Time to reform the police

Like the proverbial dog that turns back to fight when chased to the wall, Nigerians started an aggressive campaign last two weeks ago against the Nigerian police after a video in which officers attached to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) shot a man in Yaba, Lagos, went viral on social media. The incident then took an unexpected twist with many sharing personal experiences of police – and especially SARS personnel’s – brutality, sexual harassment, extortion, theft and outright robbery.  Also an online petition, with tens of thousands of signatories, has been submitted to the National Assembly seeking the scrapping of the unit. Before long, the hashtag #endSARS was created to demand the scrapping of the unit.

Many lamented that in this digital age, youth with phones, cameras and laptops and other such gadgets have become endangered species at the hands of SARS operatives who operate brazenly at any time of day with no recourse to any civilised terms of engagement.  Reports have since continued to pour in on SARS operatives’ activities with evidence-backed accusations of extra-judicial killings, robberies at gunpoint and torture.

Amnesty International, in a 2016 report on the activities of SARS said it received reports from lawyers, human rights defenders and journalists, and collected testimonies stating that some police officers in SARS regularly demand bribes, steal and extort money from criminal suspects and their families. The global human rights watchdog also stated that SARS detainees are held in a variety of locations, including a grim detention centre in Abuja known as the ‘Abattoir’, where detainees are kept in overcrowded cells and in inhuman conditions. According to Damian Ugwu, Amnesty International’s Nigeria researcher, “SARS officers are getting rich through their brutality. In Nigeria, it seems that torture is a lucrative business.” The report also detailed testimonies from former SARS detainees who said they were subjected to horrific torture methods, including hanging, starvation, beatings, shootings and mock executions at the hands of corrupt officers from the dreaded SARS

But just as Nigerians were vehemently demanding the scrapping of the outfit for its extra-legal ways of operations, one Moses Motoni, an official of BudgIT, a civil organisation, was arrested in Kaduna last week Tuesday by some policemen who were disguised as DHL courier officers and taken to Abuja.  His crime was holding a town hall meeting to sensitise residents of Niger South Senatorial District in Bida, Niger State, on the zonal intervention projects awarded to their constituency in the 2017 budget. Narrating his ordeal after he was released, Motoni said his legs were chained and his hands cuffed to a seat by the policemen who arrested him leading to a dislocation in his joints. He said he was dehumanised and treated like a criminal and the only thing the policemen who arrested him told him was that he was being arrested for “inciting the populace and trying to impeach the Emir of Bida”.

Of course as the outcries and campaign reached a crescendo, the Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, who also stands accused of corruption and gross abuse of office by Senator Misau, ordered the immediate reorganisation of the SARS and an investigation into the allegations of atrocities levelled against its operatives.

But this is a well-travelled route. Anytime credible complaints are brought against the police, the police high command order investigations and actions but at the end nothing is done and business continues as usual. For instance, since 1999, there has not been a police boss that has not hypocritically ordered the dismantling of the notorious police road-blocks in Nigeria. But till date, those road blocks still exists in all nooks and crannies of the country and serve as the medium for the extortion of, and killing of Nigerians and road users who refused to settle the policemen. What happens is that the policemen withdraw from the roadblocks for some weeks and return when national focus and attention shifts to other pressing issues.

It is clear that the police has lost the trust of the people it is paid to protect. To get back that trust, a wholesale reform of the police is needed and not just the SARS. We hope the government will have the courage to do it.