Cruelly, the illusion of safety within the ranks of law enforcement agents in Nigeria is being shattered repeatedly. Fresh incidents indicate that the security agents – particularly the unarmed corps – are suffering terrible losses to violent breaches from criminally-minded attackers. Combined, the Federal Road Safety Commission and state traffic agencies have lost over 100 officers to these fatal attacks in 2018, with other victims permanently maimed. This is disturbing. The federal and state authorities should craft new methods to discourage this abnormality.
The list is horrifying. A total of 18 Lagos State Traffic Management Authority officers were killed in attacks in the year to December 2018, laments Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. Twenty-four other LASTMA personnel suffered permanent disability in the course of enforcing traffic laws. One of them, Rotimi Adeyemo, was brutally shot in the head in Iyana-Ipaja by a mobile police officer. The deceased had arrested the trigger-happy cop for driving against the traffic. It is unfortunate that a law enforcement agent could act with such impunity against a fellow agent of the state.
The culture, instead of receding, is escalating, perhaps because those guilty are not being punished. On December 18, an Army officer, Isiya Usman (and his colleagues), allegedly beat up a LASTMA officer, Afeez Badru, who had stopped him from using the dedicated BRT bus lane near Maryland. According to the victim, he was forced to write a statement to implicate himself during his seven-hour detention at the Marda Barracks, Yaba, Lagos. These brutalities are getting out of control because the military hierarchy have turned a blind eye to the impunity of their officers. This should not be allowed in a democracy, where every organisation, the military inclusive, is subject to the rule of law.
In another horrible case, a LASTMA official, Olanrewaju Yusuf, was stabbed with a broken bottle last April in Palmgrove area of Lagos by a commercial bus driver who wanted to evade arrest. It is incumbent on Ambode to use the machinery of the state to bring these attackers to justice. Lack of it might discourage LASTMA officers from sustaining their arduous task of restoring sanity to the chaotic traffic in Lagos.
Other unarmed traffic agencies are also feeling the pinch. The Kaduna Zonal Command of the FRSC – which comprises Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Jigawa – lost 72 officers to attackers in 2018, the organisation said. “Over the past year, our patrol officers have been knocked down; some were attacked or even shot…,” Abayomi Omiyale, the zone’s commanding officer, said. “Our vehicles and property were also vandalised.”
In 2016, reckless drivers killed 70 FRSC officers nationwide, the Corps-Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi, said. In two headline cases in 2017, an errant motorist drove off with a female FRSC officer in Abuja, while, in Abia State, two officers were shot by the security details attached to the Speaker of the state House of Assembly on the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway. Officers had their legs amputated, suffered spinal cord injuries and fractured arms after such attacks. Others were kidnapped, with Lagos and Rivers states recording the highest number of attacks.
Equally, seven officers of the Ogun State Traffic Compliance and Enforcement Corps were killed by unruly motorists in 2018, official statistics show. In all this, only two offenders, one in Kebbi State, who was sentenced to death, and another in Kogi State, who bagged a prison term, have been prosecuted successfully this year, said Bisi Kazeem, FRSC Corps Education Officer.
Nigeria can learn some lessons from the United States. Owing to a spate of officer deaths at traffic stops in 2010, the United States National Tactical Officers Association inaugurated the “Below 100” training programme to sensitise officers on patrol on how to deal with violent motorists. The five key components include, wear a seat belt; wear a bulletproof vest and watch speed. The last two are: What is Important Now, meaning officers should concentrate on the motorist instead of his cell phone; and, Remember, Complacency Kills. In California and Ohio, it is mandatory for officers to go through this training.
Lagos State, with about five million vehicles on the road, should protect its traffic managers. Already, Ambode is talking tough, ordering the prosecution of errant motorists. This is not enough. Traffic law enforcement has almost completely broken down in Lagos. Driving against the traffic is a gangrene that has eaten deep into the traffic tissue, causing gridlock daily. Under his administration, commercial motorcycle and tricycle operators have defied the Lagos State Traffic Law 2012 that barred them from 475 roads and bridges without fear of punishment. This is unacceptable. The use of sirens, a sore that was muted before 2015, has resurfaced with impunity. To reduce these incidents, the law must be made to work.
The lethal use of force must be curbed. The Conversation, an academic journal, states that the UK primarily operates on the model of general duties police not being armed. They rely instead on backup from armed response teams if the need for lethal force arises. Authorisation to use lethal force is vested in senior officers. The benefits of this system are clear. Between 2008 and 2012, England and Wales combined had just nine fatal police shootings. Enforcement of traffic laws should also start with the elite and their convoys, and percolate down to the rowdy commercial drivers and motorcyclists. Senior security officers, especially the military and the police, must lead by example.
In civilised societies, armed state agents treat the citizens with utmost respect. Babatunde Fashola, Ambode’s predecessor, demonstrated this by refusing to deploy siren during his eight-year tenure. Fashola intercepted a (Nigerian Army) colonel, KI Yusuf, and a staff sergeant, AJ Adeomi, for violating the BRT lane in Outer Marina in 2012. As a result, those officers were punished by the Army. These days, uniformed state agents – particularly military and police convoys – flout traffic laws without retribution. But, nobody is above the law, which is why all offenders must face the music to bring this violent acts and killings to an end.
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