The Bloody Massacre At Apo

By

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Scruples2006@yahoo.com  

“For among my people are found wicked men: they lay (in) wait, as he that seteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men ... they are waxen fat, they shine: yeah, they overpass the deeds of the wicked … A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land…” (Jeremiah 5: 26, 28, 30.)  

If you are a policeman in Nigeria, just pause awhile and try to see if you can figure out what really has come over you that human life practically means nothing to you any more.  Could it be you have come under some terrible demonic influence that has irremediably deadened your conscience, suspended your reason, dulled your brain, steeled your heart and drained you of every compassion and fellow-feeling, so much so, that your fellow human beings, with pure red blood also running in their veins, born of women like you, also having brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands and children who would miss them with sorrow and pains if they die, now appear to you like mere rats to be wantonly crushed, hurriedly disposed of and forgotten?  Have you tried to investigate how you acquired such a sadistic, murderous disposition and mindset that are now making you to increasingly view every other Nigerian who is not wearing a black uniform like you as an enemy to be attacked, killed and crushed, and put away in a hurriedly dug grave, or even left to rot by the side of the expressway like some dead squirrel? What is this aspect of your training that obliterates all traces of humanity from you and propels you to kill and maim with utmost impunity and sickening relish the very people you were employed and paid to protect?

I am asking these questions, dear reader, because I am, like you, trapped in this very dangerous, and hazardous country, and I have no desire or motivation to seek to escape from Nigeria. I am baffled at the extent of aggression visited daily on Nigerians by the police. It is possible you may live out your lifetime never encountering the bad people the police is claiming they are protecting you from, but the trouble and trauma the policemen themselves subject Nigerians to daily may not even be equated to the trouble they are being paid to shield you from, if it eventually comes.

Indeed, on a number of occasions, I have personally faced very chilling, murderous threats from gun-wielding policemen while on Nigerian roads. Let me just recount two instances.

Last Saturday afternoon, I travelled to Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, by a commercial vehicle. It was a smooth, uneventful journey, until when we got to Ejigbo, Osun State (Big Tafa’s home state), where we met the only police checkpoint we saw on that route throughout the about five hours journey to Ilorin. They flagged down the car and the driver slowed down, ready to stop. But as the policeman made way for him, so he could drop “something” and move on, the man just crawled past without “performing.” Then hell was let loose! The man pointed his gun at us, threatening to blow us all up from the rear windscreen of the car. His colleague, a few poles away in front, has already positioned his gun, daring us to move any further, his eyes bearing palpable indications of the unspoken threat he was issuing. I was shouting at the driver,< SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">  to please, stop before they kill us all like the Apo Six.

Unfortunately, the place was also very lonely, with no traces of humans and houses anywhere, and with very thick, long stretch of bushes constituting high walls on both sides of the road. You can imagine what a generous incentive such an environment could present to trigger-happy, enraged cops. The man beside me was also shouting at the driver in Yoruba, but I heard “Abuja” mentioned intermittently in his speech, showing he was also referring to the Apo massacre. Dear, reader, I must admit it, we were really scared!

Eventually the driver stopped before the rock-faced cop in front, gave him twenty naira with unspeakable disdain (and perhaps silent curses), and their murderous anger was appeased. As the driver sped off, I clearly warned him that I do not fancy being conscripted into a forced rehearsal for a real suicide act! But the fellow replied with that most annoying cocksureness peculiar to his type, that he did not think the uniformed head-hunters will shoot anyone again considering what is presently happening to their sharp-shooting colleagues in Abuja. Such silly reassurances, dug up from very shallow reasoning, make me really very sick, to the very pit of my stomach!

The second incident occurred several years ago. I had boarded a bus heading to Costain from Alhaji Masha Road, in Lagos here. As we neared Western Avenue, some policemen tried to get the bus driver to stop but he refused. They then began to pursue him, with their guns threateningly sticking out of their vehicle windows, ready to shoot at any time. We were all shouting at the driver to stop, but you know there is always this deep seated contempt in commercial drivers towards policemen, and the silly bravado they always display, which has sent so many of them to their early graves. Their boldness always stemmed from the fact that after all the din, threats and exertions from the police, everything would just be settled by a mere “drop” of a twenty naira note. But this shallow reasoning has cost many of them their lives; though, not onl y their lives, but that of their hapless passengers too.

Eventually, the policemen overtook the bus, blocked it, and one of them was really red and fuming. He ordered all of us out of the vehicle, and declared that he would just shoot everyone, place some guns on our corpses, brand us armed robbers (there were several women in the bus too), and by the evening of that day, our corpses will be paraded on NTA network news as armed robbers killed in a shootout with the police! He positioned himself very well, cocked his gun, pointed it at us, and ordered all of us to stand still, and not move an inch. Meanwhile, his colleague was on the other side negotiating with the driver. Our captor’s swagger and raw, crude advertisement of self-importance and power almost made me laugh, despite his threats, which looked every bit real and potent.

My immediate reaction was to smile at him, raise up my hands and shout: “I surrender- o-o-o, officer!!” But that did not seem to appease him. He was still there, gun pointed at us, finger on the trigger, his body shaking, threatening hell and brimstone, with his eyes, expressions and bulging muscles all screaming: Murder! Blood! Death!

After what seemed like eternity in this macabre parade in the face of death, his man and the driver settled their matter. He simply beckoned on the uniformed psychopath from the other side, and without any word to or even parting smile at his erstwhile captives and victims, our captor just moved away, hopped into their vehicle and sped off. It took me a little while to realise it was really all over.

Now, if you think that the obviously deranged fellow, who may have unduly soaked himself really wet with gin and drugs was joking about his threats, then, you are yet to learn to live in this hyena-infested jungle called Nigeria.

Or else tell why policemen would murder in cold blood six hapless Nigerians in Apo area of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, and attempted to brand them armed robbers, by arranging to have their corpses photographed with guns placed on them by the police, in order to cover their heinous misdeed. The story everywhere now is that if you are carrying large sums of money while traveling on Nigeria’s highways, you might escape the armed robbers but not the police. Armed robbers hit and run, but the police are always there, constant as the Northern Stars. Armed robbers operate with fear, but policemen operate with every boldness. They legitimise their operations with their uniforms and ID cards. Armed robbers may even take your money and leave you to go since they are usually masked, but the polic e would not dare spare your life because, you might implicate them afterwards, and get them exposed. And so, since “dead men tell no tales”, once they rob you, they silence you forever. Nigerians returning from abroad with hard-currencies are their most juicy targets, I am told.

Unfortunately, the heat is on Mr. Sunday Ehindero, the IGP, whose genuine efforts to reform the degenerate police he inherited from the likes of Big Tafa has predictably proved very Herculean. Nigerian policemen had always advertised their destructive preferences over the years, but they got their worst kind of orientation during the last few years, when they were used for officially sponsored crimes and very destructive, lawless missions. What they came out with from those unholy operations was the conviction that  the authorities are  constantly at war with the citizenry and that they, as policemen can do anything against Nigerians and get away with it.

I know that somebody may be saying now that my categorisation of the bloodbath at Apo as “massacre” amounts to an exaggeration. Well such a person should find wisdom in Dele Giwa’s insistence that even “one life taken in cold blood is as gruesome as millions lost in a pogrom.”

It was indeed a most wicked massacre of six hapless Nigerians, whose only offence, as Nigerian businessmen, may just be that they had some real money on them which the policemen needed so badly. The panel probing the case must try to unravel the motives behind the killings. The eventual punishment that will come to the culprits will, perhaps, be the most potent factor capable of deterring future killers in uniform. Anybody can be a victim tomorrow. They may no longer be discriminating.