By Tunji Adegboyegba
It is incredible that the officials will kill over bribe
I have been waiting to see if someone would tell me it is not true. And that is in spite of the fact that the names of those allegedly involved in the crime were mentioned. With me, unease has been the word since early last week when the news broke that four Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) officials beat a man, Odion Omafo Samuel, 36, and buried his corpse in a shallow grave. The four officials, Francis Igboh, Sunday Ogi, Samson Alolade and Joseph Onolade, are now said to be in custody of the Edo State Police Command, after reportedly beating Samuel to death following the resistance he put up when the FRSC officials were allegedly trying to extort money from the driver of the vehicle he boarded. According to media reports, Samuel was said to have boarded an Audi 80 car on October 14 at Okhuaihe Hill along Benin-Agbor Road. The driver fled when he saw that Samuel had been beaten to stupor.
However, he was arrested for kidnapping when Samuel did not return home. It was after he narrated what happened to the police that two of the FRSC officials were arrested. The duo, reports said, eventually led detectives to the bush where Samuel was buried after rushing him to the hospital where he was confirmed dead. Edo State police spokesperson DSP Chidi Nwabuzor said it was a case of murder. “Our operatives in the homicide section of the State Criminal and Intelligence Investigation Department (SCIID), police headquarters, Benin City, are investigating the case. It is a case of murder”. DSP Nwabuzor added.
Although on the face of it, it looks like a murder case; an incontrovertible one at that. But then, “the law”, as they say, “is an ass”. Moreover, in our clime, no matter how seemingly clear a crime is, the suspect cannot be called a criminal until a court of competent jurisdiction so pronounced. So, DSP Nwabuzor is on his own for declaring what has happened as murder case.
But, beyond the legalism of whether the matter can be called a crime at this point or not, I must confess I am yet to recover from the shock I fell into when the story broke. FRSC officials killed an innocent Nigerian over bribe! It just refused to sink. I had waited in the hope that someone or even the FRSC would deny the story or disown the men. That this has not happened till now has made me to more or less believe that the story is most likely true.
It is not that I am not aware that some FRSC officials collect bribe on the road. I had personal encounters with some of them. Like the police, they will ask for your vehicle particulars; they ask for your driver’s licence. They ask you to produce the fire extinguisher in your car, your spare tyre, C-Caution, etc. after fulfilling all righteousness, some of them get perplexed when they see you have more than the law says you should have. Then they begin to look for extraneous things until they find other faults that are not known to the Highway Code. It is just the way some policemen behave on the road. When they later find out that you are a journalist with correct particulars, some of them will then jocularly tell you that you should have told them you are a journalist, a thing they say, should have ensured your not being rigorously searched or searched at all.
At this stage, I tell them that I could not have told them I am a journalist because I do not know of any law that says journalists should not have complete vehicle particulars or driver’s licence. In many instances, it is not that they really love you for being a journalist; what some of them are saying is that you should not have let them waste time asking for particulars since you are not likely to drop something, yet they too would not want to be as daring as to collect whatever bribe they want to collect from others for as long as you are still around. So, they simply ask you to go. I am used to some of these antics, especially on our highways. So, I won’t lose sleep if you say some FRSC officials collect bribe on the road.
But I could almost swear that they would know when to apply the brake when they see people like Samuel who are either stubborn or know their rights. To beat someone to the point of death is one of the very last things I would expect an FRSC official to do. To find the courage to bury him secretly compounds the astonishment.
The driver of the vehicle that Samuel boarded was only lucky. I guess his luck was that the FRSC officials were not armed. Otherwise, one of them might have shot him not necessarily out of wickedness but because of the desperation to cover their tracks. It is the kind of thing that happens when people commit ‘small sin’, they follow it up with serial worse sins just to make sure they are not caught. In many instances, they end up being caught. The most surprising thing is that the fact that they are eventually apprehended does not deter others from toeing the same path.
Let me feel free to continue luxuriating in self-denial by still thinking that such crimes are beyond FRSC officials. But then, I would plead for a thorough handling of the case by the police and other persons involved. When we talk of the police committing such crimes, we do not shudder. It’s like we know they are capable of such. And it’s not our fault; several policemen had committed very terrible crimes, including murder. I still remember the particular one in Kogi State where policemen at a checkpoint stopped a vehicle for routine search and killed most of the occupants when they realised that they were traders with a lot of money on them which they were taking to the market in another place to buy things that they were selling. What gave them up was the fact that some of them managed to escape. They were the ones that blew the lid off the crime. As a matter of fact, the policemen not only stopped at killing the occupants of the commercial vehicle, they also set the bus ablaze to conceal the crime.
Some military men have also been involved in similar and sundry other crimes. Name it; our other security agencies also harbour all manner of criminals. May be I should not be surprised at the case of the FRSC officials because they are also Nigerians. After all, nobody would go to outer space to recruit people for these jobs. But then, it does not seem to be rampant among the FRSC yet. This is the reason I would want the matter professionally handled so that the men involved would be used as examples to their colleagues who might want to follow the same path, if eventually they are found guilty. This is important before this kind of thing becomes routine among the FRSC officials.
What comes into my mind when things like this occur are my friends in the organisation/s involved. I always ask myself if these friends of mine could ever be involved in this kind of crime. Mercifully, not one of them has been caught or linked with such criminals in their respective agencies. Because I do not know how to handle such case.
Road safety commission was set up to ensure sanity on our highways, to reduce the rate of accidents and ensure that vehicles on the highways are worthy and that the owners have the requisite particulars and tools that can be called upon during emergencies, among other responsibilities. A situation where we have to carry our hearts in our mouths when we see them on the highways is not the best. Even the founding fathers of the commission or corps, as it were, would be sorely disappointed when they hear that the men in the organisation are no longer different from the pack. It was not so in the beginning. FRSC men were well respected on the highways when they started because all the ills associated with the police and other security agents on the roads were absent in the FRSC then. So, what has suddenly gone wrong, after all the commission was manned by Nigerians too in those glorious days?
I am still waiting for someone to tell me it’s not true; that there is a mix-up somewhere.
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