It is a frustrating time to be classified among the youth in Lagos State. Besides the socio-economic challenges confronting them, their misery is underpinned by unrelenting police abuse. The plight of an undergraduate of the Kwara State University, Ilorin, Oluwadara Adedayo, 24, recently, has provided further proof of police excesses against the youth. Adedayo jumped off the Cele-Okota Bridge in the state to escape police brutality. This is a dangerous course of action, but having experienced the police in their true colours first-hand before, he was provoked to do the unthinkable.
Faced with similar threats to life, many young people might embark on the same desperate way out. According to Adedayo, who sustained injuries in the incident, he was stopped and dragged into an unpainted bus, not minding his protestations of innocence. When he saw a chance, he fled from his captors. An officer gave chase. When he caught up with him, he brought out a gun, threatening to shoot him. “Out of fear, I jumped off the bridge,” he recounted. This is crude and vicious policing, which has no place in civilised climes. It is why the Commissioner of Police, Lagos State Command, Edgal Imohimi, has to step in urgently and eradicate the notoriety of officers in the command.
Reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s Gestapo force, police officers in Lagos assume that every young person is a criminal. This is ridiculous. On the road, while driving, and at public gatherings, the youth are subjected to cruel treatment by the police. In Adedayo’s case, it was his second encounter. A few months ago, the police accosted him, accusing him of being an Internet fraudster – or a Yahoo Yahoo Boy in local parlance. This is the standard but often false charge the police level against young people. They locked him up at a station in FESTAC Town. Before releasing him, they collected all the N2,000 on him. Imohimi, being a proactive CP, should use these cases to lay down the law against the excesses of police officers.
Infamy in the police is without restraints. Early this month, police officers were caught on camera assaulting a young lawyer in Lagos. Thankfully, Imohimi stepped in. That lawyer was lucky. Other young people suffer daily in Lagos for merely wearing tattoos, dreadlocks and beards, or having smartphones, backpacks and laptops. Certainly, these are no offences but the police clean out these young people because of these items.
In June, the police extorted N10,000 from a London-based young lady, Yewande Abiodun, accusing her of dressing indecently. Last May, Ifeoluwa Adegoke and her three companions, who went for a photo shoot in Ikorodu, aborted their trip after police officers levelled spurious charges against them at a checkpoint. The victim transferred N5,000 to one of the officers’ bank account, the details of which she posted on social media.
The list of police absurdities is never-ending. Also in May, Dapo Oguntimehin was arrested at a bus stop in Amukoko, Lagos for no specific offence. He was brutally beaten and detained. He was released after paying N3,500 as bail but he lost all his belongings at the station. On May 30, a hair stylist, Oluwatosin Idowu, 27, tasted the bitter pill of police maltreatment at Palmgrove, Lagos. Idowu had a business appointment but he was accused of dressing like a gay because he braided his hair long and was arrested.
It is an entrenched culture of impunity. However, the law does not confer the right on a police officer to physically brutalise or torture a suspect. Why should driving a car or going out to relax in the night lead to police harassment, extortion and arrest, or being chased about with a gun? This culture has probably survived because the perpetrators hide under a canopy of an indulgent police force that has lost touch with the citizens it was created to secure.
In truth, the police are not seen as a force to protect the people, but a force of occupation. They patrol in mufti, mount illegal checkpoints, deploy unpainted buses during assignments and harass the innocent on spurious grounds. For this to end, the Lagos CP needs to implement fresh rules of engagement in the way the police relate with the public.
Several cases of impunity have made headlines on social media, forcing the authorities to act in reluctance. The Nigerian youth should continue to resist and expose police harassment through the social media and other legal means, including rallies and instituting legal suits against their tormentors. Imohimi has a tough job of cleaning the rot that is so pervasive, but by being strategic and methodical, he can forge success. Help desks, toll free hotlines and social media platforms should be reproduced for victims who want to lodge complaints.
A modern, efficient police force detects fraudsters on the Internet; technology should be deployed to achieve this, as it is archaic to start apprehending every young person on the street on the pretext of hunting down Internet fraudsters. After the London riots of August 2011, the Metropolitan Police tracked offenders by poring through tons of CCTV images. From the police control room, officers captured the features of the looters and used these details to trace the offenders. Here, gun in hand, the police subjugate young people on the streets on flimsy grounds.
As this newspaper has repeatedly advocated, police officers should be equipped with body-worn cameras and audio devices to capture their interactions with the public. The Lagos State Security Trust Fund could supply these devices.
Imohimi should put a stop to police patrol in mufti and the use of unpainted vehicles. The CP should defuse the atmosphere of police terror through the re-training of officers and those who abuse and extort money from citizens punished accordingly.
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