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When dirty linen
is left unattended for so long that it becomes aromatic, it doesn’t
help to insist that your private washing efforts are working: everybody
can smell that they aren’t; nor is there any point quarrelling with
neighbours for holding their noses when they pass your house. After
all, the unfortunates actually living in the house have been gasping
for air for years!

Such were my
thoughts as I pondered the response of the Nigeria Police Force to the
report by the US-based non-governmental organisation, Human Rights
Watch: “Everyone’s in on the Game.” (Apologies are due for seeming to
notice the problem only because a Western NGO has discussed it, but my
concern here is the response by those whose conduct is under scrutiny.
The sad reality is that reactions to the work of Nigerian NGOs – e.g.
the report on checkpoint extortion in the south-east by Intersociety –
are usually either more nonchalant, or given far less media coverage
than reactions to work by their overseas counterparts.)

Force
spokesperson, Emeka Ojukwu, recited the expected party line of
criticising the report and giving numbers of police personnel
‘sanctioned’: 764 senior officers and 8,831 junior officers for
“various acts of indiscipline”.

The trouble is,
that even assuming that “acts of indiscipline” includes checkpoint
extortion (rather than, for example, resisting sexual harassment by a
squadron commander, as Corporal Emcy Munlip is presently experiencing)
no matter how many policemen officers are dismissed for mounting
‘toll-gates’, on any single inter-city journey in this country, you
will still come across checkpoints at which bribes are openly,
routinely and efficiently collected, particularly from public transport
vehicles. This alone tells every person who sees them – from
wearily-conditioned citizens to shocked open-mouthed foreigners – that
those who were sanctioned must have done something more than- ordinary
checkpoint extortion. Moreover, when many checkpoints on ‘expressways’
are semi-permanent installations with logs, spiked bars and big oil
drums, there cannot be any pretence that what is going on is ‘unknown’
to the police hierarchy.

HRW suggested, as
many have before, that the NPF’s X-Squad must be revamped. Without
this, and expansion of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission’s
‘sting’ operations, it will be difficult to take official protestations
seriously, since for even a half-hearted anti-corruption effort on
checkpoint extortion, catching offenders should be like shooting fish
in a barrel.

Against the
angrily defensive police response, it’s easy to forget that the
personal anecdotes in HRW’s report are what ordinary Nigerians go
through every day. Although the NPF dismissed the report, saying it
“lacked merit and should not be relied on”, nobody reading the
experiences it details can doubt their authenticity. An ear at any of
the Network on Police Reform in Nigeria and Human Rights Commission’s
Public Tribunals on Police Abuse will unearth stories as bad as, or
worse than those in HRW’s report. Even the ‘biggest’ man in the country
will have had someone ask for help with similar scenarios: seeking
either intercession with the police, or money with which to pay their
way out of (often unjustified) trouble.

The reality for
many is that it is indeed only with money, connections or influence
that they can extricate themselves from police wahala. Our congested
prisons are full of people who had neither. The NPF may genuinely
aspire to “maintain an effective internal control mechanism to check
abuses of human rights or professional misconduct”, but the case of
young Comfort Monday, who recently gave birth in prison after being
incarcerated at the instance of the man who claims to have purchased
her, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to those who can’t
pay, arrested at the behest of those who can.

Only the rich or
famous should expect any different treatment, and possibly not even
then: after all, an attorney-general of the federation was gunned down
in his bedroom and “nothing happened”. But the NPF must know that even
if today, it begins to show a serious commitment to the lives and
security of every Nigerian, it cannot succeed without the support of
ordinary people.

And right now, few
ordinary citizens feel that their security is a police priority, or
that the police are on their side; not because HRW tells them, but
because that is their experience.

For this reason,
the arrest in Lagos of a couple alleged to have killed their young
houseboy, Emmanuel Azuka (perhaps they chose not to ‘spare the rod’ in
order not ‘to spoil the child’) is at least as important as the song
and dance being made about arresting a couple of technicians just
because a rich man got stuck in a lift. With disturbing questions
raised about police power to protect or to oppress being available to
those who can pay for it, it will be important for any genuine effort
to bring ordinary people onside, to see who ends up getting justice. Of
course, ‘everymen’ Celestine Ononobi and Moses Oluremi, suspects in the
‘attempted murder by elevator’ case aren’t pregnant teenage girls, so
we may not hear much more about them. But what about the trial and
verdict over ‘everyboy’ Azuka’s death?

We’ll be watching and waiting.