Welcome to Southeast Region: Nigeria’s Headquarters of Official Highway Robbery is the title of a 2018 report by the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Intersociety), a non-governmental organisation. The research for the report was conducted between 2015 and 2016 in the south eastern states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo and some parts of Delta States. It graphically indicted the Nigerian police and other security outfits of collecting about 100 billion naira in bribery and extortion from motorists in the region. This amounts to 12% of the regions’ 2019 budget estimate of 870 billion naira (according to a recent presentation by Ike Chioke of Afrinvest.)
Globally, the World Economic Forum estimates that corruption costs the world economy 5% of its combined gross domestic output. This percentage encompasses the various vintages of corruption as categorized in extant research. Of course, if we sum up total institutional corruption in the SE region of Nigeria alone, it would triple this 12% police-specific bribery and extortion in the region.
This piece is however, not about the general culture of corruption for which Nigeria has gained an unenviable notoriety. We are specifically focused on the dehumanizing subjection of a specific group of people to brazen psychological torture, daylight officialized armed robbery and reckless economic extortion that have adverse consequences for economic production, moral rectitude, trust in the state, civility and general human wellbeing. It is about the economic cost and value distorting impact of police terror in the South East of Nigeria.
In a 2017 report by Transparency International, the police is perceived to be the most corrupt institution in the world. Not only TI, research after research in different countries identify the police force as the most corrupt public institution. In a recent study by SERAP, police corruption was perceived to be as high as 63% – almost twice the global average of 36%. SERAP reports that “a bribe is paid in 54% of interactions with the police. In fact, there is a 63% probability that an average Nigerian would be asked to pay a bribe each time he or she interacted with the police. That is almost two out of three.”
But no one has yet answered the question why police corruption tends to be high in every country. Among the factors that drive general, official corruption including poverty and natural resource rent, the most debilitating is poor institutions of which the police system, as the pillar and enforcer of law and order, counts as the most deleterious. Once the police institution is corrupted, the system of law and order collapses. This has unfortunately happened in Nigeria. Some would argue that we now live in the post-order society.
Extant research proves that corruption generally instill a self-perpetuating or recursive cycle of poverty, economic and social maladjustment and perverse incentives. These contribute to lowering economic growth, reducing investment and productivity, increasing inequity in a self-reinforcing way.
Police corruption is rampart in Nigeria but it is especially so in the South East where it has been elevated to the status of a norm. The Intersociety report quoted above may actually have underestimated the cost of official police corruption in the region. During this last Easter holiday, commuters who plied the Lagos-Ore-Benin-Asaba-Onitsha road will attest to the unusually high number of police roadblocks on that expressway. The frequency could be as high as one per kilometer. In the past, the roadblocks would be mounted in bad sections of the road where the poor road condition would force a slow-down in traffic thus allowing the police to flag down motorists. But this time, every kilometer of the expressway was blocked with logs and drums forcing motorists to slow down, elongating commuting time. At other times, motorists are menacingly threatened with AK 47 riffles to force them to comply with police brutality.
As one escapes from the long haul from Lagos to Onitsha and into the eastern region, the situation gets even worse. For instance, every road leading into Owerri, the Imo State capital is littered with police roadblocks where motorist must dutifully pay stipulated amounts before they could be granted passage. This has always been the situation in the East that one is forced to question the rationale for this state of siege. What is the justification for this victimization and dehumanization of ordinary citizens? Is the Nigerian state still in a state of war with the south east?
There is no gainsaying that the extortion of transporters increases the cost of doing business in the east. Every naira extorted from the taxis and buses is directly passed on to passengers which increases the cost of living.
Beyond cost of living adjustments necessitated by this brazen menace of daylight banditry by the police, it needs to be stated that it is this sort of maltreatment that breeds disillusion with the government of the day and the system of governance and can be found at the root of current political dysfunction and social disunity in this country. One of the reasons Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB flag as the justification for their protest is this victimization of the SE citizens of Nigeria by the nation’s security apparatus.
While acknowledging the rising spate of insecurity in Nigeria — not just the south east — that has necessitated increasing police presence, we cannot fail to condemn the increasing militarization of the state and the employment of intimidation as a governance tool. The economic consequences far outweigh any political gains — if there were any.
Bongo Adi
