It is time we got the Nigerian policemen and women off the streets and back to their beats. In Nigerian cities and highways, the police are the most visible symbol of fear and terror. Last year, more Nigerians were killed by policemen doing their ‘legitimate duties’ than by armed robbers. The police are increasingly becoming ranking pari passu with automobile accidents. The police is often perceived as treating every Nigerian as a potential criminal. Once you confront a police officer, you are already guilty until you can buy your freedom or explain yourself out of trouble. This is sad.
Three weeks ago, I travelled from Lagos to Akure in Ondo state. We encountered along the way 13 police checkpoints. What they were interested in were always the same: the vehicle’s particulars. Where is your vehicle licence? Where is your insurance paper? Where is proof of ownership certificate? Where are the custom papers for the importation of this vehicle? Where is the ECMR certificate? Where is the receipt of payment when you registered this vehicle? Where is your driver’s licence? Where is the FRSC receipt when you applied for the driver’s licence? Where is your MOT certificate? Where is this? Where is that? You will be lucky if they didn’t ask for your father’s death certificate! Even to the extent of going into your privacy by searching your phone. The police carry P.O.S to be able to execute bribery activities. In some situations, they escort their prey to the bank to collect bribe. What a degenerated profession.
Assuming that you were well prepared and, miraculously, you passed this inquisition, you are then asked about the content of your booth. Come and open your booth. Come and open your booth! You were ordered by a member of this Peoples Libration Army in black uniform (or any shade of black). What do you have in your bag? Where is the receipt of this carton of ogogoro that you have in your booth? Where is your jack? Where is your C – Caution? Where is your fire extinguisher? The officer nods to you and you close your booth triumphantly, thinking that you are free. Not so fast you are told. “Open the bonnet!”
The police officer, expects that he is in all kinds of vehicles, pees through your engine compartment.
“Your car has no engine number!”
You don’t know where the engine number is truly. The officer looks all over again. “Ah! Even your chassis number is wrong!”
To your alarm, the officer is right. The clerk in the licensing office had made an error, instead of writing eight, two was written when he was copying the chassis number.
“But it is still my car, even if it has no engine number or if the chassis number is wrongly written!”
Often, this argument is settled amicably with a bribe or it can end up in a messier denouement or even tragedy. Many Nigerians, including prominent ones, have been killed at police checkpoints. In answer to this distressing situation, the different levels of government have tried to isolate the big men and women from the checkpoint syndrome. Today, government officials at every level, local, state, federal, do not know what is happening at the checkpoints. Ministers, directors-general, commissioners, government advisers, legislators and other travelers in the corridors of power go about in official vehicles or in private vehicles with official police escorts. Every traditional ruler, business leader, religious leader, artist and all strong party men and women also have their police escorts. Suddenly, when you are exposed to the menace of the checkpoints, it means you are the small man who is not entitled to a police escort. How did we get to this pass?
In the past, public announcements would be made anytime a general checking of vehicle papers would be made. At that time, vehicle papers meant vehicles licence and insurance. Today, no one is really sure, not even the police.
The fault is not entirely that of the police, for the government and the society have consigned the police to the lower rung of the ladder. Virtually, no one joins the police as a profession of first choice. They join because it is the one open choice. In other parts of the world, the police service is a profession of honour, highly cherished by the community. In Nigeria, the situation is hardly the same. Today, which commissioner of police would willingly allow his son to join the service? Yet the job is a risky job. It is a humanitarian job. It is a job for those who have been put low by the Nigerian syndrome. Indeed, in Nigeria, the policeman is the angel in black.
There must be a solution to this. It is time senior police officers got around and got their cops off the streets and the checkpoints and back to their beats. In the past, the strength of the Nigeria police used to be investigations, especially when the likes of Theophillous Fagbola and M.D. Yusuf headed the Special Branch. Things have since gone from bad to worse. Getting to two decades, when Chief Bola Ige was assassinated, the police could not carry out simple forensic procedures including finger-printing, to aid them in tracking his killers. Today, no police recruit thinks of the rigour of the sleuth. He is more interested in the checkpoints.
Police commanders need to get their officers into patrol cars so that they can really check the criminals on the highways. Vehicles don’t commit crimes, people do. Robbers, knowing that the police are only interested in checkpoints, also imitate them and they set up their own checkpoints. The police collect their toll. The robbers collect their loot.
There must be a more humane and less humiliating way, even for the police, to do police job. In the 1960s and early 1970s, policemen in this country were not carrying guns in public. Luckily for the police, there are many retired inspector-generals, who could educate them on how they were able to maintain law and order in the past with minimal police checkpoints and few accidental discharges. It is time the police worried about its image and gave the job a human face.
