By Paul Onomuakpokpo
After years of a
tempestuous relationship with the police, the citizens have become very
familiar with a plethora of cases that reify the ignoble identity of that
security institution of government as a site of unbridled corruption. Thus,
they were by no means suddenly hoisted onto an uncharted territory when the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the National Bureau of
Statistics (NBS) last month alerted them to the egregious indices of the
corruption under which the police chafe. Nor did the recent allegation by
Senator Isah Misau that the police reek of corruption expressed in cronyism,
patronage and financial misdeeds come to them as a surprise.
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| *President Buhari and IGP Idris |
Indeed, Nigerians live daily with a catalogue
of woes the police inflict on them. We are quite familiar with these: the
police shoot to maim or kill commercial bus drivers or motorcyclists popularly
referred to as okada riders because
of their refusal to part with N50. They do not respond to emergency calls when
the citizens are under the siege of armed robbers. It is only when the armed
robbers have finished their operations and gone that their victims would be
harassed with the sounds of police sirens. And that is if the police come at
all. In most cases, they place obstacles in your way: they tell you that they
cannot respond to your call because they have no vehicles; if they have, they
are faulty; and if they are not faulty, there is no fuel in them. If you go to
make a report at their station, the police would ask you to pay for the pen and
piece of paper with which to make your complaint. After the complaint, you need
to give them money to investigate your case. On the walls and doors of a
typical police station would be emblazoned the warning: bail is free. But you must pay for detainees to secure their
freedom.
