues in uniform. They extort and shoot those who refused to be extorted. Four years ago, a bus running the Benin-Warri stretch was stopped by customs men and in no time they framed up the occupants with various offences. Among the occupants were students who protested such a treatment. The rogues in uniform threatened to shoot them if they did not cooperate. The poor passengers were ransacked and robbed of different valuables before they were allowed to go. There is a 2019 video depicting the killing of a foreign based Nigerian by customs men because he refused to give a bribe of five thousand naira to them. The video resurrected a few days ago.
The madness, excesses, cruelty and impunity of uniformed men have reached unbearable peak. The people are angry and what they feel whenever they behold uniformed men is utter revulsion. The resentment against uniformed men and what the people could do in retaliation played out during the ENDSARS protests of October 2020. Nigeria has become a jungle and in the jungle only the strong survives. The uniformed men trample on the people on the strength of the arms they bear. They must be aware that the proliferation of arms is a phenomenon in Nigeria and that there are many non-state actors who also bear such arms. They should not provoke the people to imitate them in their brutality. The authorities in charge of the uniformed services must rethink their purpose and modus operandi. The officers and men must be retrained again and again. They must subscribe to professionalism and discipline. They must subject themselves and operations to the laws of the land. Shooting civilians will not fuel their pride or earn them epaulettes. They should go to the forests of Abraka, Uwheru, Zamfara, Sambisa and do exploits with their guns. Only then shall we offer them flowers. This is however not saying that there are no good uniformed men and women. There are angels among these devils. Soldiers and policemen have sang and danced for me and brought smiles and laughter to my face. I have seen policemen and soldiers helping people whose vehicles broke down to fix or push them. I have seen policemen and soldiers who would not demand for or collect bribe. But they are few. They have been overwhelmed by the rogues among them, the rogues who now define them. Shame on the rogues in uniform!
