When DSS Runs Amok In Calabar

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is immaterial whether this column’s warning just last Thursday that the Department of State Services (DSS) is on the prowl and it needs to be reined in was an act of serendipity. What matters is that the warning is increasingly becoming a frightening reality. We need not look far for the ominous signs of the cluelessness of the government mutating into dictatorship. If the trouble were only that the government has become clueless about managing the economy and snatching the citizens from the cauldron of poverty, we would not bother. But the government has repeatedly demonstrated its apparent antipathy towards the people by assaulting them.

We need not explore the unceasing cases of police brutality. These are familiar. They are apparently provoked by the citizens’ refusal to oblige police officers with the bribes they demand. We need not also be reminded of the military’s maiming and killing of Shittes and IPOB members. There was the official justification of such mowing down of citizens under the rubric of squelching threats to the peace and order in the polity. But we are deservedly outraged at the impunity of security operatives when their attacks on the citizens are not provoked by the latter’s actions which conflict with the presumed interest of the state and the collective good. And this happens in an atmosphere of democracy where the dignity of the citizens ought to be privileged. 

In October last year, an easy-going Joseph Izu, a footballer with Shooting Stars of Ibadan was killed by soldiers in Rivers State. Last month, Alex Ochienu, a pastor with the Redeemed Christian Church of God was assaulted by two soldiers in Abuja for refusing to heed their cruel command to frog-jump.

There was also the case last month of a Nollywood actress and movie producer Jewel Infinity who was travelling from Port Harcourt to Onitsha. When she got to a checkpoint, a soldier said that she was gossiping about him. He did not accept the lady’s protestation of innocence that she was only engaged in a friendly debate with a fellow passenger in the vehicle in which they were travelling. The soldier demanded that the actress should knee down and apologise. Her refusal to do this was met with beating with wood and rod. 

The unprovoked brutality being meted out to the citizens by security operatives is in tandem with their reading of the body language of President Muhammadu Buhari. It is clear that Buhari either tacitly or directly endorses this brutality. This was why he approved the DSS raid of the homes of the justices of the Supreme Court over the allegations of corruption.