Subjected to intimidation, abuse and oppression,
Nigerians have launched a campaign to end police brutality. Using the hashtag,
#EndSARS, the campaign began online last weekend after a video in which
officers attached to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad shot a man in Yaba, Lagos,
went viral. The campaign, which has attracted global attention, has also drawn
responses from the National Assembly, the Presidency and the United Nations.
But as usual, the police authorities are on the defensive. This time, they must
be made to eat humble pie.
Citizens must stand up when it is clear their rights
are being serially violated by agents of the state. The Nigeria Police Force is
notorious for corruption, the use of excessive force, false arrests, illegal
detention and searches without warrant. The Yaba incident, in which SARS
officers were attacked for allegedly shooting a man, is typical of their
excesses. The video soon attracted a deluge of other video recordings of police
officers battering unarmed citizens across the country. An online petition was
launched calling for SARS to be disbanded. The campaigners, who are mainly
youths, plan to embark on protests in major cities to drive home their point.
Police brutality is turning the force and citizens
into adversaries. The views being expressed online tally with the activities of
SARS on the streets. With SARS officers, no youth is safe on the streets of
Lagos, Abuja or Port Harcourt. Nigerians, in spite of the fact that they are
contending with a high rate of crime, are fed up with the brutality of SARS.
Under the pretence of crime detection, youths are randomly stopped and
searched. Any material, especially cell-phones and laptops, even a few
thousands of naira, become incriminating items for the bribe-seeking policemen. SARS men intimidate youths, humiliate them, and extort money from them, through
their ATM cards and POS terminals.
In one such incident in Lagos, police
officers were seen battering a suspect with gun butts. Shocking, too, was the
story of a medical doctor, who was responding to an emergency call around 1am
last May; he was “robbed” by SARS operatives in the Iyana-Ipaja area of Lagos
State. The SARS men detained him and forced his wife to go and withdraw N45,000
with his ATM card when the officers threatened to implicate him for armed
robbery. With them, there is no civilised rule of engagement with the public.
It is, indeed, a reign of terror.
But, initially, a ray of hope came when Muhammadu
Buhari assumed office in May 2015. Police behaviour became civil. With
the President inattentive, police exploited this to return to their crooked
conduct. Under the incumbent Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, they
have become almost uncontrollable. With SARS, it is now an offence to wear a
tattoo, own more than one cell-phone or ATM card, a laptop or any other gadget.
Instead of getting off from their high horse, the
police have launched propaganda blitz to criminalise the campaigners. This is
evident in the case of Moses Motoni, an official of BudgIT, an NGO tracking
budget performance in Nigeria. He was arrested, detained without charges in
Kaduna for convening a town hall meeting in Bida, Niger State and handcuffed to
the seat of the car that took him to Abuja. At a point, the police brashly
alleged that the campaign was politically motivated.
Crime control does not entail brutalising and
violating the rights of innocent people. In September 2016, Amnesty
International indicted the NPF – especially the SARS – for widespread torture
and brutality. “SARS officers are getting rich through their brutality. In
Nigeria, it seems that torture is a lucrative business,” the report, entitled,
Nigeria: You have signed your death warrant, said. It detailed the horror
stories of detainees, who were maltreated by officers. In a recent report by
the World Internal Security and Police Index International, the Nigeria Police
was rated the worst police organisation in the world. The November 11 report,
which was nevertheless seriously challenged by the Nigeria Police, based its
assessment on parameters such as capacity, process, legitimacy and outcomes,
which were also used to measure 126 other countries.
To further give credence to the report, another one
by the Human Rights Watch, out in August, exposed Nigeria Police as an
organisation where extortion and human rights abuses of the public thrive.
Victims of extortion in the country, as recounted by the respected
international agency, include travellers, those running errands, traders and
many others who could be accosted on the road and made to cough up some money.
It mentioned the obnoxious system of “Returns,” where junior officers who perpetrate
the acts of extortion extend the proceeds to the senior ones along the chain of
command. This may sound contemptible, but it constitutes a daily feature in the
society, which those in authority should frontally address.
But the atrocities of SARS are symptomatic of the
entire Force. It is clear that police investigating police has a tendency for
self-protection. The IG should create a civilian body to investigate police
cases of misconduct. The police should be made to establish units or “early warning
systems,” as is the case in the United States that identifies officers with
high rate of citizens’ complaints and deal with them. Incorrigible elements
among them should be thrown out of the system. Litigation and heavy court fines
on the Force are crucial in achieving a well behaved police. This is where the
judiciary has a big role to play.
Nigerians should stand up against abusive police.
But the society will be better served by changing the scrap SARS campaign, to
that of demanding a radical or total overhaul of the unit for operational
efficiency and effectiveness. The campaign is not just a wake-up call to
the youth, but to all Nigerians, especially non-governmental organisations, the
National Human Rights Commission and Office of the Public Defender in every
state of the federation, to redouble their efforts to ensure that any atrocity
or misconduct of these notorious breed of policemen does not go unreported.
Idris’ panicky response of a promise to reform SARS
– reserve supervision at the zonal level to officers with the rank of deputy
commissioners of police and immediate re-training – is not enough. Horrific
crimes have been committed; those responsible must be identified, prosecuted in
the courts and dismissed from the Force. The reorganisation of SARS should be
holistic: some of its personnel have no business remaining in the police as no
amount of retraining can erase their inclination for atrocious conduct. The IG
should send the topmost SARS officers on administrative leave to pave the way
for unfettered investigations into the notorious outfit.
Ultimately, the responsibility to cleanse and reform
the police and its squads rests squarely with Buhari and Idris. Buhari has not
lived up to his promise of change just as the return to discipline, efficiency,
decorum and respect for the citizenry expected from a police force in a
democracy has eluded Nigerians. The President is too detached from the
people he leads and often finds it difficult to identify or empathise when
their lives and welfare are under threat. A responsive leader would have
swiftly initiated action, demanded answers from the IG and ordered thorough
investigations and reform of the killer SARS squads.
Nigerians should mount pressure through all legal
means to free themselves from an oppressive police force. The public scrutiny
of the police through cell-phone video recordings should be sustained. This is
the global trend.
