Recently, when the despicable activities of the Special Anti-robbery Squad (SARS) of the Lagos State Police Command became irredeemably notorious, its reprehensible conduct was halted and residents were reprieved, transiently. Now, they are back deadlier and multitudinously! Before this current massive invasion of most parts of the state, particularly Surulere (Aguda and Ijeshatedo especially) and Yaba (Ojuelegba axis and Jibowu), the cruelty was to molest young men who came their rabid way. Such victims were frisked and made to part with money on grounds of “yahoo-yahoo suspicion and potential charge threat.”
Last week, I sent my personal assistant to buy me a laptop which will serve as a backup. On his way back, he was stopped at Agbonyin Avenue in Surulere and asked to produce the receipt for the brand new laptop which he did. The seeming gangsters insisted he was an advance fee fraud agent. At the end of the day after so many hours’ delay, the reckless cops extorted N3000 from the young man and freed him subsequently!
The latest strategy is to rampantly comb public TV-viewing centres where most people gather every evening to watch football matches on the DStv platform of global major leagues, hotels and pubs (popularly known as “beer parlous”).
The hellish policemen use buses to move their viciously manhandled victims to nearby police stations and asked to pay ransoms ranging from N50,000 to whatever whimsical amount before their release! Those who hesitate in reaching their relatives or friends are transferred to Panti Police Station en route to Badagry, if there is further delay or no financial mediation prospects from victims’ kith and kin. The heartlessness and audacity of these indecorous and illegal operations are benumbing, to say the least.
There was an instance where innocent Nigerians were taken to the Ijeshatedo police station and the men at the station implored their colleagues to move them to another station that the cell was filled with earlier SARS victims and other routine suspects! These dastardly activities are daily occurrences. I would be utterly scandalized if the diligent Lagos State Commissioner of Police Imohimi Edgal is unaware of this Gestapo-like indulgence by his officers and men.
One of my tenants—who had been a serial victim of sorts—told me last week that he was somewhere and saw the cops in question arrest a man who was strolling with his pregnant wife in the evening in Ijesha and told the woman to go and get money fast and meet them at the Aguda police station before they relocate him to Panti that night, unfailingly! Even under the usually despotic military rule, this kind of blatant human rights abuse never existed. There were only a few cases of isolated arrest and detention of regime hypercritics, who were subsequently released after interrogation and intimidation. Why this kind of temerity and gross irresponsibility should become an integral aspect of policing baffles me beyond comprehension. Even in previous republics, this type of bestial effrontery never reigned. What is happening here is sheer lawlessness with everyone turning a blind eye, especially police authorities and well-heeled members of the society. This worsening impunity can only happen in Nigeria. Even the South African police with all their reputational negativity cannot be so deviant.
What is going on here resembles kamikaze warfare between the police and other citizens. This kind of illegality is unprecedented in Nigeria’s history. What is on the fray is an outright infringement on people’s freedom of movement enshrined and guaranteed in section 36 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). Unconstitutional behaviour should not be associated with a law-enforcement agency like the police and, indeed, any other institutionalized establishment.
Since most Lagos policemen are underutilized and have ample time to terrorize residents all day and night, they should be posted to Maiduguri to fight the Boko Haram insurgents or other trouble spots in the country where they would confront fellow terrorists!
Because most Nigerians are timid and unready to stand for their rights, they prefer to “negotiate” their freedom in the hands of official bandits who display their guns as if we were in a state of emergency. The only language these callous cops understand is brutality. And knowing that most of their countrymen will scamper at the sight of a hunter’s gun, the terrorism is aggravated!
In most other countries, the citizens will take up the gauntlet and resist the bourgeoning inhumanity by the police who are sustained with our taxes even if at the cost of fatality on both sides and the menace will stop. Here, we are too afraid thinking of our parents, husbands, wives, concubines, mistresses, rent, tuition and property that we are ready to swallow illimitable police brutality.
Even in banana republics, the level of police terrorism taking place in parts of Lagos can never be imagined let alone exemplified. When we had the Wandering Law before it was commendably abrogated, this kind of animalistic ambush of innocent citizens never occurred. Why would any sane group of persons swoop on TV-viewing centres, pubs and hotels to round up victims in exchange for blood money? Such rare raids can take place when there is sufficient reasonable suspicion of threat to life, peace, perpetuation of criminality or potential breakdown of law and order—it is not a routine entrepreneurship for policemen in Lagos.
Despite the laudable ban of checkpoints by the assiduous IGP, Ibrahim Idris, some officers and men from Aguda and Ijeshatedo police stations in Surulere still mount flexible/mobile roadblocks in this area. Between NEPA Bus stop and Agbonyin Avenue, there are usually up to three proximate points (a stone’s throw from one another) where plain-clothes cops from Aguda police station extort money, intimidate and embarrass innocent citizens in the euphemistic name of “stop-and-search” at peak hours in the morning and evening particularly and at other indeterminate periods depending on their tipsiness! The ubiquitous arrow-man is one fair-complexioned chap with bushy beards and moustache. He has no resemblance at the station. Most times I see him and members of his gang ransacking bags, briefcases and frisking their owners as if their victims are criminals. After the initial rigmarole on stopping their victims and “cooperative” prospects, they solicit for “settlement”.
Similarly, the Omilani by Adesina and Ijeshatedo road junctions have become extortion points for menacingly-armed policemen from Ijeshatedo and occasionally joined by their colleagues from Aguda to collect tolls from Keke Maruwa and motorbike (okada) operators and selective vehicle owners especially between 8 p.m. and midnight. I confronted one at the risk of “accidental discharge” recently who reeked of illicit gin! My CP, nothing tarnishes the name and image of the police as much as this highway gangsterism of extorting, intimidating, embarrassing and harassing innocent Nigerians. Please let there be reorientation, retraining and civilization of these bad eggs lest they mess up your diligence and professionalism. I do not think this despicable conduct is what policing is about.
The ongoing neighbourhood onslaughts by your officers and men are capable of degenerating to catastrophic consequences when harmless and law-abiding citizens fight back some day. It is only a question of time. We cannot continue like this as if we were still in a state of nature! Lagosians are being pushed to the wall: the day they will react, the implications would be disastrous.
Enough of these sporadic invasions and dehumanization of Lagosians for no reason at all except drunkenness that manifests in idiocy. This kind of asininity ended with colonial rule! The official rascality is antithetical to good policing etiquette that emphasizes friendship with host-communities and the inhabitants.
I plead with assiduous IGP Idris and equally hardworking CP Edgal to immediately stop this bohemianism by a few uniformed baboons euphemistically called policemen. Lagosians have endured enough—they should not be encouraged to take the law into their own lethal hands.