The Police: A Need for a Change

I’ve had the opportunity of meeting and being in close relationship with quite a lot of men and women of the armed forces, paramilitary and the police.

Luckily amongst them, I have also interacted with a wide spectrum, from those in the lower ranks to those who call the shots amongst them. These men and women have a constitutional duty to protect the lives and property of citizens and visitors of the country. In the discharge of this duty, they sometimes lose their lives or the lives of loved ones who had to pay the ultimate sacrifice to enable them perform their duties.

The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, during a plenary session of the House of Commons, at Prime Minister’s Question time (PMQ) when asked to join in reflecting on the incident of a police man stabbed while trying to apprehend a rape suspect said that, “while she was home secretary she always attended the Police Bravery Awards because these men and women run towards danger when everyone runs away.”

Today on my mind is the police. Although in Nigeria where I come from our police force is discredited for being corrupt, extortionists, brutal and shabby during investigations. Sometimes have been referred to as cowards and on a number of occasions have shown it. As we all know this is statistics and I have no intentions of disapproving but will only try to present their stories from the perspectives I understood them when they were told.

 

Image credit: AMISOM Public Information; Flickr

My first account will be my first trip to a police station in my country. Sometime between June and July of 2016, a collection of my friends, classmates and peer went partying at night in Nsukka, a modest town and home to Nigeria’s first indigenous university and with a lot of Archaeological and historical significance, a town that by its pedigree should be furnished with some of Nigeria’s finest policemen as it also houses a police barrack. 

The town being a modest town goes to sleep relatively between 10pm and 11pm daily and as a result of the population of young people living there as a result of the university which increases the population by an average of 28,000 when it’s in session, there will be frequent all-night outings. One of these kinds of outings is what my friends went for, in this case the celebration of the birthday party of their friend. It is important to note that since 2014 (I can account for this) there has been no curfew in Nsukka, so they were breaking no law by being out late with proper identification. 

So I woke up in the morning to find none of them were back, usually if they really stayed out late, they’d be back by 3am, but none of them was home. I called one of them and nobody was picking it was quite early that Saturday morning say about 5:30am, I decided to call back at about 8:30 same morning only for a police man to pick and inform me that they were at Nsukka Area Command, he said “this is the police, if you know the owner of the phone, he’s at area command, come there.” I asked what they were doing there and the line went dead. I believed bail as they said was free and that they could not possibly have committed any offence, probably being held for not having complete registration document for the car they drove in. on my way I decided as in Nigerian folklore to go with somebody because it will always be more difficult to beat two than it is to beat one, he agreed, so we left for the station.

We got to Nsukka Area Command at about 10 that morning, went to the counter and requested if they were there, we provided their names and they said they were there, so we asked to see them and the women on duty at the counter asked in Igbo “I ga ebunwu kwa”, literally translates “can you carry” we honestly did not understand, she understood, then told us we had to pay two hundred naira to see each person, now they were about eight of them, all we had on us was 2,500 naira (exchange rate as at then was about 300naira to the dollar), we reluctantly paid 400 naira to see two of them. They came out angry and frustrated, they told us their story. We still had to wait one hour for their investigating police officers to return from a routine patrol before we could begin to discuss bail.

My friends’ story was, they left their party venue by 11pm that night, dropped of a friend of theirs at his house very close to the party venue, about to start the car, a police van blocked them, the driver as expected came out, two others came out too. Their discussion with the police men began as routine, where they were coming from and where they were going, he ascertained if the driver was driving drunk, he wasn’t, if there in possession of any control drugs or arms, they were not. So the police men told them that the road wasn’t safe and they needed protection. They argued their houses were very close to no avail. Beaten, they drove behind the police van to Area Command, and were asked to sit and sleep until morning then they could go, at about 2am, they booked them as criminals and put them in the cell. 

One hour later their investigating police officers (IPOs) had arrived heard our reason for wanting to see them told us to wait while they went to provide backup to another police team somewhere. We waited another 45 minutes. Within these 45 minutes a man drove in following him was a police van and inside were the man’s pregnant wife and two daughters roughly aged 28 and 25, he wanted them detained, their offence, planning to kill him and disrespecting him. The police men who arrested them were the IPOs for the friends we were trying to bail, so that was the backup they went to provide.

Image Credit: Mission de I'ONU au Mali; Flickr

Well ours was stalled and we just had to watch the drama unfolding. The older daughter did not want to get married to a particular man her father wanted, that counted as disrespect, younger daughter’s offence I never found out except they kept repeating she was very stubborn, wife’s offence, siding with her daughters and conspiring with them to kill her husband. The whole story of how they got there is not necessary, where it got tensed up was when the police man slapped the older daughter and she flayed, stated her rights as a citizen and how he had no right to hit her only for the police man to land repeated slaps until she began to cry, while her father stood and just nodded his consent. At this point I was already frustrated for having waited two hours thirty minutes with no forth coming response then to watch a member of the police hit a citizen unjustly even while she protested her rights got me angry. They detained the daughters and let their mother go.

One of the IPOs walked up to us and we recounted why we were there and he said to bail each was 10,000 naira before we even tried our protest of that bail was free he asked for IDs, we both had our national IDs, next question was if we were married, of course we weren’t and are not. Then told us to leave or he’ll detain us. We didn’t go. We rallied the 8,000 naira bailed one at about 3pm that afternoon. We asked what their offences were and they said they had committed felony. Now felony is a legal word that contains a broad spectrum of offences like murder. Which one and they were dumb.

At about 8pm that night we had successfully negotiated bailing the remaining with another 8,000 naira. As we drove of that night going back home, they warned us that they were going for another such raid and they weren’t joking because they drove past us and tried to block us off but recognized the car and drove off.

Make what you want out of it.

My next account is that of a police man who is part of the police detailed to restore normalcy to troubled parts of Kaduna state. His most annoying account is the tale of a ruptured tire for one of their vans during patrol, they knew it was bad why they had not changed it is strange. These same individuals would extort huge amounts from you on roads during random stops and inspection for not having a spare tire or for the air gauge of your tires not being up to standard.

His more beautiful stories are those of sacrifices being made by police men in Kaduna state to ensure that so much needed peace is found. Even though there are stories of police men who are tools for politicians to continue to wreck their havoc in the state, there are stories of gallant police men who have resisted them.

A very interesting tale was one where the police stood beside the community in refusing a particular politician entry and they stamped that the 24-hour curfew in place in three local governments of the state is not unique to anybody and indeed upheld the rule of law.

There are stories of police men who faced of the attacking herdsmen despite the overwhelming number of their attackers, in some cases, they managed to hold them off, in others they lost their lives and failed to protect the lives of the residents.

Image Credit: Abayami Azikiwe; Flickr

Not neglecting the ills and rot in the Nigerian policing system, I believe it would be pertinent if Nigeria as a country took cue from Britain and started its own sort of Police Bravery Awards, to encourage those gallant men and women who mount check points all across our roads to provide security and guidance for travelers, run into danger head-on first with nothing else on their minds except the thought “service to the country”. As it is today Nigerians join the police not because they wish to serve but as an alternative to being unemployed, we can change it  if we show the pride in knowing that on a daily basis these men and women stake their lives to protect ours.

To those who have vowed to perpetually rid the police force with filth and continue to bring discredit to it, it would be pleasant if I began to see some of the dismissed or incarcerated for violation of citizen right, not upholding the rule of law, for extortion, for brutality amongst others.