Nigerians bemoan incessant bullying by security operatives

By Job Osazuwa

Sewuese Matthew, a 28-year-old 500-level student of the Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos, is in excruciating pain and agony.

She was battered, alongside her sister, Lilian Ifemeludike, by operatives of the Lagos State Task Force on Environmental and Special Offences Enforcement Unit.

The operatives were allegedly enraged that Sewuese was filming their activities on her mobile phone while they were on an operation on Durosinmi Etti Drive, Lekki Phase 1 on Wednesday, February 8.

It’s not the first time such an incident would be happening. In the past few weeks, Nigerians have been witnessing several cases of unwarranted attacks on them by policemen, soldiers, operatives of the Department of State Services and personnel of other paramilitary organisations.

Yet, they were recruited, trained and armed to protect armless Nigerians. Some of them are to maintain law and order while some others are to defend the country from external and internal aggression. And their salaries, allowances and other entitlements are paid by the taxpayers.

But these days, these same taxpayers – the civilian population- live at the mercy of security men, some of who use their status to intimidate, harass and brutalise innocent Nigerians.

And with the authorities most times looking the other way, many Nigerians cannot but wonder whether they would ever be liberated from perpetual harassment, intimidation and unceasing assault from security agents.

Not all the security personnel are guilty of such ills, though. Many are those that have been performing their duties so gallantly to create a safer society.

To many Nigerians, most of the security agents in the country have little value for civilians. Indeed, not a few Nigerians have suffered one unjustifiable punishment or the other in the hands of army personnel, Air Force men, naval personnel, policemen and other gun-wielding officers and members of paramilitary groups.

Recently, the video of two soldiers maltreating a physically-challenged man went viral on the internet. The wheelchair-bound cripple, Mr. Chijoke Uraku (alias CJ) was brutally flogged and dragged on the floor for dressing in military fatigues.

One of the soldiers dispossessed the victim of his wheelchair and threw it aside before his colleague joined him to unleash terror on Uraku. Pleas by Uraku and sympathisers did not deter his tormentors – Corporal Bature Samuel and Corporal Abdulazeez Usman.

The torture, which was widely condemned, was carried out on February 8, 2017 along the New Market Road, Onitsha, Anambra State.

A statement issued by the National President of Joint National Association of Persons with Disability (JONAPWD), Ekaete Umoh, revealed that the attack on the disabled man contravened his fundamental human rights.

The Army, through its Director of Public Relations, Brig. Gen. Sani Usman, said the soldiers’ action was unacceptable in line with the military’s zero tolerance for acts of indiscipline and unprofessional conducts, especially in relation to violation of human rights.

The day after the assault, the Army identified and arrested the soldiers. They were charged with assault, even as others were warned to desist from acts that infringe on human rights and cast serious aspersions on the good image of the Nigerian Army.

They were arrested, summarily tried on two counts and found guilty. Consequently, both men were sentenced to a reduction in rank from Corporal to Private Soldiers and 21 days imprisonment with hard labour, respectively. The punishment included forfeiture of 21 days pay to the federal government.

“The Nigerian Army has also reached out to the victim of their unjustifiable assault, Uraku. We wish to reiterate our avowed determination to ensure that troops conduct themselves in the most orderly and professional manner at all times. Any act of indiscipline would not be tolerated,” Usman said.

He also described their action as an embarrassment to the army. The Army also made donations of different items to the physically challenged man after apologising for the behaviour of the overzealous soldiers that attacked him

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Similarly, an Abuja High Court recently sentenced a soldier, Lance Corporal Oge Etudo to die by hanging after he was found guilty of rape and culpable homicide.

Having evaluated the evidence and exhibits before him, as well as the weight of Etudo’s offence, the judge declared that she would not also show mercy to the soldier.

The condemned 30-year-old soldier was reported to have, on March 27, 2014, at Dei-Dei, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), abducted, raped and stabbed a 27-year-old married woman identified as Binta Usman Kadede to death inside a bush.

On a hot Monday afternoon in June last year, near the Police College, Ikeja in Lagos, a vehicle almost hit a policeman trying to cross the road. The people passing by, including the reporter, watched as his colleague shouted, wondering why the driver could have attempted to hit a policeman.

He screamed in Pidgin English: “This bloody civilian nor dey fear; he want hit policeman near police station!”

A lady that jovially asked if a policeman was different from other men was threatened by other policemen around, saying the question might earn her a night in a police cell. She quickly left the scene.

In February last year, the video of a young man being tortured by some army cadets became popular on the internet. The man’s offence was that he had complimented a female cadet, saying that she was beautiful. For several minutes, with the assistance of her male colleagues, the victim was brutalised, detained and molested.

Some teachers, under the aegis of Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), the body to which teachers of Unity Schools belong, carried placards and marched through the streets of Calabar, Cross River State, against the Department of State Services (DSS) recently. They were protesting the invasion of the Federal Government Girls’ College (FGGC), Calabar, as well as the assault on some of the teachers in the school, by operatives of the DSS.

The incident allegedly happened after a teacher, Mr. Owai Owai, had punished some Senior Secondary (SS3) students, who had, in contravention of the school rules, forced some junior students to sweep their classroom during lecture hours.

It was gathered that one of the students that was sanctioned is a daughter of a DSS official. The student reported informed her mother on the phone, and the official mobilised her colleagues. They stormed the school in a commando style and beat up every teacher in sight, hitting the teachers with the butt of their guns while the students watched. The DSS personnel on rampage shot their way out of the school by firing at the locks at the entrance gate.

Many Nigerians have condemned the attack, which they described as a national embarrassment.

A Delta-born public affairs analyst, Mr. Daniel Kings told Daily Sun that he was not too surprised at what has been happening, claiming that the security operatives were behaving as if Nigeria was still under a military dictatorship.

“Imagine the ways the DSS operatives have been molesting everybody in Nigeria. If judges could be subjected to such ridicule, who else would they not deal with in Nigeria now, based on any slightest allegation? This is just the beginning of more troubles and brutality for civilians as long as the president remains quiet over the matter.

“In a saner society, the soldiers, for example, know their limit. But here, you see an army man in uniform driving a commercial bus or motorcycle for his daily bread. Some of them escort smuggled vehicles and prohibited goods from Lagos to every part of the country.

“It is rather unfortunate that nothing is being done about it. It is only in Nigeria I have discovered that the security operatives are above the law. They break traffic rules with impunity and drive on restricted roads in Lagos. Commercial drivers and their conductors don’t have the temerity to demand transport fare from security agents who board their vehicles in the state. All they need to say is ‘l am a staff,’ and the conductor would be intimidated.

Kings admitted that security agents’ brutality on innocent civilians did not start with the Buhari-led administration. But he insisted that such acts had now increased.

A human rights activist based in Benin, Edo State, Mr. Odubu Aiwuekhoe, told the reporter that Nigerians were simply suffering from ignorance. He believed that if more cases of assaults were reported against security agents, the ugly development could easily be curtailed.

Said he: “From past and recent reports, there had been convictions of security agents. The Nigerian military remains one of the most disciplined security agencies in Africa. But the bad eggs, just as we have it in other professions, have soiled the image of the good ones. But if you are a keen observer, you will notice that the Nigerian Army does not tolerate any act of indiscipline and doesn’t hesitate in punishing erring personnel. With concrete evidence of molestation by members of the public, we can have a better military. I believe this will be applicable to other security agencies.”

A policeman, who did not mention his name, said most of the allegations levelled against his colleagues were over-exaggerated. He maintained that there were civil servants in Nigeria who had committed worse offences but whose actions were under-reported by the media. He pleaded with Nigerians to cooperate with security agents rather than condemning them, so that the people could collectively achieve a more peaceful society.