Between the police and thieves

WRESTLING as a contest has been a  major challenge in human life. Life itself from the beginning is a gamut of struggles. Life is a contest harbouring the need to strive, wriggle, box, wrestle and battle the vicissitudes associated with humanity. The moment life wants to steal and snuff off life from one’s being, then, the wrestling contest starts as we garner all arsenals available for protection. Our life, your life, and mine are predicated on the syndromes and alternation of “police and thieves in the streets”, crediting this title to Max Romeo in his reggae music of the mid-70s. I remember as if it were yesterday, during our childhood old days in Offa, Kwara State, our thoughts about the police and thieves. For the police, we used to sing, “Iyawo Olopa ki bimo re, Biko bi Kumo a bi kondo”. This, in a nutshell,  was the impression that nothing good could come out of the average native police of old: all you expected was hard beating with batons and club and cudgels.

On the part of thieves, we had a song of the Ogun worshippers when during their festival, the “Layewu” masquerade danced in tunes to “Ogun ma mo je ki nbi  Omo ole, ki je ki enia ni lari “. The aforementioned serves as an appeal to the Ogun deity never to bestow the family with a thieving child who invariably would bring the family name into disrepute. The Nigerian society today is so polluted. In every community, no matter how tiny or big,  there are wrestling contests between thieves and the police.

There is a daily wrestling match between the criminally minded and misfits in the Nigerian society and the police that should be civil and civilised in preventing, controlling, investigating, prosecuting them,  serving as protective sheaths against injuries to the entire populace. The “police are our friend” and in describing to us the myth we generally attach to the destructive and lethal power of thieves, we are admonished that “Armed robbers no be spirit”. The armed robbers need to be fished out and demystified when adequate information is given to the police. Hmmm, but there is public fear that whoever blows such whistle later becomes a target.

The societal orientation in Nigeria of today both makes and mars the police. In Nigeria, poverty, misrule and mismanagement of material and human resources take place. Criminals thrive beyond what the average policeman can wrestle with. Powers from above, those with immense authority and connections as cabals and cartels, including cultists in the political arena, parade their deadly influence. Sometimes, they mete out death without batting an eyelid and thus make the most powerful policemen powerless. The police  sometimes partake in the sharing of the dividends arising from unholy communion with highly and lowly placed men and women.

I recall the vicious armed robbery attacks in Offa on 5th April, 2018 where 33 lives were terminated. The resultant justice or injustice which till date has not been pronounced may yet bring relief to the grieving community. Offa people are still groaning. Yet, they are happy to build friendship with the police by donating a station.

• Olaniyi writes in from Lagos.

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