This is a pertinent question in view of what I witnessed lately. In the event, I saw what the nation has done to the police. Two, I saw close-up what some members of the force do to the nation. I was in Nasarawa State where I lost a laptop and two mobile phones to thieves. I decided to bring the case to the attention of law enforcers. I entered a police station, confident that I was doing my duty as expected of any citizen. But I’ve heard enough of strange occurrences in police stations for me to have my antennae high up, ready to pick up waves of anything untoward and denounce it. Sometimes, though, I follow some issues through just to check how the system works. Such is a journalist’s material.
At the police station, I entered the first room nearest to the entrance gate. No one in the relatively large room wore police uniforms, and I was wondering if I entered an office that belonged to the police. The lady behind a desk close to the door said I should come with her to another office. There, the young officer on the seat listened as I explained that I basically came to have the theft case put on record. He told the lady to take my complaint, adding ‘and that’s it.’
Rather than this lady attending to me as instructed, she took me to another office where the uniformed officers debated which desk officer should take my statement based on how they categorised the case that I brought. I was led to yet another office where a young male officer gave me a sheet of paper. I wrote my statement which he then signed. I thought it was at that point I would be informed that official notice had been taken, and I could go. I was eager to leave because I had other engagements. But, overall, I was made to wait in the police premises for close to four hours.
The officer who took my statement waited for a long time to find a senior officer on seat to take me to. He eventually did, explaining to the senior officer that he and his patrol team actually visited the scene of the crime earlier because another group of people had reported a similar case from the area. The senior officer asked me if I wanted to have the laptop and phones tracked. I said no, that I only wanted to report and move on. I declined the offer to have these items tracked for three reasons. One, I understood from people that the police would charge a fee. Two, agreeing to have my items tracked would mean returning to this police station. I was on the move, and so for me that was a no-no. Three, the tracking could be done for a fee by private entities.
Meanwhile, this senior officer said things to his subordinate in official parlance that I couldn’t decipher. The subordinate officer asked me to come with him. As soon as we stepped outside the office he said, “You have to give us some money.” Such effort to extort wasn’t new to me. What was new was that for reporting an incident at a police station, I needed to pay. All through my stay at the station, this possibility was playing in my mind even though I imagined such a request would amount to a display of lack of self-respect and decency among uniformed officers. I had told myself that if the police actually asked me for money, then I would have confirmed that this nation’s security apparatus was in utter mess.
When this young police officer asked me for money, I accused him of wanting to extort me and I demanded to see the most superior officer. He was rattled by that as he pointed to the office, only to quickly call me back to say he needed to visit the scene of the crime. He had earlier visited the crime scene in a police patrol vehicle. What’s the second visit for? I didn’t hide my shock at these things; everyone in the premises heard me as I made my view known, and in the end I left the police station, still shocked that this was what our nation had become. People later told me that the use of the official report sheet at a police station meant a complainant had to pay. Also, complainants are routinely told that there’s no paper to write their statements so it has to be paid for. I will like to ask the Inspector General of Police, Mr Alkali Baba: Is Nigeria so poor that our government can’t buy paper for the police? This is one aspect of what this nation has done to the police; what it has turned the police into.
The other issue is what some members of the Police Force do to Nigeria. Ordinarily, the occurrence was something I would have overlooked. But when journalists find empirical evidence that supports the position they take on national issues, they bring it to the attention of the public. I suppose I’m notorious with some readers by now for arguing that no tribe has only saints, and that members of every tribe are contributors to where Nigeria finds itself. All of us contribute to the rot at our own level, then the elite nail it.
We do what we like –legal and illegal – in our corners and then blame ‘the other tribe’ for the nation’s problems. Meanwhile, if we pay attention to news reports and what we see in the public and private institutions that we visit, we’ll conclude that ‘the other tribe’ narrative can only be the outcome of a one-way traffic thought process. Members of our own tribes don’t trouble Nigeria by looting billions of naira from the treasury, illegally importing guns disguised as office equipment, importing narcotics and fake drugs that destroy lives much the same way criminal elements from ‘the other tribe’ destroy lives. Members of our own tribes don’t engage in internet fraud activities, thus killing people alive, much the same way anyone will point to some herdsman for killing people.
At the said police station that seemed to have become a revenue collection centre, I heard officers talking in native languages and sometimes the marks on their faces told the tribes they belonged to. When names were called, their religions too were indicated. These Nigerians from all tribes and religions appeared to have agreed to turn their law enforcement post to a revenue collection point. There was that reluctance to do anything except money exchanged hands.
I stated earlier that the first lady I met later referred me to another officer rather than take my statement. I understood she did this because the young officer who gave her instruction indicated that she should collect my statement and nothing more. Someone who noticed it at the time later informed me that this lady was making a face and grumbling when this instruction was given. Of course since no revenue would be coming to her desk, the reason she declined to take my statement. The marks on her face indicated her tribe, but I was certain she was among those who liked to blame ‘the other tribe’ for all of Nigeria’s problems. She doesn’t trouble Nigeria. It’s ‘the other tribe’ that troubles Nigeria. That’s where we are; destroy values that help a society stand, compromise legal frameworks that guarantee sanity, compromise public institutions where we work, and then blame ‘the other tribe.’
The foregoing makes me ask Baba: Are your police stations revenue collection centres? How did this nation treat the police such that officers feel it’s normal to collect money? There can’t be realistic law enforcement where illegal revenue collection is the focus. Highest bidders pervert justice; criminals are set free. The current state of insecurity is linked to this.
As for the larger society, what I witnessed at the police station showed that we have a united front when it comes to harming Nigeria. We’re united in perpetually blaming others for what our collective actions make happen. As for proffering solutions to Nigeria’s problems, can there be a united front and solutions found when we all erroneously believe the only problem Nigeria has is ‘the other tribe’?
