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The fallacy that the @PoliceNG can’t function without a tactical squad (especially cancerous ones that has outlived their usefulness and begging to be trashed) is an admittance that the entire police system is due for disbandment. We are not under a military interregnum. 🚨
Learn from the countries we often call a police state. They are all intelligence driven. Ours run on the culture of impunity and prejudicial profiling weaponized against the youth & future of Nigeria. These corrupt elements are calling for Chaos that may end Policing eventually.
It is not enough to disown the primitive attitude of the officer that was intimidated by an iPhone on a major expressway because this is the predisposition of over 80% of the officers our youth encounter daily. Impunity is their culture & oppression their creed.
We receive over 20 distress calls daily from citizens bordering on Mobile policemen to oppression, extortion, false accusation and indiscriminate arrest. Having a Phone they can’t afford is now worse than Armed robbery. Another report just came in seconds ago outside Oka.
Any Police Officer obviously working outside the law has ceased to be an authority but an armed robber which the society MUST begin to collectively resist to cut down on the growing number of innocent casualties. Indiscriminate raids must also be resisted. Police must do better.
Do your due diligence and show Warrants Of arrest. Take rogues off our streets and highways and commuters must be their brother’s keeper by standing for others. Stop watching harassment without doing anything to stop it. If society refuse to act it will continue.
In the past 5years I’m yet to see any report of Police curbing crimes on our highways but there’s been thousands of innocent citizens harassed and extorted at gun point for having an intimidating phone with an indiscriminate accusation of their being a yahoo boy or prostitute.
It has become an established ritual for IGPs to call for the ban of roadblocks but these roadblocks seem invincible. They kept on increasing despite the call. Police have become a money making organized crime syndicate far more powerful than the sane can tame from within.
The respected officers within the system will not publicly agree that the rogue units be scrapped because they are being mindful of the internal forces that feed fat on this. This is why the police can not reform itself. We are using legislation and political will.
There are too many fine patriots within the system that are heart broken and can neither do nor say nothing. They came in hoping to change things but soon were proven wrong by the endemic systemic rot. This is why organizations like @SIAF_NG is needed to be their voice as well.
The police structure has failed as Balkanized and the earlier we begin to fix things the better. If we wait for tragedy to strike with the response of the society it will be irreparable. We may have to start afresh.
Less than 500,000 officers with over 50% fending for themselves and seeking how to take advantage of the people they ought to protect & serve can not last a month against 200 Million Nigerians, 70% of whom are youthful, pissed & ready to fight back.
Call the robbers in mobile police uniforms on our highway to order and take them off duty for spiritual maintenance. We’ve had enough of this madness. People would rather be robbed on the highway these days than encounter countless stops by corrupt policemen seeking bribe.
As a responsible Movement, we recognize the place of the Nigeria Police in the lives of our citizens and the duties police officers discharge in securing public security, peace, safety, and protecting lives and property;
...but to us as well the crime-fighting and operational capabilities of officers of the Force must be within the bounds of law, particularly the Fundamental Rights Provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, and the Police Act.
Recognizing the key duty of the police in protecting lives and property, the respected retired Justice of the Supreme Court, Tabai JSC, famously expressed in Benjamin Oyakhire v The State (2005) SC 188/2005:
“this case represents the height of man's inhumanity to man. The appellant and his co-accused police constables employed by the nation to protect the lives and properties of its citizenry embarked on this unlawful mission and in their brazen brutality...
...terminated the lives of these five innocent and defenseless victims with unimaginable damages to their loved ones and families back at their various homes.
The case demonstrates the regrettable reality that numerous police check points along our highways give the citizenry a false sense of security.”
Nothing gives Nigerians a false sense of security than the current Police formation (even after taming considerably the SARS), set up to rid our country of armed robbers; and the regular Police who are meant to maintain law & order, but now turned into...
...an "organized crime syndicate" whose operatives kill and maim without provocation and march innocent citizens to Automated Teller Machine (ATM) points of banks and extort from them, their hard earned monies at gunpoint!
Successive leaderships of the Force have acknowledged the place of the law in the everyday operations of the Force and its officers.
Addressing a public gathering in Abuja a few years ago, the then Inspector General of Police, Sunday Ehindero, highlighted what to us constitutes the finer point of law and reason as follows:
“It is obvious that the duties of the Nigeria Police Force are a direct consequence of the powers conferred on it by law. It becomes mandatory that the law must regulate the performance of its duties relating to arrest, detention, search, and seizure and the use of force.
In other words, these duties must be exercised strictly within the limits prescribed for the police by law.
And any form of exercise of these powers which does not strictly conform to the prescriptions of the law can have unpleasant consequences (as a corporate entity, as well as for the individual police personnel).”
While we continue to witness the unpleasant consequences of the crime-fighting strategy of the Force that promotes extrajudicial and extralegal measures, extortion for self-enrichment and lawlessness,...
...clearly implicit in the brilliant remarks of the former Inspector General of Police, Sunday Ehindero, the non-adherence to the prescription of law poses far greater and graver consequences for ordinary citizens, who are the victims of the brutality of the Special Units...
...(SARS, SAKS and SACS...add STS, SOS, IRT, X-SQUAD and the police at the stations, who may have lost their sense of purpose in the society under abysmal leadership.
Considering all of this, we have recommended to the authorities from our fervent position that any credible crime-fighting strategy must encompass not just law enforcement, but also address the socioeconomic root causes of crimes- such as youth unemployment and poverty-
...and work towards engendering an environment that creates job opportunities, eradicates poverty, stems violent crimes like armed robbery, and removes the incentives for crime.
These were excerpts of our continuous dialogue and recommendations to the authorities over 3years now. As long as incentives exist for crime and insofar as the state's only policy response to crime is to arrest, torture and extrajudicially kill innocent citizens, ...
...there’ll be no end to the killings of both actual culprits of crimes and innocent citizens who are framed up with allegations of crimes. Unfortunately, the brutalities visited on citizens by officers of the Nigeria Police Force are now creating a new culture of vigilantism.🚨
