Army/Police Clash. Which Way Forward

By

Solomon Iliya

smitronix@gmail.com

While the nation is trying to get into the euphoria of a successful election and inauguration of the new government, we were greeted with the sad incident of a policeman allegedly shooting a soldier over a minor argument and the reprisal that followed leading to the death of a DPO, DCO, and some other policemen. One would have thought that in the spirit of interagency cooperation such incidents are a thing of the past, but sadly it is on the rise. So what happens to the rest of us who do not know the difference between the rifle and the gun or any of such things when people who ought to be protecting us are busy annihilating themselves?

Back in my days in the university, one of my lecturers gave an assessment of the setup of law and order as established by the colonial authorities in any typical town. This is how he put it: The local populace is so far away from the “Government Reserved Area” where the colonial administrators resided. In between such so called GRA and the local populace, you first meet the police station, then the fire station and finally the courts. Any local who leaves his place to go to the “GRA” meets the police station and is likely to be arrested by the police for “wandering” (I wander what sort of offence “wandering” constitutes). He is charged to court and sentenced to prison. Funny enough, the prison is always located in the local areas. (For those who grew up in Zaria or schooled there, please imagine PZ, the police station, the courts, GRA and of course the prison which is in Zaria City then you will know what I am saying!)

Unlike what obtains in the developed world where the policeman lives amongst the people he polices (law and order after all is community based) the colonial administrators built barracks for the police making them detached from the society. I can understand if the military are kept in barracks as they could be easily mustered for training or emergency much faster if they where centralized, but not the police! The consequence is that we have a police force that is more of a bat today. It is not a military force and it is not a community service based agency (like the bat which cannot be said to be an animal or a bird!) which is what it ought to be in the first place.

Today, the policeman wants to be like a soldier which is not what he is. He tries to equate his rank structure to that of the military which should not be. He tries to wear khaki like the soldier which further makes him an object of fear rather than trust from the citizen. To make matters worse our policy makers have given him  automatic assault weapons and armoured personnel carriers rather than a baton, tazer, and handcuffs as his duty in law enforcement is to bring in a suspect alive rather than dead. Thus, the man tries to be a soldier which he does not have the training or disposition to be. Consequently, he runs amok like the bull in a china shop shooting unarmed innocent persons at will. As a student of International Relations I know soldiers are subject to the Laws of War thus they could be culpable under municipal law or international law if they shoot unarmed persons, but what law are policemen subject to? Bitter memories still linger in the minds of families of victims of “accidental discharge” by police men and since there is honour among thieves, the police force tends to protect its own when they shoot unarmed human beings. The popular excuse is that the person is an ‘armed robbery suspect’. Please IGP sir, when did being a suspect warrant being shot like a rabid dog? Furthermore, when did the policeman become trial judge, juror and executioner? Only early this year a policeman shot dead a pregnant woman at Mpape (Abuja) and the police commissioner had the audacity to claim it was accidental discharge. The “Apo Six” case is still going ding dong after how many years and the murderers are yet to pay for their crimes. A policeman once told yours truly at a checkpoint that he will shoot me for no reason and nothing will happen to him. In the light of all these, do you blame those soldiers in Badagry for doing what they did? In 1994 at Wuse, Abuja I witnessed a police inspector bring out his pistol and shoot a soldier dead and nothing happened to that police inspector. In 2007, around Kado Estate Abuja, a policeman shoot dead a teenager who was on an errand for his mother and to add insult to injury he inserted his hand into the entry point of the wound so as to extract the bullet which could be evidence! Believe me, it happened.

As a political scientist, I am a proponent of respect for law and order and the rule of law. I have friends in the police force and in the military as well. However, given a choice I prefer to be among one thousand “crazy” soldiers than to be in the presence of one “sane” policeman with a gun. You never can tell what havoc that one policeman can wreak. Those soldiers were wrong to have carried out the reprisal they did but what do you expect when a policeman will openly tell you that he will shoot you and nothing will happen? After all the persons that policemen have shot in the past were someone’s son, brother, father or husband.

Respect is not imposed but rather earned and our policemen need to learn this as part of their basic training. The presence of a policeman ought to inspire confidence and a sense of security rather than fear and hostility.  If the IGP wants to prevent such incidents recurring, this should be drummed into the head of his recruits. Secondly, the police force has no business holding assault weapons as the very sight of the weapons create an atmosphere of terror. Rather his personality and disposition ought to encourage the ordinary citizen to respect the uniform at all times. Thirdly, government should reorganize the police to be professionals in maintaining law and order and avoid arming them with military weapons. After all the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps and the Federal Road Safety Corps do not carry weapons yet they command the respect that the police force can only dream of. How did these two agencies achieve it? The IGP should ask them. In addition, there should be an independent judicial commission that should try erring policemen since the police force cannot be trusted to maintain control over its personnel where weapons are concerned. Lastly, policemen should live within communities they are policing and not in barracks. In so doing, they will feel they are part of the community and hopefully the society will then trust them enough to point out the criminals thus ruling out the need to use a sledgehammer to crush a fly. Need I say more?