ABOVE THE LAW (Wed 10th Feb 2010)

Inside My World - Above The Law

Ali Dizaei, a Metropolitan Police Commander in the UK was this month sentenced to jail for four years. Dizaei abused his power by attempting to pervert the course of justice and by providing false evidence. Dizaei was approached by a website designer, Waad Al-Baghdadi who simply asked Dizaei to pay the £600 he was owed. Commander Dizaei refused to pay the balance and threatened the 24 year old civilian. An argument broke out between the pair and the uniformed police officer challenged Mr Al-Baghdadi to a fight in public. Dizaei then made a call to 999 emergency services and requested backup; lying that Al-Baghdadi had stabbed him.
Dizaei seems like a criminal in uniform who thought he was above the law. His actions were clearly a wholesale abuse of power for entirely personal motives. Had Dizaei not been independently investigated by the Independent Police Complaint Commission (IPCC), the innocent civilian would have been sentenced to jail for assaulting a police officer. It is comforting to know that in some societies having money and power does not exempt you from the law. I believe that nobody should be above the law.
How I wish this was applicable to Nigeria’s armed forces. The Nigerian police have a terrible reputation for corruption and brutality. In many mortuaries all over the country hundreds of corpses are stacked naked, one on top of the other. The mortuaries are in a sad state of chaos and many of the corpses’ records simply state ‘suspected armed robber’ or ‘unknown thief.’ Perhaps one of these bodies is 13 year old Emmanuel Egbo whose body is yet to be recovered and formally identified. He was a keen student who one day was playing with other children when three policemen came along and shot him. This seems to me like cold blooded murder. Is it part of police training to kill first and ask questions later? Emmanuel was an unarmed youth, how could he have posed a threat to three armed policemen? Surely they could have arrested him and investigated the claims of robbery. Is this just an easy way to cover dirty tracks?
I understand that policing is a dangerous job and many officers have lost their lives in the line of duty but with the mounting numbers of unidentified corpses; perhaps these poorly trained officers practice punishment without trial and take the law into their own hands. After all, who will question their authority, who will investigate their corruption, who will stand up and demand that unjust killings are unconstitutional and anti-democracy?
A few miles away from where Emmanuel was slain, a 22 year old boy Matthew Onovo, was gunned down on his way to his computer class. Police were searching for an armed man in the area and shot Matthew. Again, the young man was unarmed. So what proof did the police have that he was their target suspect? How can they justify their actions? It is a shame that these criminals in uniforms are not sent to trial in front of a jury to provide evidence. In the unlikely event that they were sent to court, I would not be at all surprised if they fabricated evidence. It is well known that police officers’ wages are very low and corruption in the force is endemic. I cannot recall how many times I have been stopped and asked, ‘Aunty, anything for the weekend?’ The answer to this question is a 100 Naira pay-off. So often are police more concerned with making extra money than their job of protecting the community. If I were an armed robber, at every check point I would hand over money knowing I would be free to reach my destination. It is evident that the police have immense problems with their technical capacity to fight crime. The main method used against fighting crime is to stop cars at random and look for guns; this needs to be overhauled and reformed. The system is an utter shamble, all over Nigeria; there are questions over the misconduct of the security forces. Which begs the question: Can Nigeria’s police ever be reformed?
Kemi Okenyodo of police reform group the Cleen Foundation says that the police need more than just expensive gadgets to improve their ability to work effectively. “The police capacity to investigate crime is next to zero,” she says. Officers are not trained in policing techniques- if they do have qualifications, they are often irrelevant to police work, she says. The police force needs better training, better educated applicants, better communication equipment, more pay and a promotion hierarchy needs to be put in place. The serious issue of political independence also needs to be tackled; whereby the police do not just take matter into their own hands. All their actions should be documented and reported to someone in a higher position who effectively manages the team.
The police as it is now came out of military administration. I believe the biggest challenge the police probably face is turning it from a force into a service- a public service. It is important that when you are in a job where society regards you as the cornerstone of the law, integrity and justice should not be negotiable.