The city of Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, erupted in wailings on February 14, 2017. A painter, Mr Ese Akpan, was killed by stray bullets from a police team escorting a bullion van in the state. He was said to have been on his way to a construction company when the unfortunate incident happened. A Closed Circuit Television camera which reportedly captured the murder revealed how the policemen inside the van released shots from their guns, which cut short the hapless painter’s life. After the killing, the policemen drove off, unperturbed. But the dastardly act was broadcast by onlookers.
Mindless killings of innocent people by law enforcement agents are now routine in the country. Without any compunction, uniformed men kill Nigerians with the same guns they were given to protect their lives. In many instances, the incidents go unreported and the security agents get further emboldened by their assumed invincibility. The killing of Akpan is a reminder of the nuisance constituted by bullion van operators in the country. In the process of transporting cash and valuables from one location to the other, policemen guarding these vans, which are employed for the exercise, take the law into their own hands, harassing any road user that they feel is not demonstrably intimidated by their presence.
Ostensibly to ward off attack by armed robbers, these bullion vans are heavily swathed with security operatives, mostly policemen. Perhaps as a precaution as well, the vans drive at breakneck speed and their presence is heralded by the blowing of sirens. The security operatives guarding these vans have been reported in countless cases to have used them as instruments of harassment. The vans are driven recklessly against the traffic, often engendering road accidents. Road users who are unlucky to confront their recklessness never pray to encounter them again. If you are unlucky to be driving on the highway when they pass by, you dare not drive past their vans, no matter how slowly they drive. They wield their guns menacingly and never care that these guns could go off and kill or maim bystanders.
It is high time the authorities rescued road users from the vice grip of bullion van drivers and the security operatives attached to them. The police authorities especially should be mindful of the bad name that these operatives give the police at this time when reforms are largely demanded in the force. Harassment of road users by bullion vans and security operatives is a military hangover which the police in a democratic Nigeria should free themselves from. It is a sign of autocracy and inhumanity. In a world that is struggling to do away with this archaic method of transporting money from one point to the other, Nigeria cannot afford to lag behind. In the case under review, the brutality of the security operatives must be frontally confronted in order to prevent a recurrence in any part of Nigeria. The details of the murder of citizen Akpan and the alleged police efforts to cover up the murder are gruelling and painful. This case must never be allowed to be consigned into the trash can as many cases of police brutality have been in the past.
We call on the Inspector General of Police to urgently and immediately wade into the matter by identifying and bringing to books the policemen involved in the inhuman act. The Rivers State command of the force should be able to do this without much ado. Police officers and men should be friends of Nigerians, not people who see themselves as being above the law. The process of investigation and eventual bringing to book of the offending security operative or operatives should be as open as possible, to guard against possible connivance with unscrupulous persons in the society to thwart justice. The excesses of the bullion van operators have persisted because they are hardly repelled by the society. It is high time things changed. Citizen Akpan’s death must not be allowed to be in vain.
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