The Inspector General of Police, Mr Hafiz Ringim, recently announced a ban on the use of tinted glasses on vehicles in the country. No reason was given for the ban, but a few specified top government officials were exempted from it. The Police were ordered to arrest drivers of vehicles with tinted glasses, except those that are factory-fitted. The ban which was announced through advertisements in the media, had a deadline of March 15, 2011. Since then, policemen have begun a clamp down on car owners who have not complied with the order.

The growing menace of kidnapping and other vehicle-facilitated crimes in the country may have compelled the revocation of police permits which hitherto allowed car owners to use tinted glasses. The Police had wanted to monitor and account for motorists that were using tinted glasses on their vehicles by demanding that they (car owners) obtained police permit before using such cars. However, the process soon got abused, as almost every applicant got the permit, whether the tint was factory-fitted or not. Indeed, driving a car with tinted glasses soon became a status symbol, as it conferred on the owner some mystique of social importance, with a pseudo VIP flourish. Sadly too, even policemen at checkpoints seemed to treat car owners in tinted glasses with greater respect, if not awe. That way, criminals who rode in cars with tinted glasses, sometimes with kidnapped victims in the cars, got reverent courtesies from the police and other members of the society. The need to forestall the pseudo posturing may have led to the outright ban on the tinted glasses.

While we appreciate the difficulty tinted glasses pose to the police in identifying the status of all car owners, we are concerned that the enforcement of the order may soon lose its steam. Most of the police officers, especially those of junior rank, who are often at highway checkpoints, scarcely know the difference between factory-fitted tints or local film tints. Thus, despite the exemption of the former from the ban, the police still harass car owners with factory-fitted tints, the same way they do locally-fitted tinted cars. Many policemen have even turned the new order to avenues for monetary extortions from car owners.

The Police authorities should therefore further educate its rank and file on the difference, as only the back windows of factory-fitted tints are darkened.

More than that, we believe that the mere use of cars with tinted glasses (factory-fitted or not) does not confer any special importance on the car or its occupants. They should thus be subjected to routine police checks, where and when the need arises. That way, those who hide under the cover of factory-fitted tinted glasses to perpetrate crime can be nabbed and prosecuted.

We are also worried, like the Inspector General of Police, that even some state security chieftains, including policemen, are, as always, lifting themselves above the law by yet driving official and even private cars with local tints on their glasses. We are familiar with this flagrant abuse of office by security agents, as they drive, unchallenged, against traffic, ride motor cycles without helmet, drive menacingly on the highways etc. Perhaps, they need to be reminded that those entrusted with the responsibility of enforcing the nation’s laws should not be the same people that so flippantly flout the laws of the land.

All said, we believe that while the ban should help check crime rate in the country, the issue of tinted glasses should not distract the police from the task of securing lives and property. The police should re-work their security system by exposing the men and officers to advanced and latest forms of security strategies with the aim of re-assuring Nigerians of their overall safety.