The etymology of Police force in the world indicates it’s primordial root in the ancient Greece, a derivative of Greek word “Polis”, connoting a part of non-ecclesiastical administration, that encapsulates safety, health and order of the state, its original obligation encompassed the art of governing and regulating the welfare, security needs and order of the city-state in the interest of the public.
The development of the Force from its progenitor to Roman civilisation and the Anglo-American world power substantially retain the original tenets of Police Force as an essential state component for the paramount purpose of safety, and regulation of people’s welfare in the interest of all.
It is quite instructive to emphasise the fact that policing and police work commenced as a voluntary work, and not as paid profession. It started as a noble, incorruptible profession with considerable responsibility and distinction.
Researches have revealed that the proposal for paid professional police force was vehemently resisted in Britain in the first place, for the obvious apprehension of becoming an instrument of oppression, and threat to democracy and personal liberty.
Meanwhile, the annexation of Lagos in 1861 by British colonial administration brought about the idea of police force into the territories known today as Nigeria.
Regrettably, these early police men were notorious for sharp practices and general lawlessness, for instance, In 1891, the consul general of the Oil Rivers Protectorate, which presently known as South-South Geo-political Zone was amazed to his marrow at the sight of level of lawlessness and criminality exhibited by the police, as locals in the community commonly identified them as “forty thieves” in police uniform.
Similarly, the governor of Lagos colony acknowledged in 1897 that the Force “no doubt behaved very badly in the hinterland by looting, stealing and generally taking advantage of their positions.”
Establishing a National Police Force in the post Amalgamation of 1914, the northern and southern regional police forces were merged in 1930, to form the colony’s first national police—the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).
With a population of 12,000 at independence, 80,000 as at 1979, and 371,800 in 2008, the Nigeria Police Force has been consistently identified with avalanche of misconduct, ranging from bribery, rape, serial killings, robbery, and many other shameful vices.
Exactly the way a former senior police officer depicted the Force to Human Rights Watch, “It ended up with most of the people who were joining the Nigerian police, joined it simply because it was a very easy way of making money.” As the Force is covertly saddled with a very large number of unqualified, under-trained and ill-equipped officers and men, many of whose suitability to wear the respected uniform of the Force is in doubt.”
Of course, the brutal attack of students of Osun State University, Osogbo, by men in black uniforms from the Zonal Headquarters of the Nigeria Police Force in Osogbo, popularly called Zone 11, on Saturday, January 21, 2017 seriously astonished many Nigerians.
Two students of the university, Kazeem Adesola and Ibrahim Ajao were shot by policemen in Mufti, who came searching for “advanced fee fraud students” (yahoo yahoo) at Ogidan Grammar School’s pitch, located around Oke-Baale area of the ancient town, where the students were exercising themselves. At the time the dust of the brutality settled, Kazeem Adesola, a 300 level student from the department of Physics/Electronics had been hit with bullets in his abdomen, while Ajao Ibrahim, a 400 student was shot in the mouth.
The Chairman of National Association of Nigeria Students/ Joint Campus Committee (NANS/JCC), Osun axis, Comrade Saheed Miftah said, it has been the habit of plain cloth policemen and officers of the Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) in the state to be exploiting students on very flimsy and spurious grounds, including sheer coercion.
Miftah shockingly disclosed that these security agents most of the times break into the apartments of students while they were away in class and cart away laptops and other gadgets in the name of searching for “yahoo yahoo boys”.
He explained that students in the school have long been at the mercy of police hegemony, saying he do receive torrent of complaints of police harassment on daily basis from students of that ivory tower.
According to him, a particular policeman, generally known as Samuel, with appellation” Pepper” who accordingly was part of the team that shot at students on Saturday was notorious of this atrocity and exploitation, citing instances where these men have forced students to release their Automated Teller Machine(ATM) cards and pins to them, in which huge amounts would be eventually disappeared from these accounts.
The Union Leader further stressed that the minimum bail charge for whoever these police elements arrest is N50,000, with all sorts of threat should the victim takes any step to challenge the “executive theft”.
In the same vein, another students’ leader, Adeleke Michael expressed seeming frustration over the menace of” police incessant invasion” describing it as thorn in the flesh of students of that university.
“We have been experiencing this exploitation and threat to our lives and property since last year, we met with the Commissioner of police a couple of times to express our ordeal and predicament all to no avail.
“These men would invade students’ hostels at odd hours to forcefully extort money from innocent ones, and most of the times, they scale fences and enter into the rooms through windows, many of our colleagues’ mosquitoes nets have been destroyed in the process”.
A victim, Oluwatosin Gbadebo explained that his hostel was raided around November 2016, in which about 17 laptops were confisticated, with huge sum of money, including his Samsung Galaxy Tablet.
Gbadebo said up till this moment, those policemen that came to cart away their belongings have not been located.
” The policemen came to our hostel on that day in a commando style, we became so panic, they broke into rooms of students that were not at home at that moment, while those that were around were made to part away with their laptops and phones, they collected my Galaxy Tab, they all put on black pollo shirts with an inscription of “SARS”, but when we got to their office, nobody was there to attend to us, that was the end of our property”.
Another victim, Samson Ibironke sadly recalled his bitter experience in the hands of marauding police men around Ogo-oluwa area of Osogbo metropolis recently.
In his words” I just went to withdraw some money at the FCMB’s ATM in that axis, as I was going out of the bank’s premises, three men stopped me and demanded for my phone, I was about to raise alarm when one of them brought out an identification card, and I was greatly disturbed when I discovered that they were policemen in mufti.
“I had no other option that to hand my phone over to them, they started searching my phone and later asked me to give them” something from the N20,000 I went to withdraw,” they have checked the bank notification on my phone and got to know the amount I was having on me”, he said.
The Commissioner of Police in Osun, Mr Adeoye Fimihan, while reacting to the shooting spree of his men on Saturday, in which two students were badly injured, at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Teaching Hospital in Osogbo, when he came to see the victims of the dastardly act, the police boss promised a thorough investigation to get to the root of the crime.
He rather unfortunately said that he could not ascertain whether the victims were shot until it was proved by expert, but contradictory added that he “rushed down to the hospital to ensure proper care of the victims of gun shot”.
By and large, it has become invariably pertinent and fundamentally mandatory for the Inspector General of Police, Mr Idris Abubakar to quickly put up a high- powered team to unravel first and fore-most the culpability of police high echelon in the state in all these damning allegations of fraud and criminality.
Secondly, there must be a swift step to put a stop to all forms of exploitation and extortion of citizenry in Osun, and every part of Nigeria, and intrinsically reform the Force for better policing and robust internal security measures.
Lastly, whoever found wanting in the Osun saga must not only be brought to book on paper, the individual(s) must been seen facing the full wrath of law without fear or favour, to serve as deterrent for would-be deviants.
Comments