Police: Protecting hapless Nigerians from predators

The police have committed so many atrocities that their appearance evokes terror in Nigerians. Today, Nigerians fear policemen more than criminals, writes STEVE UZOECHI

It was a horrible night in June 2005, when five young men and a lady were brutally gunned down in cold blood by an unfeeling police team. The ugly episode is today known across Nigeria as the Apo-Six killing. The five young men – Ifeanyi Ozor, Chinedu Meniru, Anthony Nwokike, Paulinus Ogbonna and Ekene Isaac Mgbe – were auto-spare parts’ dealers at Apo, a satellite town in Abuja and the lady, Augustina Arebu, was the fiancée of one of the young men, Ifeanyi. Down the road, off Gimbiya Street was Grand Mirage Hotel, a major relaxation spot in the neighbourhood and the five young men had chosen that night of June 7 to have a good time and perhaps give their friend’s fiancée, Arebu, a memorable treat. But it was not to be. How could they have known that at the end of Gimbiya Street lurked ruthless death? Their only offence till date has remained the fact that Augustina Arebu spurned the love advances of a senior police officer, then Deputy Commissioner of Police, Danjuma Ibrahim, who apparently didn’t take kindly to being turned down in public. Unknown to the six, Danjuma and his team had thereafter mounted a checkpoint at the end of the street after the senior police officer told his men that ‘he sighted a group of armed robbers in the area’. On their way home in their Peugeot 406 car, the unsuspecting victims were stopped at the Gimbiya checkpoint at the end of the street and Danjuma, after a brief argument, allegedly ordered his men to shoot four of the six. It was instant death for the innocent traders. Nwokike and Arebu, who had survived the night, were ‘finished off’ in the small hours of June 8, by two police officers who claimed the two had ‘attempted to escape from custody’. It was later discovered that Arebu was strangled. Two officers who committed the last killings were later sentenced to death while Danjuma was set free. The police had claimed the victims were armed robbers “who had shot at officers at a checkpoint.” But a Judicial Panel of Inquiry set up by former President Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed the police claims as false and recommended Danjuma and his men for trial. The five accused officers and eight other police witnesses testified that Danjuma allegedly ordered the killings. But after more than a decade of protracted court hearings, the “Apo Six” are yet to get justice. The presiding judge, Ishaq Bello, said there was insufficient evidence to convict Danjuma, who allegedly ordered the shootings. With that, the Police Service Commission reinstated Danjuma and gave him double promotion, leaving the families of the victims, distraught at the perceived injustice. More than a decade, the families of the deceased are yet to get justice. Regrettably, many of such tragic stories abound today in Nigeria with no visible sign that impunity in the Nigeria Police Force will abate any time soon. “The police shall be employed for the prevention and detection of crime, the apprehension of offenders, the preservation of law and order, the protection of life and property and the due enforcement of all laws and regulations with which they are directly charged, and shall perform such military duties within or outside Nigeria as may be required of them by, or under the authority of this or any other Act”, so says the Police Act, but Nigerians know better. Today, Nigerians from all walks of life are beginning to embrace the sad reality of living on edge in a country they call their own; depending upon the police they dread for their safety and living through each day being far too careful, not to cross operatives of the Nigeria Police Force, for fear of extra-judicial death. The agency that should protect citizens; the tax-funded security outfit that should ordinarily be the first responder to citizens’ distress calls, has over the years, gradually yet steadily, built a predator status for itself. This is the perception of most Nigerians. With the rising penchant for impunity among personnel of the Nigeria Police Force; stakeholders, security pundits, human rights advocates and agitated citizens have continued the push for a lasting solution to the growing culture of arbitrariness and lawlessness in Nigeria’s police hierarchy. Mexico is known to have disarmed and disbanded police formations in some of its states for complicity in criminal activities that had heightened the spate of violent killings in the country; but some analysts have adjudged the move as being extreme. In December 2011, the Veracruz Police formation in Mexico was disbanded, with more than 900 officers in Veracruz losing their jobs. The officers were, however, given opportunity to re-join the police only if they pass the trust and credibility test by the state. In September 2018 also, the entire police structure in the Mexican city of Acapulco was disbanded after being disarmed by the military. Mexican authorities maintain that the clampdown was a necessary step in the effort to tackle corruption and infiltration of the police by criminal elements in the wake of growing drug-related violence in the country. Nigerians in recent times have witnessed a wave of brutality and inexcusable extrajudicial killings of innocent citizens across the country, not by drug lords but by the police. Most Nigerians are already exasperated with the growing culture of impunity in the police and would not shy away from recommending a total disbandment if that is what it would take to fix the rot in the Force, and effectively stem the tide of armed brutality by the police against the citizenry. Alarming also is the thought that most agencies with the capacity to wield regulatory or supervisory authority over the police are at a loss on how best to curtail the wave of police brutality and impunity in Nigeria. Mr. Rommy Mum, a member of the Police Service Commission, the agency empowered to discipline erring policemen; while conceding that there appears to be a seeming upsurge in incidents of police highhandedness, says that in his six months in the Commission, he was yet to see a single petition to the Commission on police brutality. He said: “Besides what we read in the newspapers, the Police Service Commission (PSC) is like a court, if you do not bring an incident of abuse to its attention through a petition, it cannot take action. We need to publicise what the PSC can do for Nigerians and Nigerians should begin to come forward with specific complaints so we all can address these issues.” Mum added that incidents of police brutality had always been around but only gained prominence because of what he called ‘on-the-spot reporting’ aided by the social media. He said: “This, however, does not excuse the issues of police high-handedness. But again the new Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, is just a few months old in office and I believe he is making the right moves to tackle the incidents of impunity in the force. He is making the right reactions and interventions in words and he will need to be given a little more time to translate his words to results.” In its part, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) maintains that impunity and brutality will continue to thrive in the police until authorities commit to holding erring officers and their accomplices accountable for their actions. The South-East Coordinator of NHRC, Mrs. Uche Nwokocha, said all efforts so far made by the commission in collaboration with Amnesty International and other agencies in recent times, to get the police high command to account for incidents of extra-judicial killings by the police had yielded no result – not one incident of extrajudicial killing by the police had been fully accounted for. She said: “In most cases, they will simply tell you that they have dismissed the erring officer, but on further investigation, we often find that some of such offending officers were merely transferred and not dismissed.” Nwokocha observed that impunity and brutality in the police were largely driven by corruption. She named bribery and extortion as the triggers for highhandedness. The National Coordinator for the Network on Police Reform in Nigeria (NOPRIN), Mr. Okey Nwanguma, warned that police brutality and extrajudicial killings in Nigeria had risen to epidemic proportion and needed urgent and decisive intervention from relevant authorities. He said: “Across Nigeria, public outrage has reached a crescendo over the escalating spate of police extrajudicial killings and abuse of police power. To say the least, police extrajudicial killing in Nigeria has assumed epidemic proportion. Between November 2018 and April 2019, there have been no fewer than 15 documented cases of police killings across the country from reckless abuse of firearms. “Nigerians woke up on Sunday April 14, 2019 to the tragic news of two more casualties of police brutality in Lagos in one day. That brought to no less than six, in less than one month alone, the number of cases of citizens killed in Lagos by trigger-happy police officers through reckless and inexplicable misuse of firearms. “Earlier this year, two young women were killed in Abuja; one, just a day to her passing out from the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). This was within two weeks after the tragic killing of Kolade Johnson on March 31 by a member of a police team from the notorious Anti-Cultism Unit of the Lagos State Police Command. “And while the outrage that greeted that killing was yet to subside, another policeman under the same Lagos State Police Command again shot a young man and his young female partner, Adaobi Ojide, instantly killing the young woman. The police authorities in Lagos said the policeman who committed the crime escaped and has been declared wanted by the command while his colleagues were arrested and subjected to internal disciplinary procedure, dismissed and handed over for prosecution for murder.” Police brutality has been a recurring incident in Nigeria apparently because of the seeming lack of commitment to decisively redress the growing culture of impunity in the police. Also, on Saturday December 26, 2015, an allegedly drunk police sergeant, Stephen James, with Force No. 217884, attached to Police Mobile Force (PMF 22) shot and killed twin brothers – Taiwo and Kehinde Oyesunde, the only children of their parents – and their friend, Jeje, outside the premises of Paulson Hotel at Ketu, Lagos State, Nigeria, where Jeje’s birthday took place. The policeman later shot himself dead when the weight of the crime he committed dawned on him. On June 27, 2015, Corporal Chris Ali shot into a burial ceremony at Fugar, Edo State, with an assault rifle, killing two nursing mothers who were seated under a canopy. He was found guilty of murder in the police orderly room trial. According to police authorities, he was consequently dismissed from the force and charged to court. Most recently also, on June 3, 2019, a police sergeant, Collins Akpugo, shot and killed Chukwubuike Onuoha (21), an undergraduate of the Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike (MOUAU), at Okwulagha Afara-Ukwu, within Umuahia metropolis, Abia State. The deceased was an indigene of the community. A woman leader from the community, Mrs. Ngozi Ogbonna, who led dozens of women in protest over the killing, noted that Onuoha was shot right in front of his father’s house. Recounting how the man was killed, Ogbonna said: “Onuoha was in company with other youths when the policemen drove towards them in a Toyota Hilux van. The policemen flashed the van’s headlight in the direction of the youth, temporarily blinding them. Onuoha walked up to the van, pleading with the policemen to dim the light. Rather than comply, a policeman alighted and shot him on the shoulder.” Before fleeing the scene and abandoning the van, the policeman shot Onuoha again on the chest, killing him. The Abia State Police Commissioner, Mr. Okon Ene, also confirmed the killing, with a pledge to bring the fleeing suspect to justice. It is widely believed in Nigeria that cases of police brutality and extrajudicial killings that are covered up by the system without redress are legion. They, by far, out-number the cases that come to court. Consequently, victims of police brutality and highhandedness are most times denied justice and left without remedy. It was expected however that the return to democratic processes in 1999 and the reform measures undertaken so far would curb police brutality, but police killings remain prevalent. This calls for urgent and far-reaching measures to end this disturbing trend. NOPRIN’s Programme Coordinator, Nwanguma, observed that extrajudicial killings, particularly by Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), assumed a disturbing frequency under the immediate past IG, Ibrahim Idris, who did nothing to address the concerns raised, prompting the emergence of the #EndSARS Movement led by Segun Awosanya. A police source close to the former IG noted that only the person that had been in Idris’ shoes would understand what the former police chief had to deal with. He said: “The former IG was caught in between the crossfire of powerful political forces that didn’t seem to help his focus on the job. The most I can say now is that Idris set out to do a good job but Nigeria is what it is.” Dismissing the excuses, Nwanguma recalled that “instead of addressing widespread police abuses which prompted the popular campaign to disband the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), the police under Idris justified the excesses of the police accusing those campaigning for the disbanding of SARS as people harbouring criminal intents. The Presidency responded to the #EndSARS agitation by ordering the then IG to reform SARS and the NHRC to conduct public hearings on SARS atrocities.” Despite these official responses and the huge investments of resources, time and energy by civil society, government and international development partners and foreign governments, police reform efforts have yielded no significant improvement. Nwanguma regretted that, “on the part of government, there seems to be more rhetoric than concrete action. Even when government sets up police reform committees, the reports and the far-reaching recommendations of the committees are never wholeheartedly implemented.” Though the police have always agreed to the prevalence of impunity in the Force and had always promised to redress same, the current IG, Adamu, has, however, shown signs of commitment to tackling the wanton brutality and high-handedness deployed by police personnel in the course of discharging their duties. Unlike previous times, the IG was recently reported to have warned that Divisional Police Officers and Area Commanders would henceforth be held responsible for acts of impunity by men under their command and has vowed to restore sanity to policing in the country. And it is expected he would speedily act on his words. As reassuring as his responses and recent actions may seem, Adamu would not be the first IG to accept that there is a pervasive rot in the Force that needs urgent decisive action. One of the most indicting commentaries on the state of the police was rendered seven years ago by former IG, Mohammed Abubakar, while addressing Assistant Police Commissioners in charge of command operations and criminal investigation departments, at a conference in Abuja on February 13, 2012. He said: “The Police Force has fallen to its lowest level. Police duties have become commercialised and provided at the whims and caprices of the highest bidder. “Our police stations, State Criminal Investigations Departments (SCID) and operations offices have become business centres and collection points for rendering ‘returns’ from all kinds of squads and teams set up for the benefit of superior officers. “Our Special Anti-Robbery Squads (SARS) have become killer teams engaging in deals for land speculators and debt collection. Toll stations in the name of check-points adorn our highways with policemen shamefully collecting money from motorists in full glare of the public. “Justice has been perverted, people’s rights denied, innocent souls committed to prisons, torture and extrajudicial killings perpetrated and so many people arbitrarily detained in our cells because they cannot afford the illegal bail monies we demand. “Illegalities thrive under your watchful eyes because you have compromised the very soul of our profession. Our respect is gone and the Nigerian public has lost even the slightest confidence in the ability of the police to do any good thing. “That is how bad it has become and that is why we shall be adopting a very radical approach in the course of running this administration. “We must purge the system of corruption which cripples and frustrates every honest effort at reforming the police as exemplified in the total failure of the multiple efforts of government at reforming the Nigeria Police Force.” Abubakar had ordered the immediate disbandment of all squads, teams or any other operational or investigative outfit operating under whatever name and collapsing such under the original structures recognised by police standards. While acknowledging the logistics and welfare problems facing the police, he, however, stated that, “these problems cannot justify nor serve as excuses for the myriad of uncouth and unprofessional conduct of police officers and men across the country.” Speaking at the Public Tribunal on Police Brutality, Corruption and Abuse held in Owerri, Imo State for Southern Nigeria, by the NOPRIN Foundation, in collaboration with TrustAfrica, Nwanguma observed that the stance of the former IG Abubakar was a familiar pattern among newly appointed police chiefs in the country. He said: “It appears almost every former Inspector General of Police, upon assuming office, adopts such no-nonsense posture, talking tough and promising reforms. But down the line, as they settle in, things return to business as usual. Recall that the current IG also made similar tough statements in his inaugural speech and announced measures. “I must, however, admit that the response by the current IG Mohammed Adamu to the spate of extrajudicial killings by the police is a departure from what was witnessed under his predecessor, IG Ibrahim Idris. “The directive to hold the commanding officers at the Police Divisions and Area Commands responsible for any further infractions will awaken them to their responsibility; to monitor and supervise officers under them to ensure that they are professional in the discharge of their duties. They will now take responsibility for failure to supervise and enforce discipline among the junior ranks.” Furthermore, the South-East Coordinator of NHRC, Nwokocha, is also concerned that there may be a pattern to the incidents of police brutality and impunity. She noted that the southern part of the country was worst hit by the rampant incidents of police high-handedness. “The South-Eastern part of the country in particular, is a place where police are rarely held accountable for their acts of impunity and unprofessionalism. “The complaints of incidents of police brutality that stream in to our office from southern Nigeria is enormous and by far more than the complaints we get from other regions of the country and the major causes of these incidents of brutality is extortion. Scattered across the South-East are all manner of police, military and paramilitary security teams piling undue pressures on the people,” Nwokocha said. In May, 2019, the NOIPolls, a polling service founded by the former Vice President of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, ran a poll for 1,000 randomly selected Nigerians on the conduct of the Nigeria Police Force. While 85 per cent of participants in the poll affirmed that illegal activities by the police were very prevalent across the country, the poll also found that the South-South and South-West zones have the largest proportion of Nigerians (89 per cent each) who attested to the high rate of illegal activities by the police. And this tends to support the claims of the NHRC. Some of the parameters evaluated include: killing the unarmed; intimidating the innocent; collecting bribes; arresting the innocent; illegal checkpoints (extortion); hiring out guns to criminals, sex-for-bail and arresting commercial sex workers. “Get to some of these police stations for instance; it is shocking the level of impunity and brazenness with which they collect ‘ransoms’ from fellow citizens in the name of bail. And for that matter, bail is supposed to be free and this impunity goes on right under the noses of top police officers,” the NHRC zonal coordinator added. With the increasing spate of crime and insecurity in the country, Nigerians are further burdened with ‘being careful’ in dealing with their own police operatives who should look out for their safety, to the extent that in some areas, the sight of a policeman evokes fear instead of an assurance of safety. Only recently, in the heat of the extrajudicial killings by policemen in the country, the Head of Police Public Complaint Unit, Abayomi Shogunle, in a Twitter update that provoked public outrage, counselled citizens on how to relate with policemen, to avoid being killed. And one of such tips was that citizens should desist from speaking Queen’s English to police operatives as it may trigger conflict. He recommended Pidgin English instead. His twit reads: “For now, don’t go and be speaking Queen’s English with them on the road. For proper understanding, talk to them in Pidgin.” Ben Jack Egwuatu, a public commentator in Imo State had reacted by saying: “The counsel by Shogunle will not reassure any Nigerian and that is for sure. At best, it would instil fear in the citizenry by conveying the impression, that to be safe around the Nigerian Police, one must be able to walk on eggshell. This is the same Police Force that is funded by tax-payers money and the fact that Shogunle who is supposed to handle public complaints is saying this, is alarming, to say the least. All things considered, the Nigeria Police Force urgently needs a radical shakeup.” In a 2014 report by Amnesty International entitled: “Welcome To Hell Fire: Torture and Other Ill-Treatments in Nigeria,” the authors wrote: “Amnesty International’s research into cases of torture, enforced disappearances and deaths in military and police custody, reveals a pattern of inadequate criminal investigation by police and military and a disregard for due process. This facilitates human rights violations in custody, including torture and other ill-treatment; denies people suspected of a crime a fair trial; and ultimately hinders successful prosecution of suspects. Security officials are rarely held accountable for failures to follow due process or for perpetrating human rights violations such as torture. “The absence of acknowledgement and public condemnation of such violations by senior government officials further assists in creating a climate for impunity and raises serious concern about the political will to end such human rights violations.” While many special government committees and reports have highlighted various causes of police impunity and brutality, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) is convinced that the prime cause of impunity and brutality in the police is corruption. In one of its landmark reports on the police entitled: “Everyone’s in on the game, HRW submitted that: “Countless ordinary Nigerians attempting to make precarious ends meet as taxi drivers, market traders, and shopkeepers are accosted on a daily basis by armed police officers who demand bribes and commit human rights abuses against them as a means of extorting money. “Those who fail to pay are frequently threatened with arrest and physical harm. Far too often these threats are carried out. “Meanwhile, victims of crime are obliged to pay the police from the moment they enter a police station to file a complaint until the day their case is brought before a court. In the shadows, high-level police officials embezzle staggering sums of public funds meant to cover basic police operations. Senior police officers also enforce a perverse system of ‘returns’ in which rank-and-file officers are compelled to pay up the chain of command a share of the money they extort from the public. Those charged with police oversight, discipline, and reform, have for years failed to take effective action, thereby reinforcing impunity for police officers of all ranks who regularly perpetrate crimes against the citizens they are mandated to protect.” A senior academic in the Faculty of Law at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Binzak Azeez, in a recent article differed however, insisting that only a well-democratised polity and economy could abate the wave of brutality in the police. According to him, the police are privy to the fundamental human rights’ provisions under Chapter 4 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended. He wrote: “They are not ignorant of the Part 2 of the Police Act which posited their primary duties as ‘maintenance of law and order, prevention and detection of crime and the protection of lives and property.’ They understand that the application of firearms against persons ‘except in self-defence or defence of others against threat of death or severe injury or to prevent the escape of a person who has committed a serious or deadly crime while resisting their authority’ is unprofessional and barbaric. No amount of extant laws, bills and reforms can effectively curb police brutality in Nigeria.” It is the hope of every resident of Nigeria that the police force will progressively evolve in the right direction; advancing steadily in the quality of training, techniques, and character of its personnel, in line with global best practices; and as such, rebuilding public confidence in the possibility that the Nigeria Police Force will someday render service with integrity. Source: New Telegraph