NOT surprisingly, and for good reasons too, security agencies, in particular the Nigeria Police, have been placed on the spot by local and international human rights communities for their highhandedness in dealing with suspects in custody or at points of arrest. Quite a number of extra-judicial killings and tortures in these circumstances have been highlighted by the local media too.
Against this background, the judgment of the Bayelsa State High Court, Nembe Division, sitting in Yenagoa, delivered by Justice Lucky Boufili sending killer policeman, Matthew Egheghe, to the gallows is most welcome. It is a bold statement that the law frowns at cruelty by uniformed officers of the state and that an appropriate premium is placed on life by the Nigerian state.
That judgment would not bring back the dead, but it should to some extent console their grieving families that justice was served to the guilty. It would equally serve as a deterrent to trigger-happy men in the services who kill at the least provocation and continue to give a bad image to the institution as well as the country.
Twenty-year-old Victor Emmanuel on his way from church about two years ago was callously murdered at a road block in Yenagoa in the presence of his mother following his harmless request to a policeman to stop extorting money from hapless motorists, which he considered illegal. The mother’s intervention and pleas to Egheghe and two accomplices to stop raining more bullets on Victor failed and the trigger-happy policeman snuffed out of the young man a life full of promise. He then callously put a pair of scissors in Victor’s hands with a view to perverting justice by showing him as the aggressor!
Victor’s case reinforces the fact that many dastardly acts by a few conscienceless policemen are committed at road blocks in encounters with motorists (even against the Inspector-General’s directive on assumption of office) as some of these greedy men attempt to feed their corrupt instincts. In some instances, summary executions by policeman have been unearthed after painstaking searches by families and human rights groups.
A certain Joseph Bajulaye’s case is the latest despicable act, his killing shrouded in controversy as ever. For weeks, Special Anti-Robbery Squad operatives in Lagos denied that the son of a widow was ever in their custody. Reports the other day said SARS finally claimed on January 27 that Joseph, incarcerated since November, 2013 died in a shootout with alleged colleagues when he led police to a place for investigation.
A few days ago in Kaduna, Alhaji Ibrahim Mai Penti lamented the killing of his 14-year-old Senior Secondary School student son, Hassan Ibrahim, allegedly by some policemen. Human Rights Watch once claimed in a report that police killed no fewer than eight thousand innocent Nigerians between year 2000 and 2007. Global human rights body, Amnesty International, in a 2008 report titled ‘Nigeria Police Kill at Will’ accused the Force of “hundreds of unlawful killings every year”.
It added: “Majority of cases are uninvestigated and police officers responsible go unpunished. The families of the victims get no justice or redress. Most never found out what happened to their loved ones.” Luckily, Victor’s case is now a refreshing exception.
Undoubtedly, the police authorities deserve credit for cracking tough criminal cases. And there are many good men, thorough professionals in the Force. However, it is apparent that lack of proper tools for investigations to obtain concrete evidence to prove a case often incapacitate probe teams, leaving them with the illegal and inhuman option of torture of suspects to extract information.
An efficient system must, therefore, be built to prevent officers and men of the police from resorting to such crude tactics. A reformation of the investigative system, to secure evidence through scientific means in line with modern investigation techniques, and a more professional training of officers are also required, starting with the recruitment process. Any reform of the system should, of course, be predicated on justice rooted in transparency and accountability.
Citizens’ complaints against the excesses of the police personnel must always be fully and sincerely addressed by the Force to prevent further system breakdown while a regime of impunity thrives. With these done, Victor and many others would not have died in vain and the police force, a noble institution in the best of times, would not be dragged further to the mud.
Comments
Post a Comment