Nigeria Content Online

At 75, Sunday
Awazieama thought he had seen it all. Violence, after all, was not new
to the retired medical assistant, a survivor of the Biafra War.

But the events of the early hours of May 1 left him shaken.

At about 2 am,
several anti-riot policemen and soldiers accompanied by members of the
vigilante group popularly called the Bakassi Boys, invaded his village,
Umuuwaoma, along the Aba- Ikot-Ekpene Road, leaving destruction in
their trail.

“I was awoken by
the sound of gunshots. Before I could rise from my sleeping position,
they had broken my door and I was bundled out of my house like a common
criminal,” he said. His house was razed.

A similar fate befell other villagers, who barely escaped with their lives.

According to the
locals, the invaders then proceeded to rape young girls and women, some
in the presence of their husbands and children.

According to
Chinenye Emelogu, the counsel representing the villagers, this was a
clear case of reprisal attack on an innocent community.

“The police mounted
a checkpoint at a place called Umuibe, which is a few kilometres from
my clients’ community. While the police were there collecting their
bribe as usual, armed robbers engaged them in a shootout and, along the
line, a police constable lost his life. So in the night of the
incident, I learnt that the commissioner of police ordered the area
commander and the divisional police officer at eastern Ngwa to mobilise
the Bakassi people and the police in a joint taskforce and, in a
military commando style, they invaded that community.” It is, however,
interesting to note that the police did not make any effort to arrest
anybody while the ordeal lasted.

This is not the
only time the large retinue of policemen deployed in Aba, under the
guise of fighting kidnappers, will be accused of being engaged in harsh
tactics, extra legal activities.

In the same month,
the Anti Terrorists Squad of the police descended with all its might on
hapless civilians at Osisiomah Junction in the heart of Aba town, a day
after it was roundly defeated by a gang of armed robbers who killed one
of the policemen and took another hostage, injuring people in their
hundreds and killing some others.

The sin committed by the people was that the police alleged they cheered the robbers as they were attacking the policemen.

Ukpai Ukairo, the
legal adviser of the Peoples Democratic Party in the southeast, is not
surprised at the reaction of the police.

“It is in the
character of the Nigerian police to attack hapless citizens when they
fail in their duty to check robbery or kidnapping who otherwise had no
hand in the crime committed,” he said.

When asked about
extra-judicial killings and the destruction of property committed by
his men, Ebere Onyeagoro, the police commander of the Aba Area Command
did not deny it. He, however, tried to rationalise his men actions.

“It was a problem
of misplaced aggression and nobody could really say that it was all a
police affair. Certain problems may come up and the touts joined in
doing whatever thing,” he said.

Making matters worse

The heavy police
presence in Aba and environs, rather than ameliorating the already ugly
situation in the town, appears to be fuelling it, interviews over
several days with a cross-section of residents show.

Many of those we spoke to said they would rather see the number of policemen in the town reduced drastically.

“Since they brought
in more policemen, business has been very bad”, said Emeka Chijioke, a
commercial bus driver that plies the Aba- Ikot-Ekpene road. Mr.
Chijioke makes a total of N1400 on each trip. However, he spends about
N1000 bribing police at the numerous checkpoints along the road.

“The police are not schooled to check kidnapping or any sort of crime”, said Mr. Ukairo.

“Indeed if you were
to really enforce the law the way it is all the policemen now on the
roads in Aba will be in prison for sundry extortion. We abhor them. All
the policemen who take N20 is stealing and kidnapping with police
uniform and tax payers guns while the kidnappers is doing the same
thing through another mode.”

The police Area Commander’s explanation for the behaviour of his men was that this was done by the bad eggs within his ranks.

Nothing on the abductors

NEXT can also
confirm that contrary to police claims that they were conducting a
house to house search and closing in on the criminals in the wake of
the abduction of four journalists and their driver, no such thing was
being done.

The heavy police
presence was largely felt at the highways, where they extort from
commercial drivers. At Ukpakiri, the village where the journalists were
abducted, the only police presence was a checkpoint where passersby
where ordered to raise their arms. Some policemen were, however, seen
along the road searching through the pockets and phone of some youth.

Emeka Ogbonna, of
the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Popular Participation Front,
blamed sub-par performance of the police in getting the intelligence
needed to crack the problem on the inherent lack of trust of the people
in the police.

According to Mr.
Emeka, people who have allegedly given the police information in the
past have been singled out by kidnappers who, after abducting them,
will tell them the exact police unit they had approached to pass on
tips.

An area traditional ruler was a victim of this alleged complicity.
In 2008, Wilson Nna, the Eze of the Aba suburb of Abala, and his wife
were beheaded after allegedly alerting the police to the activities of
certain kidnappers in his community. Similarly, the Eze of Itungwa, who
later became a victim of kidnapping, has run away from his domain.
There was also Chukwuemeka Nwagwu, a police informant who was murdered
by kidnappers.