One mayhem too many

Amnesty International, the global human rights body, has harsh words for our police in its latest report over gross violations of human rights, including torture and extra judicial killings. The group says, backed with strong evidence, that the police routinely abridge the rights of suspects and carry out summary executions. The report coincided with the revelation by the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, a few days earlier, that the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu, in the south-eastern part of the country was overflowing with bodies of ‘robbery suspects’ who had been killed by the police.

The excesses of the police are not restricted to the maiming and killing of robbery suspects. Just last week the village of Ijebu-Ife in the Ijebu East local government of Ogun State was invaded by the men in uniform, reportedly on a revenge mission over the alleged murder of a senior police officer, Omolodun Oladokun, an Assistant Commissioner.

It is absolutely a shock beyond comprehension that under a democratic dispensation the police still go ahead to execute suspects. Long before the Amnesty International report was published, it was common knowledge that the killing of suspects in police custody is more or less tradition; and nothing is ever done beyond denials by the police.

The other day a policeman in Ibadan was reported to have shot a canister of teargas into the hospital where his child reportedly died. His action led to the death of two other children. The Ijebu-Ife killings and other such extra judicial killings must stop and the way to ensure we put an end to these kinds of things is for the police and other law enforcement agencies to see their duties as that of protecting the populace and not using the uniform as a vehicle of oppression.

The inspector general must step into this matter forcefully and bring to book all those responsible for the breakdown of law and order in Ijebu-Ife, whether in or out of uniform. If there is no difference between those who wear the uniform of law enforcers and those who pillage and murder then our future is doomed indeed.