[allAfrica.com] [The_Leon_H._Sullivan_Summit_Dinner] Police As Debt Collectors? This Day (Lagos) OPINION April 14, 2004 Posted to the web April 14, 2004 By Sonnie Ekwowusi Lagos Many scandalous things have been said and written about the Nigeria police that no new scandal thing about the police will shock anybody. - It seems that battle for the soul of the Nigeria police has become a lost battle. In fact many have so given up on the police that they now feel it is unwise wasting word or ink on the police. The other day I eavesdropped to hear a passer-by commenting that he prefers armed robbers to the Nigeria police because, according to him, while the former terrorise the citizens once in a while, the menace of the latter on daily basis is quite frustrating. Some are so scared of the police that the first prayer they recite as soon as they get up in the morning is; "Oh, Lord, deliver us from the police today". This is no longer a laughing matter. At times I wonder how the few well intentioned persons in the Nigeria police force are coping with the rot in the police. Truth to tell, the Nigeria police is a complete menace to the Nigerian public. This is not an uncharitable remark. And if there is any cool-headed police public relations officer ready to oppose this, I challenge him to go to any busy street in Nigeria especially around 6.30 a.m in the morning or 7.30 p.m in the evening and he would be ashamed wearing his police uniform. He will see how able-bodied policemen in uniform with two outstretched hands wide open, are shamelessly waylaying innocent motorists and okada riders and extorting N20 from each them. "Shame for me", as Zebrudaya would say. I detest going to the police. But with the pervading spirit of Christmas, on December 24, 2003, just a day to Christmas, I went to the Bode Thomas police station, Surulere, Lagos to apply for bail for two suspects. "Bail is free", "Bail is your right", "Don't pay for it". These are some of the catch phrases on the posters pasted on the walls of a typical police station. But what happened at the Bode Thomas police Station ?. The police insisted that each of the suspects must pay N5,000 to buy his freedom. All pleas that Christmas was around the corner and that the alleged traffic offence was a bailable offence were to no avail. At the end of the whole saga all the three suspects had to pay a whopping sum of N30,000 to buy their freedom. I am sure you have experienced something similar in the hands of the police. The tragic thing is that police terrorism occurs every day and nobody cares a hoot about doing something tangible to put a stop to it. Aside from extorting money from relatives of suspects to grant suspects bail at the various police stations, it is no longer news that some policemen have established themselves as institutional debt collectors. Many creditors who either out of ignorance, mischief, wickedness or who feel that the court process is too slow for their liking can today easily hire as many policemen as their want (of course upon some monetary consideration) to recover their alleged debts from their alleged debtors by means of forcibly arrest, detention, intimidation and at times even torture of the alleged debtors at the police stations. Just two weeks ago, some policemen attached to the State CID, Lagos State police command, D9, Ikeja, operating in the premises of the Lagos State Police headquarters, Ikeja, Lagos swooped on an alleged guarantor of a loan agreement, forcefully arrested him and detained him for two days before granting him bail on one condition that he pays the debt which he guaranteed to the creditor through the police failure for which the police would re-arrest and re-detain him until he pays the last kobo of the alleged debt notwithstanding the fact that the matter is a civil matter already pending in court. The fragrant lawlessness of the Ikeja police typifies the dirty practices that go on unchallenged in our various police stations. These dirty practices have become the norms of life in this country that the policemen involved in it even threaten to arrest and detain the lawyer trying to "poke into their business". But the law remains that the police has no power or competence to usurp the function of the court so as effect a recovery of an alleged debt or enforce an alleged civil contract of guarantee. Therefore, a purported creditor cannot hire the police to invite an alleged debtor to the police station with a view to compelling the debtor to pay an alleged debt by means of forceful arrest, detention or torture. Therefore, the action of the Ikeja police in inviting an alleged debtor to their station to force him to pay an alleged debt is, to say the least, not only barbaric but illegal, unconstitutional, null and void. The raison d'etre of the police under the Police Act is mainly the protection of life and property and detection and prosecution of crime. To this extent, the power of the police is restricted to the business of crime and all that are incidental to the proper definition of crime. This, in essence, automatically means that the police are not statutorily empowered to adjudicate in a civil matter involving ordinary citizens. But the problem is that even within the purview of crime the power of the police is so wide and co-extensive that it is being subjected to several abuses. The police know that they are not supposed to delve into civil claims between ordinary citizens. So, in order to give their illegal action a veneer of legality and credibility, they will tell their prospective complainant to include the ingredient of threat to life in their petition to empower the police to act on such a petition. Therefore, under the pretext of investigating a threat-to- life petition, the police now goes, arrest and detain the alleged debtor at their station until he pays the entire alleged debt or a good part of it. Of course, the alleged creditor pays the police an agreed percentage of the recovered debt. This was exactly what transpired at Ikeja CID office last two weeks. The police invited the alleged debtor to their station. When he got there, they showed him a threat-to-life petition against him from a certain petitioner who wasn't even present at the station. But before the alleged debtor could open his mouth to explain what happened, the police had grabbed him by the neck and threw him inside a tiny cubicle where he almost suffocated to death. The ridiculous thing was that the police was pretending that they were detaining the victim for an alleged threat-to-life offence when in actual fact they were intimidating him to pay up his alleged debt or be detained. Of course what the victim saw inside the tiny cubicle was horrible. He saw suspects being treated like animals. He saw tortured suspects waiting to die. No food, water and toilet for two days. There was a small boy from the North brought to the police by his master for allegedly stealing his four cows. Without wasting time, the boy's master commanded the police to chop off the boy's arms and legs. But the police refused and pleaded for more time. May be by now they must have carried out the master's command. Is this a kind of Sharia or what? Even if the four cows were actually stolen, why on earth would anybody want to amputate the limbs of a young man at the police station for that matter without given him a fair trial? During the military rule, extra-judicial killings like the Gestapo camps killings, torture to death, suffocation to death, trial by ordeal, food poisoning at detention camps were the order of the day. I had thought that with the exit of the military, all barbaric practices would have been reduced to the lowest minimum.Unfortunately, the practices still persist today. Just go to any police station and see things for yourself. There was the case of a suspect who died on the stake from whence he was being hung and tortured. Apparently, the policemen torturing him forgot that he was hanging there but by the time they remembered and showed up the man had died. So, what is the solution to all this? Should we organise a refresher course on civility and rule of law for all our policemen?. Whatever is the solution, lets remember that in the final analysis the rot in the police is a reflection of the rot in the entire system. This is why a traffic policeman can have the effrontery to extort money from a motorist in the full glare of the public. More importantly the usurpation of the function of the court by the police is an indication that all is not well with our judiciary system. Otherwise if a creditor hopes to get justice from the court, why should he/she resort to self- help or recruit the police to settle personal scores? Also the rampart political assassinations in the country could be linked to the absence of justice in the land. Because the aggrieved has lost confidence in the judiciary; because he believes that the judiciary is not what it should be, he goes that extra mile to take the law into his hands. Nevertheless, the tawdriness in the judiciary system or the absence of justice in the land is not excuse for committing murder or paying the police to recover personal debt or settle personal scores. We are supposed to be operating a presidential democracy where the rule of law reigns supreme and where capricious and arbitrary exercise of power should find no place.   =============================================================================   Copyright © 2004 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). =============================================================================