By Tochukwu Ezukanma
SIR: There is an Igbo saying, which loosely translates to, “if the king laughs, his servants will become delirious with laughter.” In other words, servants are out to impress their master, and prove their loyalty to him, and consequently, will carry to the extreme the master’s desires and actions. The Nigeria Police Force, in this context, is the servants, and President Muhammadu Buhari is the king. If the government respects, develops, protects, and secures Nigerians, the Nigerian police, invariably, will revere and protect Nigerians.
The police force is merely an instrument of the ruling elite; and its handling of Nigerians is a direct reflection of the attitude of the Buhari presidency towards Nigerians. What can be expected from a police force, whose behaviours reflect acclaim for banditry and terrorism; approval of the mass-murder of the innocent by herdsmen; and dramatized contempt for human lives? It must be palpably contemptuous of Nigerian lives, and thus, kill and degrade the people. Not surprisingly, since 2015, painful, tear-jerking stories of police brutality and extra-judicial killings have been on the increase in Nigeria.
At Ijora, Lagos State, a 16 year old boy, Emmanuel Chukwu, was killed when the police opened fire on a group of youths that gathered at the police station, in protest, against possible police connivance with a child kidnapper. According to the boy’s mother, “On getting to the police station, I pleaded that they allow me to see his body but they refused, and threatened to shoot me, if I didn’t leave immediately”. And the Baale went to the station to plead that the mother be allowed access to the son’s corpse. He was arrested and detained till the next day. Why threaten to shoot a mother for wanting to see her son’s corpse? Why arrest and detain a Baale for pleading that a mother be allowed to see the remains of her dead son? It is Apartheid-styled systematic degradation of Nigerians by the police.
On Christmas day, 2022, a police man, Drambi Vani, shot and killed a 41 year old pregnant woman. She was riding with her husband and daughter and other family members, on their way home from church, when the policeman shot at them, and killed the lady. A husband, wife and daughter and family members – what an innocuous, benign group? Still, they were shot at, not by a psychopath on the prowl to steal and kill, but by a policeman, a sentinel of law and order, and supposedly, professionally trained, disciplined and self-restrained, and deployed to protect the people. Secondly, the errant policeman is not a police rookie, still susceptible to twitchiness, rashness, and other strains of unprofessionalism, but a veteran police officer of 33 years of service.
A police force in the service of a government that places more value on bovine (cow) life than human life will inescapably be derisive of human life. Until there is an attitudinal change within the police force, nothing, not retraining and/or reorientation will considerably reduce these unjustifiable killings by the police. It is only a new found reverence for the sanctity of human life within the ranks of the governing elite, which will inevitably filter down to the ranks of the police force that will drastically reduce the meaningless killings of Nigerians by the Nigerian police.