Date Published: 04/24/09
Agboros in Uniforms
By Tochukwu Ezukanma
An agboro is not just a blustering ruffian. He is also a ruthless and unreasonable man whose behavior cannot be rationalized by any normal yardstick. Having overstretched my budget on a trip to my hometown, I was forced to travel by road from Onitsha to Lagos. At the more established transportation companies, the last buses had all left for Lagos. So, I had to make do with boarding a bus at the Onitsha Motor Park. At the Motor Park, the agboros were at work.
I was staggered by their rudeness and cantankerousness. They were lying to their passengers, insulting them and threatening to beat them up. The passengers, especially the elderly amongst them, angered by their insolence and deceit were heaping curses on them. I remained cool, trying to detach myself from that bedlam. However, I was bowled over by the imprudence of an agboro who threatened to kick a pregnant woman in the stomach. Despite my deliberate attempt to stay above the fray, I lost my cool, and dared the beast to try it and see what will become of his bestial self.
In many respects, members of the Nigerian military are very similar to the Onitsha Motor Park agboros. They are sometimes as thoughtless and irrational and their behavior as bizarre. This is made very evident by the repeated brutalizing and killing of Nigerians civilians by Nigerian soldiers for no reason. Ordinarily, that assault on Ms. Uzoma Okere by navy ratings with the approval of a rear admiral would have passed unnoticed. It caught the nation’s eyes and stirred her conscience because it was captured on a video tape.
In their characteristic hypocrisy, the politicians and the military hierarchy saw an opportunity to score some political and public relations mileage from the national outrage that attended that barbarity. The presidency, the legislature, the Chief of the Defense Staffs and some governors pretending, as though they were just realizing it for the first time that soldiers routinely injure and murder Nigerian civilians for no reason and go unpunished, came up with their series of charades. They called them laws.
The Lagos state government came up with a law banning the use of siren by anyone, as though the law ever allowed the use of sirens by any one in the state, except for the governor and the deputy governor. The military made their law banning the use of siren by senior army officers and the carrying of horse-whip by military men. By the existing laws, were military men with the exception of the Chief of the Defense Staffs authorized to use siren and does the Nigerian constitution grant any one the right to carry horse whip and herd Nigerian citizens around like animals? The legislature and the presidency also came up with their own deceitful shams.
Moreover, the problem in Nigeria is not lack of laws. The problem is the refusal of individuals to obey the law and the inability of the government to enforce the laws. In spite of all the anti-corruption laws, does Nigeria not remain one of the most corrupt countries in the world? The Inspector Generals of Police have repeatedly declared police road blocks and the attendant police extortion of money from motorists illegal. But have police roadblocks and the extortion of money by the police not remained a fixture of our national reality?
The beating up and sometimes killing of Nigerian civilians by members of the Nigerian military is neither new nor anecdotal. It is an old problem and it is very rampant. Nigerian soldiers regularly beat, shoot and kill civilians for the filmiest reasons. And most of the times, they go unpunished.
In October, 2008, at Ilorin, air force men, including two sergeants beat a taxi driver and three shop owners along Yoruba Road to a state of coma. They also beat up passers-by and other shop owners and grabbed two of their victims “with blood oozing out of their heads”, locked them up in the boot of their car (Volkswagen Golf 4 saloon car marked AT794LFF), and drove them of to their barracks. What necessitated the violence and brutality? The military men who were driving against the traffic were enraged when the taxi driver, shop owners and passers-by urged them to obey traffic laws and stop driving against the traffic.
In Lagos, at Allen Avenue, Ikeja, a naval officer shot and killed an okada rider. A sadist of demonic dimensions, he had first asked the okada man to open his mouth, and then, he shot him through the mouth; he died instantly. For no justifiable reason, he wasted the life of a struggling, promising young man. The Okada rider was a student at the University of Lagos, but rode his Okada part time for survival. What was the Okada rider’s offense? The naval officer alleged that he scratched his car.
At the order of a brigade general, his orderly shot a man. As the man, a houseboy in the brigade general’s neighborhood, fell to the ground groaning under the impact of the bullet that struck him in the leg, the brigadier ordered him to shot him again because “I want my neighbors to be afraid of me”. The orderly shot him a second time and the houseboy died. What was the dead houseboy’s offense? He had a quarrel with the brigade general’s houseboy.
To beat people unconscious and lock them up in the booth of a car because they had asked you to obey traffic rules is criminal lunacy. To shoot a man through the mouth because he scratched your car is satanic cruelty. To order an orderly to shoot a man to death because you want your neighbors to fear you is murderous psychosis.
Criminal lunacy, satanic cruelty and murderous psychosis - would not similar adjectives qualify the mindset of an admiral who approvingly watched the public beating and stripping naked of a young woman? How different is he from the agboro who saw nothing wrong in kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach? The behaviors of some members of the Nigerian military are gross, irrational and intractable, just like the agboros. The significant difference being that this band of agboros are quartered, paid and uniformed at government expense.
Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
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