What a policeman can do…

The report that a policewoman (allegedly) killed a danfo driver over N500 bribe in the present-day Nigeria caught my attention last Sunday. We have been used to policemen carrying out extra-judicial killings. But a policewoman?!  It beats my imagination.

At first, I thought the policewoman opened fire on the driver for refusing to part with the N500 she demanded as bribe as most of her male counterparts are wont to do, especially at their Illegally Generated Revenue (IGR) points which are generally referred to as checkpoints on the highways. The policemen call it Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
According to a newspaper report, the policewoman and the danfo driver got into an argument over settlement. Pissed off by the driver’s refusal to play ball, a scuffle followed. Overpowered by the policewoman, the deceased slipped into a gutter where he met his death. Another version of the incident said that in the course of the argument, the driver went into seizures and gave up the ghost in the hands of the assailant.

The policewoman then used her police sense to escape from the scene before the protesters could lay their hands on her.
The tragedy attracted fellow commercial vehicle drivers in the Igando area of Lagos who got angry and all hell was let loose. They blocked the LASU-Igando Expressway and prevented the police from taking away the corpse. The policemen responded by firing into the sky to disperse them. But the protest continued till the next day as the angry mob mobilised and moved against the Igando police station, threatening to set it ablaze.
However, the Lagos Police Command has denied that any policeman or woman was responsible for the death in the Sunday tragedy but confirmed that there was an incident that led to the death of one person.

The acting image maker in charge of the state police command, Damascus Ozoani, absolved the police of any complicity in the death of the driver. He said hoodlums frustrated the police attempt to rush the driver to the hospital.
It is public knowledge that the Nigeria Police Force does not live up to its much-taunted “Police-is-your-friend” mantra. Rather, most Nigerians see an average policeman (and woman?) as his/her number one enemy who is always on the prowl for bribes or can pull the trigger at the slightest provocation. Old instances abound.

But one that still stands out occurred on November 25, 2009, when a mobile policeman called Raymond Egbongbonwuyi literally ran amok on learning that his daughter had died while on admission at a hospital in Ibadan. He detonated a canister of teargas in the ward, causing the death of two other babies. He also beat up the nurses in the hospital, regretting that he did not have his AK 47 rifle with him. Though he had lost another child in another hospital a few weeks earlier, it was difficult to understand why he behaved the way he did. Egbongbonwuyi’s expression of grief was bizarre and a reference point to the dangerous disposition of a typical policeman to the people he is trained and paid to protect.

He was promptly dismissed from the Nigeria Police Force but that did not compensate for the lives of the innocent babies he tear-gassed to death, neither did it bring his own daughter back from the dead.
In 2011, a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja sentenced a police corporal, Obanla Julius, to death by hanging for killing a motorist, one Shagari Haruna, at an IGR point. One pathetic episode also occurred in April 2010, when a mobile policeman, apparently consumed by frustration, opened fire on a boy in Lekki Phase 1 in Lagos, alleging that the victim was laughing hysterically at him!
Before the advent of cashless banking, businessmen/women and traders were in the habit of moving heavy cash from one point to another. During the crude era, woe betide anyone if policemen on IGR duty discovered that he/she had good cash on him/her.

The risk of being shot dead (from behind) and labeled as armed bandits was always there. Policemen could take the life of a driver who fails to part with as little as N5. No amount of money is considered too small for a policeman on IGR assignment. Little drops of water, to an average policeman and even his boss who expects daily returns, make a mighty ocean. That is the kind of horrible image the bad eggs in the system have carved for it.
The recent spate of extrajudicial killings by policemen all over the country became worrisome even to the system itself.

It was in the light of this that the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, decided that police personnel bearing guns should be subjected to psychological evaluation. Some of them are in the habit of being drunk while on duty and as such, they are mentally and emotionally destabilised. Some police officers have also become so paranoid that at the slightest provocation, they are quick to open fire on anyone they sight.
What a man can do, it is said, a woman can do even better. Only this week, a woman inspector attached to the Ubiaruku Divisional Police Headquarters in Delta state, whose name was given as Julia, allegedly demanded bribe from a journalist, Emmanuel Okoro, before she could commence investigation into a burglary case.

According to him, the woman inspector had insisted on collecting money, asking: “How do you expect me to investigate your case when you refused to bring money? If you don’t want to bring money, you better do the investigation yourself. Shebi you be journalist?”
Julia’s conduct, if found to be true, is not only a disgrace to the system but also to womanhood.
Regarding the Lagos episode, there is the need to institute an independent inquiry into the circumstances that led to the death of the danfo driver. The police authorities in Lagos cannot investigate themselves. I hope some human rights activists are reading me.