CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC: NIGERIA POLICE OFFICERS AND THE REST OF US

NIGERIA POLICE OFFICERS AND THE REST OF US

Most Nigerians have not bothered to interrogate the fate of police officers and the complexities surrounding their assignment since the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Ordinarily, Nigerians do not care about the fate of police men and women. Many do not even see these men and women as frontliners in the battle to contain Corona virus, yet they are. As a Nigerian, I understand that there’s no love lost between the police and citizens they’re paid to police. Typically in Nigeria, the police mantra “The Police is your friend” is considered by citizens as empty sloganeering and an irony walking on high heels. On a daily basis, citizens record nasty and unpleasant experiences of police corruption, highhandedness, human rights violations and extrajudicial killings.

 

Yet the police cannot be better than the society it police.



In case you have not bothered to think about it and come to the same conclusion, Nigeria Police Force (NPF) (is) a victim of a dysfunctional country. Only a fool thinks that because a log has stayed inside a river for so long a time, it can become a crocodile. In that sense those who expect Nigeria Police to do their job like British Police also have their job cut for them; they’re living in a fool’s paradise.

 

Put in proper context, this piece is fallout from the ugly incident at Iwo town, Osun State, on Sarurday, April 18, 2020; the video of which went viral with attendant uproar, outrage and consequences. I refer to the video of two policemen beating a defenceless and seemingly helpless woman with robust sticks in broad daylight. It is not difficult to condemn the policemen in the video as brutes, who have no place in a modern police. But can anyone honestly say the Nigeria Police is a modern force?

 

I am writing this piece in order to put the police side of the story in the public place and context. Nigerians believe the police are always wrong; that belief is a product of years of police anti-people demeanour and deep-seated animosity which the people have also developed for the police. Certainly there’s no love lost between both parties. The police hardly tell their own stories. Even when they do, they’re rarely believed, let alone get public sympathy.



Yet, there are good men and women in the Nigeria Police; and I have met some of the good ones over these years. In particular, about ten years ago, I developed a relationship with Osun State Police Command. Without going into much details, I became friends with a group of eight newly commissioned Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) posted to Osun State after I did them a favour, when they came for an assignment in my city of residence. All university graduates with good grades (one of them with a First Class in Physics), they were specifically recruited for deployment into special units across the country following a recommendation for the modernization of NPF by the Parry Osayande Panel on Police Reform (what happened to that modernization initiative is a story for another day).

 

In the intervening years, through interactions with these good men who found themselves inexplicable in the police, I got ideas of the corruption and rot in the force, which have inadvertently turned policemen to monsters we know and fear and also made police work an embarrassment in Nigeria. In case you do not know, the average Nigerian police officer operates on low morale: he buys his own uniform and foot wears, he’s on low wage, he has no life insurance, he’s ill-equipped to do his job, he’s angry and traumatized, etc. Do you know that when some police men die on duty, colleagues and friends of the deceased often contribute funds to bury him/her? Yes! This is the truth and nothing but the truth.

 

Without much ado, let me focus solely on the viral Iwo police brutality video.

 

When I saw the video, something prickled in me as I couldn’t accept the extent of the brutality, which I’d watched. Immediately, I reached out to my contacts in Osun Police Command, expressing my displeasure over the conduct of the police men in the video. I wanted to know ‘why’. Unequivocally, I submit that there’s no justification, under extant law and in a normal society, for the action of the two police officers in the eye of the storm. That said, the question which follows is “Is Nigeria a normal society?”

 

Officers with knowledge of what transpired in Iwo town gave me the police side of the story.

I present to you police side of the story. My sources are fine police officers with whom I have maintained a relationship of trust and respect for many years, backed with good testimonies from third parties who have encountered these men in the line of duty.



1. Iwo, Osun State, is a difficult place to police by Nigerian standard due to religious and cultural reasons.

 

2. Iwo residents in all ramifications resisted Osun government lockdown/restriction order.

 

3. With few men and equipment, the police struggled miserably to contain a rising crime wave and lockdown violations.

 

4. The police high command fearing the spread of Covid 19 in police stations across the country gave directives to the effect that only violent crime offenders should be detained pending their arraignment in court. Others including lockdown violators should be processed through discretionary powers especially where Mobile Courts are not available.

 

5. In Iwo town, Osun State government didn’t provide a Mobile Court for the prosecution of lockdown offenders. Yet the government wants the police to enforce lockdown in a town, where almost everyone is violating the lockdown. Don’t forget also that the police are not expected to keep lockdown violators in police cells (see Item 4 above).

 

6. Noticing the seeming helplessness of the police in Iwo town, the people have resorted to challenging the police with wanton disobedience and sometimes, violence against officers on legitimate police duties.



7. Within a spate of two weeks in April, while on duty enforcing the lockdown, several police officers were attacked, assaulted, and stoned in an orgy of communal violence; some of the officers suffered bodily injuries for which they required treatment and hospitalisation.

 

8. Policemen in Iwo town soon reached their tethered end over series of assaults and injuries suffered by the rank and file. Sadly, many of the culprits were left off the hook following interventions (the Nigerian style).

 

9. To stem the tide of violation of law and order by Iwo residents in view of police lack of capacity to detain and prosecute lockdown offenders, the police decided to implement corporal punishment.

 

10. The alternative was to detain offenders (the police couldn’t do that in view of extant realities) or do nothing and give in to a reign of anarchy.

 

11. This was the situation in terms of police and community relations and the rule of engagement in Iwo town when the lady in the viral video, Tola Abdul-Azeez ran foul of Osun State lockdown order in the town.

 

12. According to informed police sources, Tola actually lied to the public about what transpired on the fateful day in order to curry sympathy and cast the police in bad light for maximum effect.

 

13. Contrary to her claim, she didn’t violate the lockdown because she was desperately in search of drugs for a sick relation.

 

14. Two policemen on lockdown enforcement found out loitering in the street. Thinking that she lived in the neighbourhood, they told her to leave the street for the safety of her house. Upon their return to the same area some time later, they found the lady still loitering at the same spot with nonchalance. When the officers insisted she had to leave the street, the lady told the patrolling officers that she had come from Osogbo, the state capital to purchase goat (ewure) at Iwo market. The policemen told her that it was obvious no market would open because of the lockdown and they couldn’t just allow her to remain in the street in a way that undermined their efforts and power to enforce the lockdown. She was told to find a place to stay if truly she had come from Osogbo. Mrs Tola Azeez stubbornly insisted that she had nowhere to go. At this point, the officers lost their cool and applied the recommended measure.

 

15. It is to the credit of the police that the leader of the patrol team (a senior police officer), promptly stopped his men from further assaulting the lady. That clearly indicates that there are good men in the force; men who should necessarily get our sympathy, support and encouragement in this particular case and from time to time.

 

Of course the video went viral with condemnation trailing the actions of Officers Ikuesan and Ibrahim, who are at the centre of the allegation of police brutality. The police ordered an investigation. The two men were found guilty and recommended for dismissal.

 

But I want to ask Nigerians whether they have seen videos of lockdown enforcement in places like China, India, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana, etc. In some many videos I have seen and reports I have read from this countries, police men and women in these countries applied tactics similar to what Officers Ikuesan and Ibrahim applied in Iwo town to deal with recalcitrant and belligerent citizens. In China and India, their police even applied stricter and in some cases, the most brutal tactics to stem the tide of global public health emergency.

 

Sadly, the Iwo police incident presents in grim realities the challenges which policemen face in carrying out orders and doing general police work in a dysfunctional society such as ours. We must never forget that these men and women are humans too; they can make mistakes especially work-induced mistakes. Like you and me, they can be provoked. Don’t forget, they are Nigerians too and they carry the mentality which comes with that identity.

 

In the battle against COVID-19, the police have hardly been treated well. And that’s why they’re the weakest link in the chain. Do you know that:

 

1. Unlike other frontliners in the Covid 19 war, especially health workers, the police have not been adequately mobilized and equipped to do their job.

 

2. Police men and women do not have safety wears to prevent themselves from getting infected with Covid 19 as they police the borders and isolation centres across the country. Yet the virus is no respecter of anyone. And they would also like to return to their families safe too every day.

 

3. Why do you think police men have been collecting bribes from motorists who break the restriction of movement rule? These men are the ones who source for money to fuel patrol vehicles and take care of other essentials needs, which are hardly catered for.

 

4. They’re not on any special allowance like who are on Covid 19 assignment.

 

5. Many of them are overworked (of course you know that Nigeria is underpoliced, while several officers have been deployed to guard politicians, public servants, some foreigners and private citizens) so much that they’re traumatised and prone to anger since lockdown enforcement started.

 

Make no mistake, the lady who was assaulted, Mrs Tola Azeez is not the only victim revealed in that Iwo saga.

 

Officers Ikuesan and Ibrahim of Nigeria Police Force, Osun State Command are just unfortunate victims of the Nigerian system.

 

Echoing Asa (the Nigerian Afro-Jazz musician) in one of her most memorable songs, both the jailer and the prisoner are in jail. Though no one seems to offer the dismissed officers any sympathy, I truly sympathise with them because what has happened to them is Nigeria.

 

I use this piece to passionately appeal to the authorities of Nigeria Police Force to reconsider the dismissal of both men. All over the country, men and officers of the police have been tasked to carry out a very difficult assignment in a complex and complicated society. Let us show these men not only some understanding but mercy.

 

May Nigeria not happen to us.

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