IF the Ghana-based Nigerian citizen, Liberty Kelechi Isaac, who recently returned to the country after six years had expected some sort of warm welcome to his home country, he had another thing coming. On August 26, the native of Nguru Nworie autonomous community in the Abok Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo State got the shock of his life at a roadblock in the Udi axis of the Kolokuma/Opolama Local Government Area of Bayelsa State where he was beaten and robbed by some men of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF). His account of the incident is chilling: “I came to Nigeria to attend the traditional wedding of a friend in Bayelsa State. After the wedding and we were driving back to Imo State and around the Udi axis, some policemen flagged us down. We stopped and they asked me to unlock my phone. I reminded them that the Inspector General of Police (IGP) had asked Nigerian citizens not to allow policemen on the road to access their phones. Immediately I said that, they started beating me. They threatened to kill me if I refused to open it. I asked them to take me to the police station but they refused. So, instead of me dying, I obeyed them. Immediately they accessed my phone, they went to my messages log and saw a N10 million bank alert. Immediately they saw the alert, they shouted “Na dem!”
The policemen then allegedly forced the shell-shocked returnee to transfer the sum of N3 million into an account number they provided, drove him to Ahoada, a city in the neighbouring Rivers State, and then released him. Happily, the police have arrested most of the suspects. The video clip in which Liberty narrated his ordeal had gone viral on social media and, through his lawyer, he had lodged a formal complaint on the incident at the Zone 16 police headquarters in Yenagoa, where an Assistant Inspector General of Police, Paul Alifa Omata, was reported to have promptly, and commendably, ordered an investigation which revealed the identity of the erring officers. While three of them were arrested, one was reported to have fled before investigators could reach him.
Citizen Liberty’s ordeal is indeed a profoundly sad one. Returning home briefly after a six-year sojourn in Ghana, he had the right to enjoy the sights and sounds of his motherland, undisturbed by the kind of nasty experience he had. However, he had a terrible experience at the hands of the very men paid to protect him, and were it not for divine providence, he could have been killed and his body dumped in the bush or clamped in detention without his family members knowing anything about his whereabouts. Such incidents are not uncommon, and it must have been such cruel agony for the friends with whom he was returning to Imo State after the wedding in question to suddently realise that their company had been broken up for no just cause. Assuming but not conceding that the policemen in question had legitimate reasons to suspect that Citizen Liberty was a fraudster, did they have the right to beat him? How is it that Nigerian citizens cannot move freely in their own country if they have bank alerts with figures running into millions of naira on their phones? The utter darkness of this episode is further signposted by the fact that the suspected armed robbers in police uniform were not willing to take the assaulted citizen to a police station where, naturally, he would have been interrogated if he was indeed involved in any crime. We are sick and tired of errant policemen extorting and robbing innocent citizens with the arms provided to them by the Nigerian State.
What ritual of training and exercises do the police give to their recruits and what kind of people get recruited into the force? Imagine the warped logic inherent in police personnel forcing a traveller, at gunpoint, to transfer N3 million from his bank account to them while believing that such heinous crime would go unnoticed and unpunished! Is it that the policemen do not know that there is always a record and a traceable thread for bank transfers and that the victim had the particulars of the forced transfer? Did they think that they could force a Nigerian to illegally part with N3 million and the victim would just go home and forget about the episode? What went on in the minds of the perpetrators of this open, sordid crime and how did they think things would go down in the end? There must be a whole lot of cynicism about Nigeria’s justice system for police personnel to display such obvious disregard for justice and the need to be above board in their duties. This means that the police authorities must go beyond arresting the suspects, as they have done in the instant case, to institute a comprehensive reorientation that will imbue all personnel with a more logical and valued appreciation of justice and their role in bringing this about in the country. The current projection of police personnel as bandits operating in government uniform is dispiriting.
Transparent and diligent prosecution of those involved in the current case and publicly projected, appropriate punishment will help in raising and cementing a new positive attitude on the part of police personnel while assuring Nigerians of the readiness of the police authorities to chart a new, positive direction for the force. That is what law, logic and democracy dictate.
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