Police Brutality: The Wanted Still Wanted By The Nigerian Police – By Emdee David

With a new government comes new policies and zeal. Government workers put up an act of seriousness when a new sheriff is in town. With the coming of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in May 2023, government agencies and parastatals are sitting up. They all want to impress the Boss. We have seen this with the Nigerian police and other security agencies. They are poised to dig up old cases to prove they are working. While the Federal Government is revisiting cases like that of Dele Giwa, the veteran investigative journalist murdered during the Ibrahim Babangida administration; or trying to visit the Orosanye Panel’s suggestions for a better Nigeria, some State governors are calling up cases of corruption allegedly committed by their predecessors or their subordinates. In our local parlance, we call it “Initial Gragra.”

Who knows how long that would last?

However, what the Nigerian masses are looking forward to, aside from good governance, and a prosperous economy, is for justice to be served on those who perpetrated acts of human rights violation against the civilian masses. The case of Endsars is not forgotten. Although the Lagos State government made efforts by constituting a panel of inquiry, compensating victims of the Endsars protests and its aftermath, and submitting a report of the panel to the Federal Government, the youths and Human Rights bodies are still not satisfied with all these. Key to the report is the assertion that there were no lives lost at the Lekki Tollgate during the protest. Meanwhile, families and pro-endsars celebrities have reported that lives were lost and there was a massacre. If only the government could take more time to investigate further, the citizen’s thirst for truth and justice may be appeased.

The Civil Society Organizations have also beamed their searchlight to the numerous cases in Rivers State where Human rights violations were committed by the previous government of Gov Nyesom Wike, now the Honourable Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Under his watch, soldiers and Mobile policemen invaded communities and allegedly killed innocent civilians suspected to be members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) under the command and leadership of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Gov Wike had purportedly banned the activities of the group and during the Endsars protest, had accused them of being behind the riotous protests in Oyigbo and other Rivers communities in which soldiers and police officers were said to have been killed. Thus, IPOB members were declared wanted. A Youth leader, known as Stanley Mgbere had a bounty on his head, despite the denial by IPOB that he was not their member. The group had complained about this blanket accusation and asked for a proper inquiry into the activities of the Nigerian Soldiers and Police officers in Rivers State who in retaliation and a bid to hunt down those wanted by the authorities, allegedly killed scores of civilians in 2020.

The then State Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mukan, announced that there would be a full investigation into the incidents and the prosecution of the culprits. The tenure of Gov Wike passed and nothing tangible was heard about the investigation. Rather, what we now hear is a continuation of the horrific witch-hunting of IPOB members by the new administration of Gov Sim Fubara since his assumption into office in 2023. This has not gone down well with the people of Oyigbo, who are predominantly Igbo and automatically thought to be members of the proscribed Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB).

The people of Oyigbo are still calling for justice and the present state government led by Gov Sim Fubara is rather focused on the continuous search for suspected “perpetrators” of the killing of soldiers and police officers. The main suspects are IPOB members who the police claimed operated under the guise of #ENDSARS protests, some of whom were arrested last year.

Recall that the Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mukan, who condemned the attack on public and private properties had also accused the Igbo group of carrying out the acts, and vowed that, “The command will stop at nothing until the perpetrators of these dastardly acts are arrested and brought to justice.’’ Please note; The police command clearly stated that they will “stop at nothing” until those they declare wanted are apprehended. Last year, the manhunt was reactivated and there were reports the army raided the houses of suspected IPOB members and arrests were made.

This prompted me to dig into the matter, based on his previous interviews with some victims of police and army brutality in 2020. His fears were confirmed. The police are after those they had declared wanted but were not able to arrest. Among them is Ms Nkechinyere Scholastica Chukwuemeka, who could not be reached as her phones were switched off or unreachable. As a citizen and investigative journalist, I interviewed Nkechinyere and others in 2021 and reported their stories in the media. None of them was reachable. However, a call to Nkechinyere’s family member yielded some results and confirmed that there was indeed a raid by the police in the Oyigbo community. The family member who pleaded anonymity explained that before this, rumours had filtered in that there was going to be a raid. This news was the reason Nkechinyere and her co-IPOB members on the Police’s wanted list had to flee the country to save their lives.

Prodding further, the family member hinted that Nkechinyere was sent abroad to study for her masters when it became clear that her life was still in danger. Nobody would disclose the country to which she had fled. During the raid, sometime in October 2023 men of the Nigerian army stormed the home of one Mr. Ben Okoronkwo whom Nkechinyere lived with during her recuperation, and tried to force him to give out her location. He refused and was said to have struggled with his assailants. He was overpowered and one of the soldiers who was beating him used the butt of his gun to hit his chest. Mr. Okoronkwo fell and could not be revived; he was later confirmed dead right in his own house.

How could we claim to be a democratic nation when cases like this abound in the everyday lives of Nigerians? This is not the Nigeria the youths are praying and working to build. This needs to stop. We must end police brutality. The security forces should not be killers of their fellow citizens. They are trained and paid to protect them. This is also a call to the international community to support civil rights societies and human rights organizations in Nigeria to further fight against the excesses of the Nigerian security agents who seem to believe they are superior to their civilian counterparts and their lives do not matter. We have equal rights to life in Nigeria. Equality and equity should be enshrined in the operations of all government agencies and parastatals. This is what Mazi Nnamdi Kanu had been fighting for before he was tagged a terrorist and waiting to be hanged by the courts. We must protect the rights of every citizen of Nigeria, both at home and abroad.