Boko Haram Vs Police: One Bad Turn Deserves Another
By: Abu Bilaal Abdulrazaq bn Bello bn Oare
sahaabah@aol.com


The Nigerian Constitution provides for the establishment of a federal police under the command of an Inspector General of Police, who shall be appointed by the President, and part of its role is the promotion and maintenance of law and order, as well as the provision of security of the lives and property of the citizenry.

Unfortunately, however, the police force in Nigeria is nothing but a personification of incompetence, as it lacks the basic requirements central to effective social control, which includes sensitivity, respect, responsiveness, diligence, trustworthiness, and selfless service. The Police in Nigeria could best be described as despotic, draconian, primitive, and grossly lacking in credibility and legitimacy, hence they do not enjoy the confidence, respect and support of the citizenry, especially the hoi polloi.

A report of the Open Society Justice Initiative / Network on Police Reform in Nigeria in May of 2010 titled: “Criminal Force: Torture, Abuse, and Extrajudicial Killings by the Nigeria Police Force”, written by Professor Chidi Odinkalu, Director of the OSJI, has it that the NPF officers commit summary executions, participate in large-scale killings and undertake the mass burials of victims in shallow graves. Rape and sexual violence against female detainees and suspects, the report says, is not unusual, with police attempting to cause suffering, inflict punishment, or coerce compliance by subjugating the victims. The report quoted a police officer who described raping sex workers as a “fringe benefit” for policemen on night patrol.

The report reads in part: “Police in Nigeria commit extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and extortion with relative impunity. Nigeria Police Force personnel routinely carry out summary executions of persons accused or suspected (not convicted) of crime; rely on torture as a principal means of investigation; commit rape of both sexes, with a particular focus on sex workers; and engage in (felonious) extortion at nearly every opportunity. The Nigerian government has acknowledged these problems and promised to address them in the past, but to date, abuses have continued with no real accountability. Nigeria's leadership must pay serious attention to police reform if it hopes to succeed in restoring public safety. This report's findings are based on independent field monitoring and investigation at over 400 police stations and posts in 14 states and territories in Nigeria from February 2007 to January 2009. The research was augmented by a review of relevant legislation, case law, and official reports, as well as secondary materials, including newspaper articles and NGO reports.”

The gross misconduct of the Nigerian Police Force draws both local and international attention. Amnesty International (AI), for example, returned a damning verdict on the Nigeria police saying it “kills at will.” It also said the police are responsible for hundreds of behind-the-door executions that take place every year in the country. AI’s director of Africa programmes, Erwin van der Borght said: “The Nigerian police are responsible for hundreds of unlawful killings every year”.

At this juncture, it would be very propitious to recall a few of the nightmarish onslaught of the Nigerian Police on the ordinary citizens of this country.

In the early 80s, Dele Udoh, a one-time Nigerian top athlete was brutally murdered by a police officer in Lagos. It was explained away as accidental discharge, and the case was swept under the carpet.

On Monday, June 23, 2008 and on Monday, June 16, of the same year, both The Sun and the Daily Trust newspapers respectively detailed the incidence of a police shooting spree at Toge, Airport Road, in the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. Both accounts talk of one dead and two shot and wounded. The person killed is said to be one 27-year old Ismaila Usman (Abdullahi) and the officer responsible is Corporal Sanga Mohammed (Mobile Force Tag 211185). The shocking part of the story, as reported by the dailies, is that these shootings were carried out against people supposedly being ejected from illegal structures. The news of this attack made the rounds internationally, and one does not need the services of a soothsayer to tell how such an action portrays us before the international community.

Likewise, it was published in the Punch newspaper of Monday, 24 May 2010, that on the 7th of February 2001, a plain clothes policeman, Corporal Rabiu Bello attached to Kaduna State Criminal Investigation Department (CID) requested a young apprentice, Haliru Salau Agaba to buy a stick of cigarette for him. Haliru responded that he could not afford it. Corporal Bello pulled out a pistol and pumped bullets into the young apprentice, who slumped. On Sunday, 18 March, 2001, Mr. Kalu Samuel Iroh was arrested with four others for an alleged traffic offence. The five were detained at Makoko Police Station but were later transferred to Barracks Police Station, Surulere, Lagos, where Kalu was battered to death by policemen attached to the station. Nothing has come out of those cases as well as that of the celebrated killing of six young Nigerians in Apo part of the Federal Capital Territory.

Very recently, a Benin High Court presided over by Justice Roland Amaize sentenced Police Sergeant Kalejaiye Ola to death by hanging for the murder of one Paul Erimafa on June 23, 2003 with assault rifle, AK47. According to the judge, the accused initially reported a case of armed robbery against the deceased but investigations proved otherwise. In his words: “It is the view of the court that there was no justification for the accused person to have shot and killed the deceased who was harmless as at the time of the incident.”

In a like manner, in 2008, the Nigerian Police gruesomely murdered Musa Idris, a member of the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria, Warri Area Council, whom they viciously framed up to be an accomplice of one Mudiaga, a notorious political thug in Warri, Delta State, whose killing by the police was also extra-judicial, as he was not made to face trial nor convicted by any court of competent jurisdiction. The police arrested Musa and took him to his family in handcuffs for a search of his home. At the end of the search, which revealed no incriminating evidence against Musa, he was taken into the police van, and on their way back to the station, they wickedly shot and killed him, alleging that he tried to escape.

Perhaps the most celebrated of such killing sprees of the Nigerian Police Force, though not the latest, was that of the Boko Haram sect members that took place in Borno in 2009. The police, at that time, also claimed that the group’s leadership were killed as they tried to escape. But the claim later proved to be false and deceptive, typical of the NPF, when the army that arrested the leadership stated its own side of the story. Then in February 2010, Al-Jazeera TV went on the international stage to show footages of unarmed civilians who were brought out of their houses, made to lie face down beside the road, and shot by the police who, perhaps, were oblivious of the fact that their actions were been filmed. The world was, indeed, shocked by the gory images contained in those footages.

Another sore point of the Nigerian Police Force is the shooting and killing, maiming and brutalizing of innocent Nigerians (especially commercial motorists and cyclists) for refusing to “cooperate” in the form of giving police men N20 bribe, which they euphemistically refer to as “Roger”, at the ubiquitous road blocks (most of them illegal) mounted across major roads in the country. The following excerpt from an Editorial of the Nigerian Tribune provides sufficient instances where policemen mindlessly took the lives of the people they are meant to protect for an “offence” as little and as trivial as refusing to part with twenty naira:

“In Anambra State, four citizens lost their lives while returning from a vigil when they were shot by some mobile policemen over a disagreement on a twenty naira bribe. The other day, a mobile policeman reportedly shot dead two persons in a commercial bus at Amawbia junction in Awka when the driver of the bus refused to part with a twenty naira bribe. In Lagos, Celestine Okoro and Richard Okoroafor were killed in the Bariga area of Lagos, despite paying the twenty naira bribe, while Morakinyo Akerele and Nnamdi Francis Ekwuyasi were also shot dead at the Falomo area by some policemen carrying arms procured with tax-payers money and 17 year-old Oluwatosin Adelugba of Keke High School, Agege, Lagos was shot dead at a check-point because the driver of the bus in which she was riding refused to give policemen the usual bribe.”

These rampant incidents of wanton killings of innocent Nigerians at police checkpoints have instilled feelings of trepidation, apprehension and extreme fear into the hearts and minds of motorists and commuters who approach these checkpoints with pounding hearts.

In truth, the citizens of this country have suffered more oppression in the hands of the Nigerian Police than they have suffered in the hands of hoodlums and armed rubbers. For years, the ordinary Nigerians have suffered police brutality and oppression. Thousands of innocent, law-abiding, and peace loving citizens of our country have been unremittingly harassed, extorted, tortured, framed-up for offences not committed, wrongfully incarcerated, brutalized, or killed by trigger-happy policemen. There are confirmed cases of policemen posing as commercial bus drivers in search of passengers, and as soon as they gather these unsuspecting passengers, they drive them straight to the police station and accuse them of unfounded offences. On the highways, scores of accident victims still grasping for life have been killed by policemen in order to cart away their possessions. Hundreds of students have been arrested for exam malpractices during GCE, WAEC and JAMB examinations, only to be accused of armed robbery on getting to the police station. Innumerable cases of extra-judicial killings have been carried out by the Nigerian Police, either due to incompetence or in order to cover-up facts.

It is quite disturbing to note that these policemen who carry out these dastardly acts are people employed and paid by the federal government, using tax payer’s money, to protect the masses but who instead chose to do a disservice to the nation. Clearly, the Nigerian Police Force has literally evolved into that state apparatus which works directly against its set goal of protecting the masses of Nigeria. One out of every ten Nigerians has a sad tale to tell about their experiences with the police force, whose victims are always at worst suspects, but never convicts. They never get these suspects to face the law and be convicted or freed, as the case may be, and they have almost always gotten away with their despicable acts.

But the Boko Haram has said no to this perpetuation of impunity. They have vowed to avenge the extra-judicial killing of their leaders by the NPF and they have made good their threats by unleashing terror on the police which has so far proved to be incapable of policing itself. A sizeable number of Policemen have been sent to their graves by the bullets and bombs of the Boko Haram fighters. Policemen now discard their uniforms, forsake their stations, and flee into the bush when they perceive any Boko Haram attack. In the far eastern state of Maiduguri, policemen go to the stations in mufti, with their uniforms carefully hidden in their bags. When they get to the station, they change into their uniforms, and at the close of business they take off their uniforms again before hitting the roads back home, all borne out of fear of being caught by Boko Haram fire. In fact, for an average policeman living in the Northern part of Nigeria, especially the North East geo-political zone of the region, the fear of Boko Haram is, to say the least, the beginning of wisdom. The dreaded group appears to have laid a siege on that axis of the country, using guerrila-like warfare.

However, if we agree that oppression is worse than carnage, and if we also agree that it is natural for an oppressed soul to seek revenge or at least redress, then we can comfortably say that the vengeance mission of the Boko Haram, cruel as it may seem, has given succour and healing to the hearts of the numerous victims of police brutality in this country. For once, the police are been paid in their own coin. They are been made to taste a little of the atrocious cruelty they have always vented on defenceless Nigerians. Even as we decry the innocent citizens caught in the Boko Haram fire, it remains a truism that in the attack of policemen by Boko Haram combatants, there is the fulfilment of the Biblical adage which says: “He who kills by the sword shall die by the sword”. But will anyone dare say well-done Boko Haram?


These Boko Haram combatants cannot continue to kill for ever. But in the same vein, the law keepers themselves cannot continue to be lawless for eternity. The Nigerian government must do all that is required to stop the lawless actions in the police force and curb the culture of impunity, in order to save the nation from the current impasse. It is disheartening that it was only the bombing of the police force headquarters that the IG, Hafiz Rigging, sorry Ringim, described as a “wake-up call”, whereas a thousand and one other extra-judicial killings had been carried out in the country, claiming so many innocent lives.

Abu Bilaal Abdulrazaq bn Bello bn Oare
sahaabah@aol.com
Kaduna, Nigeria.

"One bad turn deserves anotherm" indeed.