The sad fact
is that the Nigerian Police is noticeably obsessed with insuring the incumbent
regime against civic protest than in serving their constitutional purpose.
ore often
than not, the Nigerian Police runs riot like a malicious militia whenever the
politics of the president of Nigeria faces a viable challenge in the form of a
street protest.
The police
rush out to crush the demonstration. They assault the protesters. They
brutalize them on an order of magnitude that can pass as sadomasochistic
bullying.
The police
ought to be civil, coolheaded and non-partisan. Their constitutional duty is
simple and clear: the maintenance of law and order. But whenever Nigerians
organize and set out to march under the banner of a cause that appears to be at
odds with the official stance, the police almost always slough off
professionalism and confronts the people with devastating cruelty.
The police’s
penchant for attacking protesters reared its ugly head in Abuja on Tuesday. In broad
daylight and in the heart of the nation’s capital, they pounced on Resume Or
Resign campaigners, beat them, battered and teargassed them. They mauled
journalists who were covering the rally.
The
protesters had essayed to assemble at the Unity Fountain, Maitama to call on
President Muhammadu Buhari to end his interminable medical exile or abdicate on
the grounds of incapacitation. The police inflicted bodily injury on the
protesters and branded them ‘’hoodlums’’ and ‘’criminal elements’’ to justify
the assault.
All
independent accounts of the demonstration pointed out that the Resume Or Resign
crusaders were peaceful and restrained and that men of the Nigerian Police were
the aggressors.
Needless to
say, the police had no business savaging the protesters. It was not within
their mandate to victimize people exercising their right to freedom of assembly
and expression. It is not a crime to ventilate a view that is out of sync with
the political interest of the president: and even if it were, the police are
not authorized to moonlight as executioners of jungle justice.
The Nigerian
Police basically stole power from the arms paid for by the citizenry and
applied that illegitimate force against the people and the law.
The Nigerian
Police is governed by the psychology of an Orwellian thought police. The rank
of the police considers it their job to ensure universal devotion for the
government of the day. They think themselves under obligation to stamp out any
attempt by citizens to assert their right to ventilate disagreement.
The Nigerian
Police treated the protesters as enemies of the state because their seemingly
innocent advocacy represented a potent interrogation of the secret health status
of President Buhari and his fitness to continue to lay claim to power. The
protesters asked that if his interminable indisposition was not the very
definition of incapacitation, he should come back to work. Or step aside.
After Buhari
had spent almost half of the year on a medical holiday, magnetizing batches of
government officials on ‘get well quick’ homage and curating optics of
recovery, it was only fair that responsible citizens ask him to resume or quit.
Buhari has
refused to go beyond admitting that his current sickness is the most serious of his
lifetime to revealing the nature of his condition. He has shown no respect
to the taxpayers who pay his medical bills, including the beggars whose alms purse his administration has proposed to
perforate.
Ironically,
Aisha Buhari flew
back to London to ‘see’ her husband on the eve of the first day of the
protest. Only a few weeks ago, she had asked "the weaker animals" to
start rejoicing because "the Lion King" would soon return to his kingdom.
It turned out that the ‘recuperated’ Lion King did not return home: it was the
‘Lion Queen’ who had to ‘return’ to London to join him in the foreign den!
It is
impossible that a big country Nigeria will be an echo chamber resonating with
the specious claims of the president’s spokesmen. Or the second-hand
testimonies of politicians whose judgment of Buhari’s health was formed inside one hour
of lunch and banter. Even if Resume or Resign did not emerge, some other voice
would have demanded that the president prove his health.
The sad fact
is that the Nigerian Police is noticeably obsessed with insuring the incumbent
regime against civic protest than in serving their constitutional purpose. They
consider the suppression of dissent the most important part of their job. They
are certain to be overhasty in punishing contrarian opinion like patronizing
guards of a slaveholder.
Earlier in
February, they truncated a multiple city protest planned to
demonstrate against the increasing banalization of human suffering by the
Buhari presidency. They intimidated the organizers and cited a fake
intelligence report on the prospect of violence in order to dissuade massive
participation.
The scare
tactics worked. Many peace-loving people stayed away. And what had promised to
be a phenomenal popular movement turned out to be a weak parade of defiance by
a small core of civil society players.
Countless
times, the Nigerian Police have attacked Shiites protesting
against the endless incarceration of Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky. The police
would hit, club and abuse them with stone-age ruthlessness. The vicious
onslaught has recurred so often it now registers less as the outrageous
violation of the dignity of the human being than the repeated replay of a
horror film.
The matter
of pro-Biafra activists is even more spectacular in provoking the Nigerian
Police to insanity. The police don’t bother to expend energy on
manhandling this class of protesters. They just engage the gun. They shoot into the crowd and let
their hail of bullets choose the targets!
It’s often
said that the belligerence of the Nigerian Police derives from its history and
legacy as an agency of colonial coercion. But that does not sufficiently
account for the service of citizen subjugation the Nigerian Police perpetrates
on behalf of the Nigerian government. There is the critical factor of the
fealty of every Inspector General of Police to the person of the president.
Every IG
owes his appointment and length of tenure to the grace of the president. And given
the naked contest that ensues among all eligible senior police officers
whenever the position of the IG is due to be vacant, the fortunate pick
naturally swears to destroy any source of irritation to his appointer… as
continual gratitude for being promoted to the peak of their career.
That
sycophancy trickles down the chain of command and moves the average Nigerian
policeman to answer dissent with brute force.
The Nigerian
Police needs to do more than drop the ‘Force’ from their name. They must drop the
force from their paradigm. The very age of our civilization encourages the
plurality of views. The police cannot continue to conduct itself like a private
militia beholden to the president.
You can
reach Emmanuel at immaugwu@gmail.com and
follow him on Twitter at @EmmaUgwuTheMan.
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