#EndSARS campaign: Nigeria police in urgent need of reform

Like the proverbial dog that turns back to fight when chased to the wall, Nigerians started an aggressive campaign last week against the Nigerian Police after a video in which officers attached to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) shot a man in Yaba, Lagos, went viral on social media.

The incident then took an unexpected twist which revealed how most Nigerians are truly feeling about the police generally, with many sharing personal experiences of police brutality, sexual harassment and theft.

Many lamented that in this digital age, young boys with phones, cameras, laptops and other such gadgets have become endangered species at the hands of SARS operatives who operate brazenly at any time of day with no recourse to any civilised terms of engagement.

Reports have continued to pour in since then on SARS operatives’ activities with evidence-backed accusations of extra-judicial killings, robberies at gunpoint and torture.

Amnesty International said it received reports from lawyers, human rights defenders and journalists, and collected testimonies stating that some police officers in SARS regularly demand bribes, steal and extort money from criminal suspects and their families.

According to Amnesty, SARS detainees are held in a variety of locations, including a grim detention centre in Abuja known as the ‘Abattoir’, where Amnesty International found 130 detainees living in overcrowded cells.

“SARS officers are getting rich through their brutality. In Nigeria, it seems that torture is a lucrative business,” said Damian Ugwu, Amnesty International’s Nigeria researcher.

Former detainees told Amnesty International they had been subjected to horrific torture methods, including hanging, starvation, beatings, shootings and mock executions, at the hands of corrupt officers from the dreaded SARS, according to Amnesty International in a report published September 21, 2016.

“A police unit created to protect the people has instead become a danger to society, torturing its victims with complete impunity while fomenting a toxic climate of fear and corruption,” Ugwu said.

With the social media awash with eyewitness reports as well as victim accounts of this seeming legal racket across Nigerian state, many Nigerians began to call for an end to SARS.

“If we fail to make this #EndSARS campaign count, SARS/Police will be more brutal on us and politicians will never take us serious again. The goal of the movement will not be achieved and injustice will prevail,” Opeyemi Babalola, a concerned Nigerian, said via his twitter handle.

Several prominent Nigerians, including Oby Ezekwesili, Atiku Abubakar, Remi Sonaiya, and many others lent their voice to the request for reform and end to police impunity.

In the heat of the #EndSARS campaign, Moses Motoni, an official of BudgIT, a civic organization, was arrested in Kaduna on Tuesday, December 5, 2017, by some policemen, who were disguised as DHL courier officers and taken to Abuja. His crime was holding a town hall meeting to sensitise residents of Niger South Senatorial District in Bida, Niger State, on the zonal intervention projects awarded to their constituency in the 2017 budget.

Narrating his ordeal after he was released on Wednesday, Motoni said his legs were chained and his hands cuffed to a seat by the policemen who arrested him; he dislocated his joints in the process.

According to Motoni, he saw hell in the hands of the police personnel, who dehumanised and treated him like a criminal.

He said he was not informed about his crime, but the policemen simply said he was arrested for “inciting the populace and trying to impeach the Emir of Bida”.

As the outcries became overwhelming, Ibrahim Idris, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), ordered the immediate reorganisation of the SARS and an investigation into the allegations of atrocities levelled against its operatives.

In a statement signed by Jimoh Moshood, Force Public Relations Officer (FPRO), the IGP noted that SARS has curbed armed robbery, kidnapping and cattle rustling, among other crimes, but explained that in the new arrangement, a Commissioner of Police is now the overall head of the SARS nationwide under the Department of Operations, Force Headquarters Abuja.

“The zonal and state commands as well as divisions will continue to operate anti-crime units, crime prevention and control squads to prevent and detect crimes and criminalities in their respective jurisdictions. The Federal Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS) will, from now on, exist and operate in the state and zonal commands under the Commissioner of Police, FSARS, at the Force Headquarters,” the statement read in part.

The statement also disclosed that a new training programme on core police duties, respect for human rights and humane handling and care of suspects in custody would be required for all FSARS operatives. It explained that the programme would be conducted in collaboration with civil society organizations, local and international non-governmental organizations and other human rights bodies.

The IGP urged members of the public who have complaints of rights violations committed by SARS operatives to lodge reports through a variety of platforms, including telephone and social media.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, December 5, 2017, the Senate directed its Ad-hoc Committee on Security Reform, which was inaugurated to holistically review Nigeria’s security infrastructure, to investigate the issue of human rights abuses by officers of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad on the Nigeria Police.

Also in commemoration of World’s Human Right Day today, December 10, there are plans to hold an #EndSARS #ReformPoliceNG Rally in Abuja on Monday, December 11, at the Fountain.

“This is not a protest by the way but a Global Awareness Campaign,” the organisers said.

When the World Internal Security and Police Index (WISPI) ranked the Nigeria police worst in the world, many members of the force felt affronted and denied the ranking, saying that Nigeria police is the best in the world.

The report said “there are 219 police officers for every 100,000 Nigerians, well below both the Index median of 300, and the sub-Saharan Africa region average of 268”.

“This limits the capacity of the force to measure up to its law and order mandate. In terms of process, legitimacy and outcomes, the story is not different which makes the force fall short of the required standard. High levels of political terror have been an issue for Nigeria since 1993, with the country scoring a 4 on the Political Terror Scale every year since then,” the report said.

But police spokesman Jimoh Moshood replied, “Nigeria Police Force is the best in UN Peace Keeping Operations, Best in Africa, One of the Best in the World. The Force rejects the report as unempirical and absolute falsehood” that “should be disregarded and discountenanced”.

But with the insurrections of #EndSARS, which many have lent their voice to, it is easy to see that the ranking is justified.

The Nigeria Police Force, established in 1930, has a long history of engaging in unprofessional, corrupt, and criminal conduct, with many senior citizens now lamenting that the institution has proved difficult to effectively manage and control and has become largely unaccountable to the citizens it is meant to serve.

Ayo Opadokun, a former secretary, National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and convener, Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reforms (CODER), told BDSUNDAY that the cure for Nigeria’s policing ailment is a return to a true federal system as it was practiced before 1966.

“The problems of the Nigerian Police and the crimes associated with it are as a result of our over-centralised government. This is unitarily centrally government which the army foisted on Nigerians since 1966; and in the process created one centrally Police Force with its multi dimensional crisis. This is the main reason why are having these issues,” Opadokun said.

“So, I consider the most critical thing that could have make such situation possible much more important than the fallouts. If we want to resolve and solve our problem lets return to federal system of government,” he said.

But while Nigerians are calling for the scrapping of SARS and sanitization of the Nigerian Police as an institution, allegation of corrupt enrichment levelled against the current IG by Isah Misau, who is representing Bauchi Central at the Senate, has not been satisfactorily answered.

The alleged corrupt revelation started sometime in August this year when Misau, an ex-police officer, accused the IG of pocketing at least N10 billion monthly, totalling N120 billion annually, for providing police protection to oil companies anthers and private individuals.

The senator also told his colleagues at the red chamber that the Police under its current IG have taken corruption to a new height by engaging in varying degrees of sharp practices and raising illegal funds which he suggested be legalized and converted to the Federal Government.

Although Senate President Bukola Saraki, who presided over the plenary, promised that the allegations raised by Misau are ‘important issues’ which cannot be swept under the carpet, the matter has already died out long ago, like many before it.

The activities of the Police and how its officers are handling weaponry had also come under scrutiny recently, after a report released in two parts between in December 2016 and May 2017 by the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation revealed that at least, 44 assorted arms belonging to the Nigerian Police could not be accounted for between 2013 and 2015, respectively.

The report unearthed that arms as well as rounds of ammunition entrusted to police personnel were said to have been “snatched”, “missing” or “lost”, while standards established by the Nigeria’s financial regulations for reporting and checking such incidents were ignored by the police authority.

For instance, in Umuagwo, Ohaji/Egbema local government area of Imo State, five arms (3 AK-47 and 2 AR rifles) recorded in Arms/Ammunition Returns of September 19, 2013 could neither be traced in the latest handover note of the armourer and the Division Police Officer of April 7, 2014 and August 31 2015 respectively nor sighted physically as at the time of the audit inspection on October 14, 2015.

Similarly, during the audit inspection of arms and ammunition records maintained by the Nigeria Mobile Police Force, the audit report discovered that Squadron 43 Lion Building, Lagos, reported the loss of 25 arms of different models.

Debo Adeniran, executive chairman, Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL), said the discourse should not just be about the misconduct of SARS and the calls for the team to be scrapped, but the reformation of the Nigerian Police as an institution which he said is long overdue.

“The Police, Immigration, Customs and all of them are overdue for reformation. They need to be taught civility and the idea of honest living; because many of the officers are the ones giving abets to criminals in Nigeria and if we continue like that the situation will continue to degenerate. We may get to a place where criminality will become a household thing and all of us will be in trouble.

“From the Police angle, there is a need to do urgent reengineering of the machinery of police operation is Nigeria. There is hardly any unit of the police that has lived up to the expected standards of policing. I don’t subscribe to the scrapping of SARS. It can be reorganised in such a way that there would be civility in their operation. Police should not see anybody with laptop as a yahoo person.

“As a matter of fact, yahoo persons are not the ones that we ask them to chase about. They are to go after armed bandits, including kidnappers and all that. EFCC is in charge of 419, that is not SARS responsibility. What SARS officers are doing violates peoples’ right and privacy. The intimidation and harassment of civilians must stop,” he told BDSUNDAY.

 

NATHANIEL AKHIGBE & MABEL DIMMA