SARS is dead, long live Police brutality

Call the drummers, arrange the percussionists, let the vocals join the treble and the bass guitar and let’s go paint the town red – SARS, the Systematic Armed Robbery Squad, or by its official name, Special AntiRobbery Squad is dead! Mohammed Adamu, the Inspector-General of Police signed the declaration on Sunday after days of protest and a long campaign by concerned citizens dreading to become its dead victims.

But wait a minute; aren’t we celebrating a tad too early? Would it not soon be like - SARS is dead, long live SARS? Some of us think so and here is why we hope we are wrong but think we are right.

Let’s get serious people, there is a trophy passed down to every inspector-general banning and unbanning things in Nigeria. We have lost count of the number of times police outfits have been banned in this country. For all you care, Bob Marley’s lyrics; Rebel Music – why can’t we roam this open country? Oh, why can’t we be what we wanna be, we want to be free – could have been written about the Nigerian police. As he’ll say, we have crossed many rivers to talk to the boss, too many people have died and however we look at it, many more would have to die.

The Nigeria Police is not fashioned to serve or to protect. From the recruitment process, the police are not trained to ‘serve’ the people. Its recruitment procedure is officialised hazing. Recruits are directed to bring a cutlass, buckets, shorts and white sneakers. Report after report of the dehumanisation that follows has led to the high command papering over the cracks, where a demolition of a decaying structure is required.

By the time a recruit or an officer finally walks through the procedure, their humanity has vanished. The journey to their first posting is often made on open trucks. There is no assurance of accommodation befitting humans as the barracks (where available) are decrepit and totally unfit even as animal shelter.

The police station is built like a prison, devoid of the ventilation needed for a scorching climate. The lower you are on the rungs of the ladder, the more the systemic dehumanisation trickles down. Dehumanisation becomes a potent weapon left for the average officer to level up with the frustration and sleaze that subjugates the system from top to bottom.

This is not limited to the police, it cuts across every level of our security - the police, the armed forces, customs and immigration, civil defence, VIO, road safety. Uniforms and arms remain a means by which brutalisation becomes a principal act of state policy.

Glorified dane guns are issued to confront criminality that is advanced in sophistry. From the boots to the uniform, the average police officer pays for their outfit. It induces the thought that the psychological dehumanisation of the police is a deliberate policy to institute dehumanisation as a top-down process.

It used to be that uniformed organisations are the worst debtors of providers of social services like water and electricity. It used to be that NEPA is hardest on bloody civilian debtors if it needed to stay afloat since its worst debtors are agencies of government it could not disconnect without painful repercussions. In civilised systems, people in uniform would never denigrate their uniforms or oath of office and allegiance to the people. These ones cannot strike back at their oppressors, so they strike at the people.

None of the aforementioned narratives justifies the institutionalisation of mindless violence as the modus operandi/ vivendi of the force or the disbanded SARS. It is just a gentle reminder of where and how the rains have been beating us and why our collective victory lap is presumptuous.

The establishment of SARS in itself is a practical example of applying eczema medication on a gangrenous wound. Nigerian comedians have made hit-skits on how the uniform instills discipline. Our society is deformed and tends to rationalise brutality. It ought not to be so.

Adult Nigerians would remember that every IG has banned or reformed an outfit or scrapped something only to bring them back through the back door checkpoints being a case in point. The IGs are themselves products of a broken system. As far as we know, not a single one is based on a vision, perception or understanding of crime, criminality or how to deal with these issues. Each appointment has been a ‘job for the boys’and loyalty to the commander of thieves and the rogue elements making the calls. They all come prepared to do the bidding of the C-in-C or the cabal through the institution of brutality. They vow to suppress any and every form of dissent while paying lip service to tackling crime and criminality. The result is that we, the people are on our own.

Rather than have a service that caters for the common good and the safety of everyone, the few good officers become ADC and security attaches and the rest are left to command an army of dehumanised robots who derive their manliness from brutalising the people that put the uniforms behind their backs and the guns they are issued. Operating as groups, they are a clear and present danger to the civil populace while remaining in cahoots the rogue and criminal elements in the society.

Our society’s wealthy turn their homes into prisons with I-pass-myneighbour gates and security doors designed to secure bank vaults. They are ‘friends’ of the DPO who did not owe his promotion to either qualification or ability to tackle crime but loyalty to the oppressor and ability to make returns to the commissioner. The DPO rarely has the needed tools to maintain a post and if he inherits a good patrol vehicle, it is reserved for his wife’s grocery shopping and dropping off and picking children from schools.

Where there is an emergency, victims are told the vehicle tank is empty or that the man in charge of the armoury has closed for the day. The DPO settles the commissioner who in turn settles those above him. Don’t ask the IG this story, because he’ll deny it. This is the tragedy of policing Nigeria. The end result is that, once one of the criminal means of getting the returns dries out, anarchy is unleashed on the populace to the extent that those who recently called for the disbandment of an outfit soon start asking for its restitution. We have seen this happened ad nauseam.

Our country as a whole needs reform. The police as an institution use arcane training and operational manual, probably one designed by a colonial establishment to keep nationalist irritants at bay. It should be scrapped and a new one built from its ashes. One that is loyal and answerable to the people and not their oppressors. Such an outfit needs funding. We can’t have a pre-colonial police tackle digital criminality. If we do, everybody not in the gang is a victim until they prove to the contrary.