•IGP Egbetokun
On Thursday, February 22, 2024, the Nigeria Police Force further defamed its already battered and corrupt image by levitating its objectionable and abhorrently debased preoccupation to a grand act — with the commando-like brutalization and detention of Barrister Julius Abure — the National Chairman of the Labour Party (LP) with a detachment of over 30 police officers in Benin City.
The devious design; banal outing, shameful exhibition of brute force and unprofessional outburst of Nigeria Police, Zone Five Police Public Relations officer, DSP Tijani Momoh and his primitive communication strategy and the deliberate partisanship and meddling in political party affairs did not only expose the rot in the force in its degenerated form, but also shows that the Nigeria Police Force will set this country ablaze in days ahead, if it is left unchecked.
Nigerians are obviously not in doubt that the Nigeria Police Force didn’t learn any moral lessons from #EndSARS protests that almost torpedoed the country because they are victims of emotional intelligence. The Police has demonstrated arrogantly again and again that they’re the poisoned chalice and low hanging fruits on the road to Nigeria destruction.
Tijani Momoh’s stated reasons for Barrister Abure’s brutalization on the eve of the Labour Party’s primary election for a petition written since last year, is the most uncharitable, deficient, inept and crude approach an image maker of Nigeria Police standard can tease out. The PRO mustering intelligible, incoherent and poorly scripted hatchet job was caught on camera ‘partizaning’ calling Barrister Abure “a factional chairman of the Labour Party, who the Police found in possession of guns and munitions after resisting arrest”. Without mincing words, DSP Tijani epitomises and emblematizes the tragedy and failure of remedia national service redemption.
Then the conundrum: why was Julius Abure and other Labour Party (LP) officials arrested, detained and brutalized on the eve of the Edo State gubernatorial primary election? Since when did a mere petition against Nigerian citizens translates to treasonable felony that warrants a battalion of Police detachment to batter and humiliate a man of Barrister Julius Abure status?
What is Nigeria Police’s day job in the midst of internal security architecture collapse and total abdication of their constitutional duties? Does the Police job begin and end at thousands of illegal checkpoints where Nigerians are daily harassed, dehumanized, extorted of their hard earned money and brutalized for being law abiding? Why was Barrister Abure not invited by the Police Authorities, either via phone call or through his numerous police officers serving with him? Or are the police officers working with him who are daily on his entourage on illegal duty?
Police major functions are succinctly spelt out in the 1999 Constitution and the Acts that established the Force which says in parts: “the Nigeria Police Force is entrusted with a range of duties and responsibilities aimed at maintaining law and order, protecting lives and property, as well as detecting and preventing crimes. These responsibilities are crucial for the overall safety and security of the Nigerian society”.
Section 4 of the Police Acts and Regulations lists the duties of the Police Force to include: The prevention and detection of crime. The apprehension of offenders. The preservation of law and order. In this instance, preservation of law and order is what distinguishes the police from band of criminal elements like kidnappers, Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram. It has become apocalyptic now that the Nigeria Police Force has descended abysmally into the hell hole of terrorising the citizens it is meant to preserve and protect in accordance with the Nigeria Constitution.
When the Nigeria Police permissively and deliberately violates the law and order it is established to preserve in an infernally incompetent degree— exceptionally corrupt, mind-blowingly self-serving, incomprehensibly clueless, overweeningly ambitious, and in a cruelly insensitive manner — then Nigerians should have no other options than to resist the criminal enterprise called Nigeria Police Force.
No doubt there are professionally exemplary Police officers who have distinguished themselves just like the once who provided sachet water and biscuits to protesters yesterday in Lagos. The leadership of the Force at the highest echelon must reign in the ascendancy of enemy Police Officers to save the Country.
The Nigeria Police has a job to do, apart from chasing innocent citizens and harassing Yahoo Boys and molesting law abiding Nigerians on the streets of the country. The nation is already at a cross road with the economy on its knees as result of foreign exchange racketeering, smuggling, financial espionage, illegal mining and massive production of counterfeited goods. When you add Police brutality to the sharp upsurge in kidnapping, abductions, criminal extortion, amphibious piracy and trans-border heists, then Nigeria may abruptly cave in as we know it.
*Comrade Ikhide can be reached via: ikhideluckyerasmus@gmail.com.
