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So Who Speaks For The Other Victims? By Solomon Iliya
I noticed an interesting piece on the back page of This Day, Sunday Edition of 12th June 2011. The families of the police victims were crying for justice over the killing of members of their families allegedly by soldiers in the recent military-police clash in Badagry. This got me thinking and I put down my thoughts in these few lines. The food for thought is; “Who speaks for the other victims?”
Since the gruesome murder of Dele Udoh, a promising Nigerian athlete, by a police man at a check point in the late 70s or early 80s (if my memory serves me right), we have had a plethora of incidents where police men shot unarmed citizens and after the initial hue and cry, nothing has come out of it. The police force has a very interesting defence each time one of their own shoots an unarmed citizen. It is either you hear that it was ‘accidental discharge’ (if it happens in public) or it is that the dead person was ‘an armed robbery suspect’ (when it happens behind public gaze). So who speaks for these other victims?
These two stale notes which the police keep singing pose some questions. Let us start with the “accidental discharge”. A gun is a mechanical contraption. It is inanimate. It is like a car, a TV set or any other gadget. It does not come to life on its own. Someone must always activate it. Therefore why would any “trained” (assuming they get any training at all) police man accidentally shoot someone? The effects of the gun once it has been fired cannot be controlled therefore one would expect that a professional career, trained police man should handle it with care. After the Mpape incident, the FCT police commissioner brazenly came on air to say that the policeman on duty at the Zenith Bank premises used his rifle to hit the taxi for parking in front of the bank. More questions come out from that statement. Was that rifle a club or a whip? Was the police man supposed to use the rifle as a cudgel to hit anything or anyone? Then even if as the commissioner claimed, the police man used the butt of the rifle to hit the bonnet of the taxi I guess (in my “bloody” ignorance) that the business end of the rifle would have been pointing skywards, the bullet should have gone skywards, so how come the bullet from the “accidental discharge” killed the pregnant woman? (Reminds me of one police officer during the Abisoye Panel who claimed that the bullet that killed the late Farida Mustapha of the ‘Ango Must Go’ Fame in 1986 said the bullet travelled in a curve! Can you believe that? That was a “trained” policeman’s definition of ricochet! For those of us victims of that police invasion in ABU 1986, Farida Mustapha’s room was facing a different direction from where the police claimed the ricochet came from and there were three blocks between her block and the nearest place the police claimed to have been! Apparently a police man deliberately shot Farida.) Enough of “accidental discharges”.
The other police excuse is always that the person shot was an “armed robbery” suspect. As at the last count, under our criminal code, a suspect is innocent until proven guilty by a competent court of law. In which case, why should a police man shoot dead a ‘suspect’ on any grounds? This is because he knows that the man is no longer alive to defend himself! A few questions arise from this defence. Was the ‘suspect’armed? Did he pose a danger to innocent citizens? Did he resist arrest? (Then why did the police not shoot Dimeji Bankole when he resisted arrest in the first instance when EFCC went to arrest him?) I guess there are non-lethal ways of apprehending a suspect without having to shoot him dead if he poses no threat to the police man or general public. As a kid I remember that the police use to carry batons and there were parts of the body they could hit to demobilize a suspect. What happened to those batons? Today, technology has gone further by introducing the tazer which is used by any normal police force to apprehend a suspect especially when he is not armed. Yet the Nigerian police man would rather shoot first and ask questions later. So who speaks for these other victims?
All of a sudden, the families of the police men who were “victims” of the army-police clash are crying blue murder because they are now feeling the pain that their relatives’ colleagues have imparted on other people. Relatives of Dele Udoh, Farida Mustapha, Colonel Rindam, the Apo Six, the unsung soldier whose death at the hands of the police man led to the retaliatory killings and so many others have been crying and no one has listened. Therefore, why are these police men so special? Is it because some other people gave them a taste of their own medicine? This reminds me of a story a preacher gave. He said there was a pastor who used to counsel bereaved families to be strong and not cry when they lose a beloved one. He then lost his son and when people came to console him, they found him crying. They echoed his admonition to previous bereaved families to him. What was his response? He said; ‘You will not understand. This is different!’
Without trying to sound callous or cynical, I would want to suggest that the emphasis being placed on the Badagry incident is one sided. The police ought to remember the bright lives they cut short and swept the issues under the carpet before asking for justice for their own that were victims of retaliation. After all, if the police man who shot the soldier had been professional enough to remember that he should not point a weapon at an unarmed person al this would not have happened. A proverb goes: if you wake up in the morning and a chicken starts pursuing you, then you better run. You never can tell if it grew teeth during the night. Therefore, who speaks for the other victims?
George Santayana wrote that; “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The only way to prevent such incidents in the future is to reconsider giving police men rifles while they are on their beats. The government should also review the training the police men get as apparently they are not to be trusted with dangerous weapons. In addition, the police man should be trained to exude confidence and trust. Police men need to undergo serious psychological evaluation as it seems a lot of them do not have the mental capacity and temperament to handle firearms. Finally, the press ought to understand that as the fourth estate of the realm, there are two sides to a story. Their reporting of only one side does not help matters either. Please also keep speaking for the victims I rest my case. |