Policing Without Restraint In Nigeria
LAGOS FEBRUARY 6TH (NEWSRANGERS)-THE Nigeria Police Force is in the spotlight again. A video of its masked and weirdly dressed officers shooting and scaling a fence on a purported arrest mission makes this impossible to deny. The incident in Delta State is a throwback to the pre-#EndSARS protest days. What magic can President Bola Tinubu perform to save the force and the country from implosion again?
In the referenced video, which has gone viral, two officers were seen outside a gated house demanding to be let in. When the apparent house owner refused, asking for a search warrant, they opened fire. One of them clambered to the top of the fence, jumped into the compound with his weapon, opened the gate, and let his partner in. This is outrageous.
At this point, a frightened occupant said, “This could be a thief.” Indeed, many Nigerians have been extorted, robbed, and killed by people in police uniforms. The conduct of the two masked officers was widely condemned on social media and beyond. Many questioned why they had no search warrant and resorted to scaling someone’s fence.
The Police Act, 2020 aims to make the police accountable and transparent, protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, and guided by the values of justice, fairness, and equity.
Olumuyiwa Adejobi, spokesman for the NPF, was unmindful of these provisions when he validated the conduct of the odd officers, saying, “The police have the power to break into any house or place where they are reasonably convinced an offence is being committed.” This is indefensible.
Nigeria is a democracy, not a police state and officers act with arbitrary impunity. In standard law enforcement procedure, police are mandated to search and arrest a suspect on the provision of a valid search warrant. And they must identify themselves properly. The Police Act empowers police officers to break into a house to rescue a victim of an ongoing crime but there was no indication that anyone was in danger in the house when those masked officers broke in.
Adejobi’s belligerent posture is at odds with his office. He sounds like a general rallying his troops to war rather than an image maker interfacing between the force and the public. His utterances embolden the bad eggs in the system. The police should be professional in their statutory work but must do so with restraint. Adejobi should communicate that to his colleagues.
Sadly, restraint and circumspection are hardly in the NPF’s rulebook, only impunity. The #EndSARS protests in major cities nationwide and across the world in October 2020 urged the Muhammadu Buhari government to disband SARS, a unit of the police force notorious for arbitrary searches and arrests without warrants.
SARS officers targeted youths mostly by their fashion choices, tattoos, and hairstyles, not by reliable information; they detained, extorted, and sometimes killed them. The protests ended tragically with soldiers shooting and killing an unspecified number of the protesters. The killings were denied, but the international media had forensic proof that they happened.
Within days of the protests, the government announced the disbandment of SARS, but nothing has changed. Police officers still perpetrate the anomalies that SARS was notorious for.
Amnesty International said, “The Nigerian authorities must hold the police and other security agencies to account for unleashing deadly force on people who did not constitute an imminent threat to lives.”
Such endemic conduct has exposed the NPF to opprobrium. In a survey conducted by Barometer between 2021 and 2023, Nigeria did not make the top 10 African countries with good police services. Given the NPF’s profile, this is not surprising.
Police conduct should align with what obtains in Western Europe. Therefore, the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, should institute deep reform in the system that accords primacy to human rights.
Punch
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Posted by News Rangers
on Feb 6 2025. Filed under Features, National.
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