Two incidents happened last week in which the police was both villain and victim. The first involved two students of a polytechnic in Ozoro in Delta state. They had completed lectures that day and were returning to their rented living quarters. As they neared a police station, adjacent to the street they had taken, they were stopped by a dozen uniformed policemen from the station. A video clip posted on a social media platform by an onlooker showed the officers beating the students with their hands and batons and hard boots. They targeted hands, knees and faces. The audio was too poor for one to hear what they officers were telling the students. But the whack-whack, po-po of the pummelling were unmistakable.
The second incident involved vehicles carrying a wedding party heading for Akwa Ibom state from Rivers. They came to a stop-and- search point manned by two police officers, one a woman inspector, Christiana Ekerere. She was a widow and mother of four. They were waved down and their driver was asked to produce the “particulars” for the vehicle he was driving. The female officer was busy videotaping the scene while the search for papers was going on. When it was over, the party was told to move on but the young men, believed to number 30, who had seen the officer at work with her cellular phone, demanded it be handed over to them. She refused and what followed was sheer medlam. They went to work on the poor officer, throwing stones at and raining blows on her. Even after she crumbled to the ground and lay motionless, they went on kicking her. Her male mate ran away, seeing what was happening to his colleague. Sure that the officer was dead, the men reentered their vehicle and drove off.
Somewhere far off someone was filming the madness and posted the footage online. His courage helped lead to the eventual arrest of 16 of the men who murdered the officer.
It is this ambivalent functionality – a form of contrariness – the effortless oscillation between the heroic and the brutish of the police – that makes it difficult to see it as the “friend” it wants to be accepted to be. It is said that the police officer, by his ‘importunistic’ nature, is un-befriendable. When he visits you, something he often does, he expects to get “something” from you and when you go to him, he expects you to have brought him “something”. He always receives but never ever returns your goodwill.
And neither does he recognize a true brother in line of duty. Let me share a personal experience. In 2006, my brother-in-law had a problem at his workplace and the police came and took him away. My sister called me a day later and told me the police station her husband had been taken to. She then whispered conspiratorially that “our language man is the officer there.” I said fine and obtained his phone number. I introduced myself and told him I was on my way. He said ok and hung up. On arrival, I was told the officer I wanted to see had “just stepped out.” The officer who welcomed me asked if there was anything he could do for me. “No,” I replied. “I’ll wait for my brother’s return.” “Brother? Ok o,” he remarked and walked away. I waited for two hours but brother never came back and he was unreachable on the phone. Out of the station, I would learn that “There is nothing like brother in a police station. You pay for the service you need, brother or no brother.”
Let’s not forget that this beggarly mindset set in as the result of the poor pay the policeman received and the miserly manner in which he was quitted. But his workplace conditions have improved considerably since 1999. Now there are structures in place that ensure the officer’s wellbeing keeps improving. These include a ministerial position, a police service commission and a pension board. With all these, what we expect is a truly professional, more forward looking and broadminded police. But no. Why not? Because old habits, they say, die hard. Now the uniform has cloaked this old habit in officialdom and the gun has come with power and power with impunity. If the officer cannot get peacefully what you and I ‘owe’ him for ‘securing’ our lives and property, he will exact it by use of force!
At the root of this malaise is the erosion of professionalism, itself caused by the commercialisation of admission to the police force as are jobs in public service. Powerful people are awarded admission slots which they go on to sell to the highest bidders, many of them uninterested in the job of policing. All they want is the uniform and the gun that they will use to imperil life, not safe or protect it. The police problem will persist, unfortunately, for as long as admission merchantilism lasts. I don’t see it ending anytime soon. And, of course, the police cannot, as yet, be my friend.
