The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Oluwakayode Egbetokun needs to brace up its training tactics. The orientation given to the officers of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) is premature and half-baked. And I am sure, no one is probably taking them through the memory lane, should they have forgotten too quickly what can happen when they err in their duties.
Scribblers of time that we be cannot forget the mayhem that let loose on October 20, 2020. The carnage and the sour stories behind it shock the whole world. Nigerian Police were accused of brutality and extortion. A department of the force, SARS was held responsible and so, Nigerian youth took to the streets across the country.
Nigeria, being a country where beheading of a head is a medicinal antidote for headaches, saw the protest as an avenue to test the new armament. Under the then president Muhammadu Buhari, a carnage at dawn, broke out on protesters whose only weapons were the Nigeria Flag and their voices to chant solidarity. It was Jimoh Isiaq’s body that first became the most visible target to test the new arsenal. That was in October, 2020. He died.
The successful shooting of Isiaq gave the police and its gaffers courage to deliriously conk their chests for more. And there was more, launched on October 20, 2020—this sent a shockwave to the whole world’s spines. Nigerian army, police and suspected armed gangs opened live rounds at peaceful protesters in Lekki Toll Gate and the rest was history. At the end, over 77 were killed according to the portrait of blood (1&2) authored by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism.
Distressingly, despite deaths, the demands of these protesters were not addressed even though SARS was disbanded. Today, under IGP Egbetokun, the same demands have resurfaced again beaconing on to the possibility of another pandemonium if not truthfully and timely rampaged.
Police Officers are again extorting random Nigerians. The news is now going round and it is making names for itself every day. Last week, the news of the four Lagos Policemen involved in extorting N1 million from members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) took the world by surprise. But Nigerians were not new to it.
In June, operatives of the Nigerian Police in Anambra allegedly extort N800,000 from a Nigerian. Police had said they have initiated efforts to identify the officers but nothing has been heard of it hitherto. Meanwhile, this extortion allegations came days after an operative was dismissed in Abia State for allegedly shooting dead an entrepreneur over his refusal to bribe him.
Earlier in March, another operative was dismissed while two others were suspended for allegedly extorting $3,000 from two Nigerians in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. A Divisional Crimes Officer of Abraka Division in Delta State was also removed from office for allegedly extorting over N2 million.
Nigeria police had reportedly put some of its operatives in detention at the police headquarters in Abuja for allegedly extorting N30.3 million. This among others unfolding every day culminate to the rising police extortion in Nigeria. Since the beginning of the year, the increase in the police extortion is already gaining weight, a development that caused the IGP to issue a statement warning officers to desist from using his name to extort Nigerians.
But what IGP Egbetokun does not know is a mere statement or continual punishments of the offending officers cannot solve the ongoing police extortion in Nigeria. Not while the force remain underequipped and underfunded.
