Date Published: 06/10/09

POLICE SIEGE OF SOUTH EAST

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Nigerians have generally been confronted over the years by the dangerous Cankerworm of corruption of our men and officers of the Nigeria Police Force especially those operatives posted on the major Highways across the country.

Following widespread outcry from a cross section of Nigerians, the top hierarchy of the Nigeria police force decided to set up what they called Anti-corruption Units in the different state formations of the police all across Nigeria.

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But if you think that the setting up of the anti-corruption taskforce by the successive Inspectors General of police and the different commissioners of police in the thirty six states of the Federation and Abuja will stop these diverse dimensions of corruption among police operatives, then you are dead wrong.

Reason: the immediate past administration was so incensed by the putrefying stench of corruption and bribery afflicting the Nigeria police that the then President Olusegun Obasanjo during a seminar on Human Rights and Law Enforcement in Nigeria organized by the Nigeria police delivered a speech where he called for an all out battle against the scourge of police corruption.

Obasanjo whose eight years stay in power from 1999 to 2007 was characterized by widespread allegations of corruption had stated thus;

“The new Police Force we are building is one dedicated to the service and protection of the people of Nigeria with pride, dignity and consummate professionalism. The new Force has no place for corruption and all its attendant ramifications. A corrupt Police Force is an ineffective, inefficient and disrespected Police Force....”

This piece will not talk about the corruption at the highest hierarchical levels of the nation’s police because it is already a well known fact that a sitting Inspector General of police was arrested, charged and convicted in court for corruption in the immediate past dispensation by the then Mallam Nuhu Ribadu-led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

To the consternation of most thinkers and analysts in Nigeria the said former Inspector General of Police Mr. Tafa Balogun was literarily handed a very light sentence of six months which he spent at the Cosy Kuje prison facility in Abuja considered as one of the cleanest prisons in Nigeria. This despicable and reprehensible light sentencing of a man who was alleged by the then Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to have stolen several billions of police funds may have encouraged the operatives in the Nigeria police posted in the different so-called check points across the country to intensify their atrocious acts of bribery and corruption in the full glare of all.

A good Nigerian observer Konye Bagu had observed in his letter to the Editor of Saturday Thisday of June 6 th 2009 that the menace of policemen on our Nigerian Roads has become dangerously worrisome. This observer stated rightly thus;

“I wish to draw your attention to the greatest embarrassment currently playing out in Lagos and probably all over our nation. It has to do with the current spate of corruption going on on our roads being carried out by our policemen. Contrary to earlier directives from the IG of Police, the number of checkpoints within Lagos has increased alarmingly and these checkpoints have become money-making points for our policemen who openly solicit for money from…road users daily.…”

“Unlike before when these ‘Men in Black’ hide their ‘loot’ so that the ‘stop and check’ corruption-control unit earlier put in place by the police do not arrest them, nowadays they solicit openly for N50 (no longer N20) from these road users. The extortion happening on our roads is unparalleled….”

‘The average policeman is no longer interested in the security of civilians but is rather concerned about securing his pockets. The transport fare escalation being experienced by commuters in Lagos is due to police greed. This wanton act of corruption on our roads needs to be curbed immediately. It is no longer “Wetin you carry” but “Wetin you go pay”. These checkpoints are commonly referred to as ‘Settlement Centres’ or ‘Police Toll-gates.’ This might explain the sudden rise in police shootings within the state as most drivers who refuse to stop and ‘pay’ are shot at by these greedy men in black.…”

Bagu’s observations on the misbehaviours of the Nigeria police operatives in Lagos were exactly what I observed during my last trip to the South Eastern Nigeria last week. From one checkpoint to the next, these gun-wielding drunken police operatives have made it a point of duty to extort money from all the drivers plying these dangerously life threatening road infrastructure.

I came face to face with these corrupt tendencies of the police operatives in virtually every part of the South East and the most dangerous aspect of all these corrupt tendencies of the armed Nigeria police is that the unarmed and heavily harrassed civilian populace in the South East have become timid, intimidated and docile and do not believe that active resistance of these criminal life style of the police operatives could check the trend. Why for instance will the commercial drivers and even operators of private cars participate in the act of bribing these policemen without putting up any form of resistance? My inquiry in the South East gave me the impression that most people are too scared of “accidental discharge” and extra legal executions associated with most of these drunken Police operatives that they do not want to become victims. The federal government must call these irresponsible police operatives to order. The State Government must rise up to the challenge of protecting their ordinary people from police extortion and intimidation.

It is shameful that while the police operatives have perfected means of laying siege and extorting innocent civilians in the South East, armed robbery, kidnapping, and all forms of criminalities are going on without any successful anti-robbery and anti-crime law enforcement mechanism by these Police operatives. Something should be done urgently to check these trend to avoid a situation of implosion by the civil populace because no matter how docile a civilian population is, if they are pushed to the wall by the atrocious conduct of the Nigeria police operatives, then they could be forced to stage active resistance using every available tools. The saying goes that if “peaceful change is impeded, then revolutionary change becomes inevitable”.