By Sandra Ijeoma Okoye
If there is any occurrence that agitated my emotions, like I never experienced, it was an episode that happened as I was heading home from work recently. To narrate the incident from an explanatory perspective, it is expedient to say that as a passenger was in the bid of disembarking from a motorcycle, popularly called “Okada, at second Rainbow bus stop along Oshodi/Apapa Expressway that he inadvertently stepped on the shoe of a uniformed man. Groundlessly provoked, despite being apologized to as I heard “Sorry” intermittently uttered by the “offender,” the nerves of the uniformed man was not in any way calmed as he brought out his (koboko) and mischievously flogged the man until he left some whip marks on his skin as he slapped him, and continued to furiously queried “Why did you match me?” The foregoing was expectedly replied to by the boy as he kept begging that it was a mistake. To the bewilderment of not few onlookers as the boy kept yelling for help, the boy’s plea for forgiveness unarguably fell on deaf ears. I tried talking to the uniformed man to let go, but he remained adamant as he objected to my plea. Other passersby, even elderlies among them pleaded, but the uniformed officer refused to let go even as his body language displayed the suggestion that he wanted to transfer his aggression to those that were begging him to forgive the boy.
Prior to the foregoing incident, it is expedient to say that I have in the recent past witnessed the police harassed a guy for no reason other than he wore dreadlocks. Yours sincerely can also say in this context that she was once publicly harassed for committing no crime other than in the estimation of her harassers’ assessment, she wasn’t well dressed. Not only was I molested, I was derogatorily called “Yahoo woman”. It was not as if I was indecently dressed as my body was decently covered. As if the foregoing anecdotes are not enough to buttress my view in this context, I have seen a uniform man dragged a bus conductor into the mud, and ordered him to sit therein, and consequently ordered him to frog jump. If I may ask, “Is it the job of a uniformed man to discipline people on the street?”
The foregoing excruciating experiences which have made not few Nigerians to be groaning under the jackboots of uniformed men, particularly in public places such as on the streets, are telling enough for one to conclude that the culture of brutality literarily runs wild on the streets, and there is need for concerned authorities to intervene, and call their men to order.
While the foregoing anecdotes collectively laid credence to the fact that there have always been cases in which men and women in uniform had clashes with the unarmed members of the civilian population, the increasing spate of such incidents, with public shame and near-fatal consequences call for interventionist approach from concerned authorities even if it means compelling armed-wielding uniformed men to undergo psychological assessments. Not only is the suggestion for periodic mental assessment for all personnel justified, there is an urgent need to henceforth identify those that are vulnerable to influences, who must, therefore, be subjected not only to psychological evaluation but even treatment.
It is difficult to comprehend why our uniformed men behave the way they do. It is sardonic that they take pleasure in dehumanizing the very people whom they are paid and trained to protect and secure. Not few unenlightened Nigerians have peddled the rumor that some mischievous uniformed men are been influenced by the nature of their training while some have baselessly adduced their predilection to brutalization to the “Injection” that were administered on them in the course of training. “Injection?” I have for the umpteenth times queried, and told those that hold such weird view to go and tell it to the marine. They would say “It is the nature of the training that they undergo that made them to always deal with civilians in a ruthless and bestial manner”. To me, I think this line of argument is rather elementary, and sounds fabricated to be swallowed hook, line and sinker by anyone that has an analytical mindset as such line of thinking cannot stand the test of meticulous scrutiny.
In fact, it is mindboggling to think that the powers that be in drawing our security operatives’ training programmes input civil disobedience as a course in their curriculum. I think the hangover that the long years of military rule in the country is yet to fizzle out from the psyche of our security operatives as they tend to see the so-called ‘bloody civilians’ as inferior creatures who are not fit to live in them same place as them.
To me, uniformed men are literarily having the audacity to brutalize the civilian populace as they wish on the strength of the fact that Nigerians fear uniforms, especially military and para-military uniforms which are used to bully and sometimes commit infringements with impunity. It is unarguably against the foregoing backdrop that Fela Anikulapo Kuti of blessed memory sang of the excesses of the uniformed men in one of his albums thus: “So policeman go slap your face you no go talk… Army man go whip your yansh you go dey look like monkey… Dem leave sorrow, tears and blood, dem regular trade mark…
But if I may ask again, “Is it right for Nigerians to be morbidly afraid of those expected to protect them from harm?” The answer to the foregoing is capital “NO”.
Be that as it may, I am in this context appealing that uniformed men should be orientated to see civilians as fellow citizens, and not as objects of brutality as been witnessed almost by each passing day.
