Whenever trigger-happy
cops kill an innocent citizen, they have only given expression to the
adversarial relationship they have cultivated with the rest of the citizens.
They have not done anything different from what others who occupy positions of
authority do. Those who preside over the affairs of our nation see society as
bifurcated between themselves and the rest of the citizens who should be
subjected to ill treatment at their hands.
To them, government does not exist
for the people but for a handful of leaders and a coterie of their loyalists.
Or why do our leaders not feel the pain of the citizens? How would our leaders
feel the pain of driving on a pothole-ridden road when they fly above it? Would
they feel the pain of being treated in a slaughterhouse that is outlandishly
christened a general or teaching hospital when they fly abroad for medical
treatment at the expense of the taxpayers?
It is only on those rare occasions that they
are made to experience the pain of the citizens that they may consider taking
action to stop the source of a tragedy. If a son or daughter of the president
or a governor had been shot dead by the police when the victim was not guilty
of any criminal offence, by now the government would have initiated a rash of
policies and programmes to stop the unprovoked killings of innocent citizens by
the police. But as usually the case, policemen only harass and shoot dead those
outside the class of the rich and powerful in the society. It is only a
tricycle and a bus driver who refuse to be extorted of N50 or youths whom they
suspect of being criminals simply because they are wearing earrings and
dreadlocks who suffer the grisly propensity of the police.
Thus, the shooting to death of Kolade Johnson
in Lagos only illustrates the perennial ordeal of the citizens at the hands of
the police. Johnson’s killing was the fourth reported cold-blooded murder by
the police in just one month, March. The police smudged the month with blood on
March 2 with some officers shooting a bus driver dead in Mosan, Ayobo area of
Lagos for refusing to part with money. Two weeks after, a teenage girl was
killed by a stray bullet in a shootout between policemen and some cultists in
Ikorodu, while on March 25, an Okada rider was shot dead in Kilo, Surulere area
of Lagos.The victim, identified as Ademola Moshood, was a few blocks away from
his house, when he was shot by an officer attached to Soloki Police Station,
Surulere.
Now, the police have ended the month with the killing of Johnson on March 31 by
operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) who had visited his area on
an unmarked commercial bus to arrest a boy who was wearing dreadlocks. Johnson
was shot dead at a venue where he had gone to watch football. If the police
believed that all football viewing centres were sites either for the
proliferation of criminality or the hibernation of felons and malefactors, why
have they not banned them since? Worse, the policemen may not have understood
their rules of engagement with the rest of the society. This perhaps explains
why they would raid and start shooting at football viewing centres that
obviously had no guns or other lethal weapons hidden somewhere.
No, the policemen could not have been taught
such rules of engagement when their leaders have been preoccupied with
ballot-snatching. Propelled by cupidity, they have been aiding politicians to
commit all kinds of electoral heist at the detriment of their professional
responsibilities. It is because the police have not been educated on their
responsibilities to the rest of the citizens that they see the latter as
perpetual foes to be extinguished at every given moment. And out of the
ignorance or deliberate violation of the rules of civility, they cannot
understand the attitudinal and sartorial peculiarities of the youths. They do
not understand that today’s youths want to daily push further the frontiers of
independence. Police operatives are affronted when they see young ladies having
beards and moustaches. Once they see them, they want to get scissors and cut
off what they consider as excrescences. They may even go to the extent of
striping them naked to see whether they are male or female.
Of course, we must take cognisance of the few
professional persons in the police. These are the ones who are really motivated
to make a career in the protection of life and property. And these ones have
the sympathy of the citizens. The fact that they attempt to match sophisticated
and heavily equipped criminals with antiquated weapons has not gone unnoticed.
The citizens are aware of the need for them to be provided with improved
welfare in terms of better remuneration and accommodation in the place of their
squalid shanties. But the bulk of the police personnel see their jobs as a
means to quick self-enrichment. This is why they are ready to pay any amount as
a bribe to be recruited by the police. And to continue to remain in the police,
they sustain this culture of bribe-taking and bribe-giving. They give bribes to
pass their examinations. No wonder, we are often shocked at how some of them
got to the top of the police leadership.
To wean the police off their unprofessional
proclivities, they should be re-orientated. This should begin from the top. If
the managers of the police had been serious about ensuring sanity in the
security agency, they would have realised this objective a long time ago. Every
time a new inspector general of police is appointed, he considers it his first
major public duty to order that all illegal checkpoints should be
dismantled.After that, he does not bother whether the order is obeyed or not.
Thus, fuelling the suspicion that the managers of the police benefit from the
criminality that is perpetrated at such checkpoints.
More importantly, the killing of Johnson has
once again brought to the fore the need for restructuring and its attendant
true federalism. If there were local police as part of true federalism, they
would have an idea of the criminals in their environment. They would not mistake
law-abiding youths for criminals simply because they are soccer- and
dreadlocks-loving.
But we cannot afford to eternally wait for the nation’s leaders to cure
themselves of their dread of true federalism before there is an end to these
mindless killings. There is the urgent need to check these killings by the
police. One way to do this is to make sure that those who are responsible are
duly punished. There should be no room for the very jaded excuse that those
killed are victims of stray bullets. The police should end their complicity in
these killings by resorting to a so-called orderly-room trial of the culprits
only to redeploy them where they would commit worse atrocities, or quietly ease
them out. All those found guilty should be allowed to face the legal process
that would see to their punishment. If they knew that there were dire
consequences for the way they wasted the life of Johnson, they would be more
conscious of their responsibility to protect life and not to take it. And in
the case of Johnson, the police must go beyond just identifying the culprits.
They must be made to pay for their unprovoked murder.
A nation where the police can kill innocent
citizens is far from ready for development. It cannot attract the local and
external support that would lead to building it. Johnson was a young man who
returned to Nigeria in order to pursue a music career after living in South
Africa for five years. How do we persuade Nigerians abroad to return home and
invest when their lives would not be safe here? Or how do we stop professionals
like doctors from emigrating when in addition to their poor salaries and lack
of opportunities they are faced with the peril of physical elimination by the
police anytime?
Again, there is the need to make police
operatives to adhere to the dictates of professionalism anytime they are on
duty. Just as the doctor who is about doing a critical surgery would not be
drunk and over-smoked before going to the theatre, so the policemen who have
guns should not be allowed to indulge in these vices while they are on duty.
They must know that their duties are too sensitive to be executed under the
influence of Indian hemp, drugs and alcohol. And they must be made to realise
that it is irrevocable self-immolation if they are swayed by the notion of
their being gods who can only be momentarily placated with the blood of
innocent citizens like Johnson.
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is
on the Editorial Board of The Guardian
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