SSS’ brutality in Calabar

The State Security Service (SSS), otherwise known as the Department of State Service (DSS), was in the news again recently. This time, it was for an alleged brutalisation of teachers of Federal Government Girls College, Calabar, Cross River State, on February 2, 2017. According to news reports, a Senior Secondary School 3 student, along with nine others, had been given corporal punishment by a Civic Education teacher, Mr. Owai Owai, for forcing some other Junior Secondary School students to sweep their classroom during lessons.

Apparently incensed by the teacher’s ‘audacity’ in punishing her, the student was said to have picked up her phone and called her mother, a DSS operative who promptly mobilized her colleagues to the school. The operatives unleashed mayhem on the school, shooting sporadically into the air amd beating the teacher in question and his colleagues blue and black, before finally leaving the school premises. The action of the DSS operatives drew the ire of the Nigeria Labour Council (NLC), Cross River State chapter, which held a public march round the capital city to show its displeasure.They also marched to the office of the state governor to submit a letter protesting the evil act, as well as marching to the office of the Speaker of the state House of Assembly. Both had promised to ensure that justice was done in the matter.

This public display of power by security operatives paid from the public purse is a usual phenomenon in Nigeria. Men entrusted with guns and other coercive instruments regularly unleash the fury of their equipment on the innocent public in the bid to underscore their power. It is apparent that the DSS operatives in this case were emboldened to act out this brutality because the phenomenon has gone on unchecked in the country for too long in the country.

This is also a case of Nigerians entrusted with power using what they think they have to get what they want. Otherwise, the mother of the Federal Government Girls College student in question would not have thought that the next thing for her to do was to mobilize armed operatives to invade the peace and quiet of a citadel of learning to carry out such a mindless  act of terror.Until members of the uniformed profession start seeing that they have no patent on the powers of the public instrument entrusted into their care by the Nigerian State,  this illicit use of power to oppress fellow Nigerians will continue. The misuse of power by the DSS operatives is a sad reminder of how public office has been used as an instrument of terror  over the years.

The brutality at the Federal Government Girls College, Calabar only came to light because some people were aware of their rights and felt the need to bring their oppression by supposed officers of the law to public knowledge. In actual fact, the same brand of violence is done to Nigerians in several corners of the country everyday and without public awareness.This is why the culprits in this case should be taught lessons on how to make a distinction between the instruments of state power and the person temporarily entrusted with the power.

One of the duties of teachers is to ensure that students not only acquire mental education but also tread the path of discipline so that their tomorrow can be good both for themselves and the society. The debate over corporal punishment in schools has been an age long one, with arguments for and against it. In this case, even if the students were administered corporal punishment, the parent of one of them who happened to be a DSS operative should have proceeded to the school to complain to the appropriate authority which would in turn have punished the said teacher if he actually administered punishment that inflicted injury on a student. The recourse to the coercive apparatus of the state by the DSS operative was barbaric and has no basis in civilized existence.

There is the need for the DSS and indeed all security agencies in Nigeria to periodically take their officers and men through refresher courses on civil engagements and responsibilities. It is apparent that many of these officers still carry the fossils of Rafindadi’s National Security Organization (NSO) whose barbarity Nigerians can only recall with trepidation. The DSS operatives who went beyond the bounds of civility at the Federal Government Girls College, Calabar should be punished in accordance with the law. It is by so doing that future misuse of power would be tamed.