Again, Amnesty International exposes serious abuses in police custody as well as the military
Nigeria’s public officials have a seemingly infinite capacity to deny the undeniable, no matter how ridiculous that denial may be. They deny virtually everything under the sun, including those that are visible even to the blind. It is getting to an embarrassing level that we should begin to wonder if it is not better to make amends concerning things that we cannot own up to in public instead of making ourselves and the country look stupid in the eyes of right-thinking members, not just of the country, but also of the international community.
The latest of such denials has to do with the 2014 Amnesty International (AI) Report alleging that the police and the military habitually torture men, women and even children – some as old as 12, sometimes by beating, shooting and even raping them. The report, appropriately titled “Welcome to hell fire: Torture and other ill-treatment in Nigeria,” alleged that about 5,000 persons had been detained over terrorism since 2009 when military operations began against Boko Haram. The AI Research and Advocacy Director, Netsatmet Belay, who presented the report, urged the Federal Government to criminalise the use of torture for investigations by the police and the military.
This is not the first time AI will be issuing such damning report on Nigeria. For example, it had, in a 2012 report entitled: ‘The State of the World’s Human Rights’ equally said that Nigeria’s human rights situation has continued to deteriorate. ”There were consistent reports of police routinely torturing suspects to extract information. Confessions extracted under torture were used as evidence in court, in violation of national and international laws” it said adding that: “Hundreds of people were unlawfully killed, often before or during arrests on the street. Others were tortured to death in police detention. Many such unlawful killings may have constituted extrajudicial executions. Many people disappeared from police custody. Few police officers were held accountable, leaving relatives of those killed or disappeared without justice.”
Expectedly, the police have denied the allegations. Commissioner of Police Emmanuel Ojukwu, Force Public Relations Officer, Force Headquarters, said torture is NOT an official policy of the Nigeria Police. Virtually everything he said in the statement is far from the truth. “Since the dawn of democracy in 1999, the Nigeria Police Force has significantly improved on its human rights records, owing largely to training and re-training, community policing, attitudinal change and structural transformation.
“Of a truth, torture or ill-treatment is not, repeat, NOT an official policy of the Nigeria Police. The Code of Conduct of Officers, as well as our Regulations prohibit torture and incivility to members of the public. We are versed with international best practices, and the dictates of the Nigerian Constitution as regards human rights. So the police do not routinely torture suspects. It is not systemic or endemic”, he said, among other spurious claims.
Torture may not be an official policy of the police, but it cannot be denied that it is an unofficial policy. And it manifests in the various ways that Amnesty has listed. At any rate, of what use is denying a thing we all see and hear of almost daily, with some of the victims who were lucky to be alive to regret their experiences giving testimonies of the hell they went through in police cells. As a matter of fact, the state of many police cells is enough torture.
A victim once narrated how she was asked to strip by a female police officer at a police station after which she was asked to stretch her laps apart. She then had tear-gas pumped into her genitals! According to her, she is yet to recover from the mental and physical injuries she suffered as a result of the experience, years after. Another victim, Justice Nwanwko, a hotel manager, who was arrested in Onitsha, on July 31, last year, over the discovery of two human skulls and an AK 47 rifle in a room in the hotel, said he was beaten and hanged “on a rope like a barbecue” by men of the Special Anti-robbery Squad, Akwuzu, Anambra State. Nwanwko said he was detained in a dark cell for 36 days along with a director of the hotel and was subsequently arraigned in court for the murder of one Nnamdi Okafor, who he said was killed in police custody. Many have gone like that unannounced in police custody. Many who escaped with their lives have one sordid tale or the other to tell of their experience there.
So, how can anyone deny that torture is rampant in a country where some policemen routinely tell those with the misfortune of encountering them that they would “simply waste them”? Or in situations where they tell their victims that they (victims) were lucky it was not dark yet; they would simply have disappeared without trace? No doubt it is difficult for the police force to admit the allegations. But it is clear too that the force is merely playing the ostrich by denying them. Perhaps one would have been more comfortable if the police authorities had said they sanction those of their officers caught in the act; even though this is not in all cases. In many instances too, the police try to shield them.
Amnesty believes that merely criminalising torture is enough to deter those involved. This is where the human rights organisation missed the point on the Nigerian situation. The problem with Nigeria is not about lack of laws but lack of the will to punish those who infringe them. It requires restructuring the gamut of our criminal and legal systems to effectively check those who use torture to extract confessions or who commit other crimes.
One thing we should not lose sight of though is the circumstances under which the officers trained, live and work. Just last year, Channels TV came up with an expose on the sordid state of affairs in our police training colleges. We were treated to disgusting stories of how as many as 50 trainees share not a fish, but a fish head. President Goodluck Jonathan, rather than express shock and sadness at the story wondered how the journalists penetrated the place to bring out the embarrassing report. This clearly tells how much concern successive governments have for the police. It has always been reported how prospective police recruits pay to secure admission into the police training colleges. We see the sorry conditions of the police barracks, many of which could be taken for pigsties. Some, according to reports, have started collapsing; others are dangers waiting to happen.
Just last week, the Lagos State government raised the alarm on some of these dilapidating structures apparently to avert another round of criticisms as in the case of the collapse of the Synagogue guest house under construction which came down on September 12. We have always been regaled with stories of how the police are poorly paid, poorly kitted, with little or no attention to their general welfare.
The truth of the matter is that only a few persons could pass through these harrowing experiences and still have any milk of human kindness in them. We can argue that since they know the conditions under which the police operate, those who cannot cope with such need not apply to join the force. This could be partly right. But in a situation of chronic unemployment, some of those in the police force see their stay there as a stop-gap measure, pending when better things surface. So, we have to do more to improve the lot of the police if we want efficiency.
We do not have to wait until when some policemen or other security agents would put the entire country in a peculiar mess like the Synagogue incident before our governments wake up to their responsibility of checking the excesses in the police and other security agencies. The Jonathan government might have completely lost its sense of shame, having attracted so much disgrace to the country, the latest being its exportation of $9.3m to South Africa ostensibly to buy arms, in gross violation of that country’s laws, only to mumble some mumbo-jumbo that appeals to itself and itself alone. Nigerians do not have to lose their own sense of shame. So, they must rise in unison to condemn these gross violations of human rights and dignity by the very people who should be their friends, the police. A country can only get the kind of police it deserves.
