POLICE BRUTALITY AS AN IMPEDIMENT TO DEMOCRACY
In the year 1863, in the eleventh month and on the nineteenth day, at the Gettysburg Cemetery Declaration, the Chief Speaker for the occasion, Edward Everett spoke for two hours. After him, a young lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, (the sixteenth president of the United States of America famously called “Honest Abe”) spoke for just two minutes and stole the show beginning his speech with the premise of equality of men thus: "... years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." What struck a chord among his listeners was his awe-inspiring definition of democracy as “the government of the people, by the people and for the people which shall not perish from the earth.” For more than a century and half, this definition has not diminished in its intellectual relevance.
Interestingly, this one-million dollar definition, reiterates the word, “people” three times leading to a logical conclusion that the cornerstone of democracy is the people. Sadly, it is this very phenomenon, “the people” that police brutality in Nigeria attacks in its hydra-headed forms, chief of which are extra-judicial killings, unlawful detention and harassment. A common thread running through the web of these manifestations is that the people, the cornerstone of democracy, suffer. Thomas Hobbes conception of the Hobbesian society (in his 1651 book, “The Leviathan”)as one in which life is nasty, brutish and short seems to be having a field day in Nigeria.
To start with, one major manifestation of police brutality is extrajudicial killings. Killing of yet-to-be-sentenced suspects and indeed, totally innocent citizens have become common threads running through the web of Nigeria’s police system. For instance, Comrade Ifeanyi Onuchukwu, an Executive Director of the Nnewi-based Human Justice International recounts one such experience thus: “I was in the cell around 7:15 pm when 20 detainees were brought out and summarily executed…they were buried in shallow graves at Agu Awka, very close to Eze River”
Furthermore, innocent Nigerians like bus drivers and conductors who are reluctant to pay bribe to the police on their self-made roadblocks and illegal checkpoints have often been sent to their untimely graves by drunk and trigger-happy police men in the guise of accidental discharge. Usually, the responses from the public and civil society are anarchic and chaotic mass protests, demonstrations and uproar. Last year, One Mr. Benjamin Peters, a Special Anti-Robbery Squad Official, shut a moving vehicle in July 2018 leading to the death of Miss Angela. She was a youth corper who was to pass out the from the National Youth Service Programme. That was an irreparable damage for it was the destiny of an helpless victim cut short by an hapless police system. Clearly, the first Inspector-General of Police, who assumed office on 1st April, 1930, the late C.W Duncan would turn in his graves if he heard this! This brutality, for the first time in a long while, caught the attention of the presidency, leading the then acting president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo to overhaul the composition and functions of the security outfit in order to checkmate its recklessness.
In addition, detaining and harassing suspects in cells and prison for years pending the gathering of sufficient evidence constitute police brutality. Evidence abounds of physical pains inflicted on suspects to elicit information. They include, but are not limited to cigarette burns, insertion of broomsticks and sticks into the genitals of male suspects and broken bottles into the female genitalia, beating with horse whips and electric strokes and denial of food and medication as well as removal of fingernails. In the first place, the constitution provides in section 14 (2) (b) that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government, yet to the police this provision seems to be a constitutional carrot dangled in the face of citizens which they cannot eat. In the second place, unlawful detention is unconstitutional. The constitution in section 35 provides that no one should be detained beyond twenty four hours without being charged to court. The proper step is to release such suspect pending the gathering of sufficient evidence. This provision has been thrown into the ocean of recklessness for 38, 352 persons or 71% of the prison population were reportedly detained awaiting uncertain trial.
Disturbingly, the police force has retained its colonial orientation of being the British’s instrument of force, oppression and suppression against self-determination. Those were the days in which the police were placed above and not within the society it was meant to serve; in order to protect the selfish interests of the colonialists. Five decades after the formal departure of the colonialists, the police has retained its colonially-inherited punitive character instead of a society-friendly law enforcement agency. Section 4, of the Police Act, 1975 which provides for a harmonious relationship and friendship between the public and the police has been jettisoned.
The negative trend of police brutality can be reversed by putting in place a number of measures. First, concerted efforts should be geared towards facilitating workshops, symposia, seminars, training and retraining of officers which would traverse the inculcation of professional ethics, respect for human rights and dignity, keeping members abreast of contemporary security challenges and measures to effectively confront such. Second, the police should be properly equipped with modern crime fighting gadgets and equipment to combat the sophisticated nature of crime. Lastly, the living conditions of members of the force should be improved through enhanced salary packages and functional pension schemes. Police brutality needs to be checkmated at this crucial time. The English Master of Rolls, Lord Denning had the Nigerian Police in mind when he gave his stern warning to wit, "Be not so far high for the law is above you." The police must turn a new leaf for if its brutality continues unabated, it will get to a point when it is not going to be about who is right, but about who is left.
In the year 1863, in the eleventh month and on the nineteenth day, at the Gettysburg Cemetery Declaration, the Chief Speaker for the occasion, Edward Everett spoke for two hours. After him, a young lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, (the sixteenth president of the United States of America famously called “Honest Abe”) spoke for just two minutes and stole the show beginning his speech with the premise of equality of men thus: "... years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." What struck a chord among his listeners was his awe-inspiring definition of democracy as “the government of the people, by the people and for the people which shall not perish from the earth.” For more than a century and half, this definition has not diminished in its intellectual relevance.
Interestingly, this one-million dollar definition, reiterates the word, “people” three times leading to a logical conclusion that the cornerstone of democracy is the people. Sadly, it is this very phenomenon, “the people” that police brutality in Nigeria attacks in its hydra-headed forms, chief of which are extra-judicial killings, unlawful detention and harassment. A common thread running through the web of these manifestations is that the people, the cornerstone of democracy, suffer. Thomas Hobbes conception of the Hobbesian society (in his 1651 book, “The Leviathan”)as one in which life is nasty, brutish and short seems to be having a field day in Nigeria.
To start with, one major manifestation of police brutality is extrajudicial killings. Killing of yet-to-be-sentenced suspects and indeed, totally innocent citizens have become common threads running through the web of Nigeria’s police system. For instance, Comrade Ifeanyi Onuchukwu, an Executive Director of the Nnewi-based Human Justice International recounts one such experience thus: “I was in the cell around 7:15 pm when 20 detainees were brought out and summarily executed…they were buried in shallow graves at Agu Awka, very close to Eze River”
Furthermore, innocent Nigerians like bus drivers and conductors who are reluctant to pay bribe to the police on their self-made roadblocks and illegal checkpoints have often been sent to their untimely graves by drunk and trigger-happy police men in the guise of accidental discharge. Usually, the responses from the public and civil society are anarchic and chaotic mass protests, demonstrations and uproar. Last year, One Mr. Benjamin Peters, a Special Anti-Robbery Squad Official, shut a moving vehicle in July 2018 leading to the death of Miss Angela. She was a youth corper who was to pass out the from the National Youth Service Programme. That was an irreparable damage for it was the destiny of an helpless victim cut short by an hapless police system. Clearly, the first Inspector-General of Police, who assumed office on 1st April, 1930, the late C.W Duncan would turn in his graves if he heard this! This brutality, for the first time in a long while, caught the attention of the presidency, leading the then acting president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo to overhaul the composition and functions of the security outfit in order to checkmate its recklessness.
In addition, detaining and harassing suspects in cells and prison for years pending the gathering of sufficient evidence constitute police brutality. Evidence abounds of physical pains inflicted on suspects to elicit information. They include, but are not limited to cigarette burns, insertion of broomsticks and sticks into the genitals of male suspects and broken bottles into the female genitalia, beating with horse whips and electric strokes and denial of food and medication as well as removal of fingernails. In the first place, the constitution provides in section 14 (2) (b) that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government, yet to the police this provision seems to be a constitutional carrot dangled in the face of citizens which they cannot eat. In the second place, unlawful detention is unconstitutional. The constitution in section 35 provides that no one should be detained beyond twenty four hours without being charged to court. The proper step is to release such suspect pending the gathering of sufficient evidence. This provision has been thrown into the ocean of recklessness for 38, 352 persons or 71% of the prison population were reportedly detained awaiting uncertain trial.
Disturbingly, the police force has retained its colonial orientation of being the British’s instrument of force, oppression and suppression against self-determination. Those were the days in which the police were placed above and not within the society it was meant to serve; in order to protect the selfish interests of the colonialists. Five decades after the formal departure of the colonialists, the police has retained its colonially-inherited punitive character instead of a society-friendly law enforcement agency. Section 4, of the Police Act, 1975 which provides for a harmonious relationship and friendship between the public and the police has been jettisoned.
The negative trend of police brutality can be reversed by putting in place a number of measures. First, concerted efforts should be geared towards facilitating workshops, symposia, seminars, training and retraining of officers which would traverse the inculcation of professional ethics, respect for human rights and dignity, keeping members abreast of contemporary security challenges and measures to effectively confront such. Second, the police should be properly equipped with modern crime fighting gadgets and equipment to combat the sophisticated nature of crime. Lastly, the living conditions of members of the force should be improved through enhanced salary packages and functional pension schemes. Police brutality needs to be checkmated at this crucial time. The English Master of Rolls, Lord Denning had the Nigerian Police in mind when he gave his stern warning to wit, "Be not so far high for the law is above you." The police must turn a new leaf for if its brutality continues unabated, it will get to a point when it is not going to be about who is right, but about who is left.
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