Killing over stipends

Much as I’m deeply frustrated over the brutal murder of an innocent man by a Customs officer caught in video, I feel there’s more to the ease of cocking an AK-47, staring a fellow human being in the eye, knowing  he’s done nothing wrong and firing a shot, then raising his arm to confirm he’s truly dead.

This only points to the demise of humanity in the hearts of men-in-uniform in this country. Though not unexpected, it’s outrageous. Of course, we know they undergo some inhumane training which seeks to depict adversaries as inhuman. But is there no part of their trainings that teaches how to recognize a friend from a foe and how to treat an ordinary man different from an armed enemy, or differentiate a harmless commuter from a Boko Haram?

Oyo Guber race: Alliance is imminent ― ADC PRO

Why should a soldier hit a Danfo bus with his car, knowing deep in his mind it’s his fault and hurriedly alight to not only shatter the windscreen of the Danfo but also throw some slaps at the innocent cheeks of the old man on its wheels? Is that how they’re being taught?

It’s disheartening how much drivers who refuse to ‘drop something’ at the military checkpoints are tortured. What if many of those missing persons, whose posters we see around pasted on street walls and electric poles, were actually not kidnapped but somewhere beneath the bushes close to one military checkpoint along Mokwa-Jebba?

The murderer customs officer could have found it so easy to shoot, because he ‘knew’ no one would question him if he did. Well, no one is questioning him already after all. Instead, the customs would write in a press statement a different narrative from what is obtained glaringly in the video.

It shocks that despite the glaring of the chain of events, the customs could be defiant enough to peddle a contradictory narrative “that it was during the skirmishes and struggle to disarm the officer that the rifle discharged and hit the friend of the customs (Godwin) who lost his life.”

But then, who’s monitoring the activities of these men-in-uniform on the highways? Who’s ensuring that the customs officer is searching vehicles, not pockets? Who’s watching over that policeman, that soldier man, standing on the highway, just so he’s actually protecting, and not looting, commuters’ wallets and most importantly, not kill or torture them, when they refuse to bribe?

Besides, the customs officer in question, as we speak, ought to be on his way to jail for brutally killing a man because of five thousand naira.

Muneer Yaqub,

Sokoto.