Nigeria Police Force

By Muhammadu Sabiu

A native doctor named Odoh Emmanuel has been detained by the Enugu State police after it was claimed that he used a rifle intended for testing the bullet-repelling charms he had created for his client Onunze Benedict to kill him.

The terrible incident was said to have occurred in Umuaram Village, which is a part of the Ikem neighbourhood in the state’s Isi-Uzo Local Government Area.

The victim, an Eha-Amufu resident, reportedly asked the local oracle to create the charm for him.

The native doctor, who was only 23 years old, made the decision to try the charm on his customer by shooting him several times.

Commenting on the incident, the Enugu Police Command, through its spokesman, DSP Daniel Ndukwe, said in a statement: “On 16/11/2022 around 11 pm, Police Operatives serving in Isi-Uzo Police Division of the command arrested Odoh Emmanuel (male and a native doctor) aged 23, of Umuaram Village in Ikem community of Isi-Uzo LGA, for shooting and murdering his adult male client, one Onunze Benedict, of Eha-Amufu community in the same. 

“Preliminary investigation reveals that the suspect confessed to having used a locally-fabricated single-barreled gun to shoot and murder the said victim in his shrine at the mentioned location while testing the gunshot protection charm he had prepared for him. The gun has been recovered, while further investigation is ongoing at the Homicide Section of the State CID Enugu”.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

The inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, has denied disobeying any court order.  

The denial is coming after Justice M O Olajuwon of the Federal High Court sitting at Abuja ordered the detention of the IGP on the ground of contempt of court. 

In a statement made available to newsmen and signed by the Police Spokesperson, CSP Olumuyiwa Adejobi, in Abuja on Tuesday, the IGP claimed ignorance of the said disobeyed court order. According to the Police, the order was not made during the tenure of the current IGP

“The Nigeria Police Force wishes to state emphatically that the office of the Inspector-General of Police, IGP Usman Alkali Baba, psc(+), NPM, NEAPS, fdc, CFR, did not disregard Court Order or the rule of law as the office is not aware of any Court Order, during the current IGP’s tenure, with respect to a matter making the round in the media that the IGP disobeyed a Court Order for the reinstatement of a dismissed officer of the Force.” The statement reads

However, the IGP said he had directed the Commissioner of Police in charge of the Force Legal Unit to investigate the allegation in a bid to ascertain the position of the court and proffer informed legal advice for the IGP’s prompt and necessary action.

The statement further stressed that the IGP is committed to upholding the rule of law and synergizing with the judiciary to ensure quick dispensation of justice.

By Abubakar Suleiman

“There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” – Idi Amin

The advent and tremendous upsurge of social media platforms have really enabled and deepened freedom of expression as guaranteed by the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It has interestingly also destroyed barriers erected by politicians to insulate them from public criticism or scrutiny. However, this freedom has come with some blowbacks. The platforms aren’t the sources of the blowbacks, but the abuse of their usage is.

An issue on the front burner is the arrest and alleged torture or physical assault of one Aminu Adamu, a student of Federal University, Dutse, who was accused of posting a tweet suggesting the First Lady, Aisha Buhari, to be corrupt for squandering the poor man’s money and her body size is a sign of this alleged thievery. The arrest was allegedly carried out on the instruction or directive of the First Lady.

Surprisingly, as at the time of writing this piece, Mrs Buhari or her spokesperson is yet to give a public statement distancing her from this allegation which is a classic case of impunity or abuse of privileges or government institutions. Sketchy reports have it that it is the handiwork of an overzealous security detail attached to her. 

Warts and all, a Nigerian citizen has gone missing, and the Department of State Services (DSS), the Police and other security agencies have a duty to reunite him with his family or take him to a court of competent jurisdiction for whatever offence he must have committed. And, of course, whoever enabled this forced disappearance of Aminu Adamu should also be charged within the ambit of the law.

That said, it is worth noting that politicians or people in power are not alone in the abuse of privileges. What Aminu allegedly did was also a clear case of abusing the freedom of expression and the privilege conferred on him by the Nigerian constitution and social media, respectively. Some people are so engulfed by tendentiousness in partisanships sometimes that they miss the opportunity to network or create value for their business products or brands using social media platforms. 

One of the disadvantages of the freedom that comes with social media is the ability to break barriers unconditionally. It is devoid of a vetting process. Hence it sometimes makes ill-mannered people feel empowered to impugn the integrity or character of people they ordinarily would not dare or attempt doing that too. Plus, others will share this character assassination with glee and without verification.

Tellingly, that politicians or public officers should be subjected to scrutiny or held accountable as humanly possible does not mean they can be maligned, slandered or outrightly and falsely accused with no scintilla of evidence. Politicians or people in power have blood running in their bodies. They have emotions. And bad as they might seem, they also have some integrities to protect.

Bridges have been burnt in exchange for likes or savages on media platforms. Oftentimes effused hatred or unintelligent zingers have replaced verification and validation. In the comfort of basements, unscrupulous people have willingly or unknowingly plunged people into fierce physical or fight online, or even a country into chaos with uncouth written words borne out of unstable emotions. 

Some people just find it difficult to make a point without using insulting or derogatory words, while others will just classically defame or cast aspersions uncontrollably and even unintelligently. 

Interestingly, these people who enjoy and propagate this kind of bashing find it difficult to stomach the slightest of criticisms whenever they are subjected to one. I especially blame no politician or a person in power who approaches a court for this purpose. That they are politicians doesn’t mean their characters or integrities don’t matter.

Therefore, we really need to tread carefully with our engagements on social media platforms. If we derive pleasure in unfettered access to such platforms, then our usage of them should come with a high sense of responsibility.

Let me conclude with a few lines from Kalev Leetaru’s article published on Forbes with the title, “A Reminder That ‘Fake News’ Is An Information Literacy Problem – Not A Technology Problem,” he wrote, “schools no longer teach source triangulation, conflict arbitration, separating fact from opinion, citation chaining, conducting research or even the basic concept of verification and validation. In short, we’ve stopped teaching society how to think about information, leaving our citizenry adrift in the digital wilderness, increasingly saturated with falsehoods without so much as a compass or map to help them find their way to safety. The solution is to teach the world’s citizenry the basics of information literacy.”

Abubakar Suleiman writes from Kaduna and can be reached via abusuleiman06@yahoo.com.

By Muhammadu Sabiu

A 12-year-old boy has been detained by officers of the Bauchi State Police Command for allegedly abducting a three-year-old daughter.

The girl’s father informed the police that his daughter had been abducted after receiving an anonymous phone call notifying him of it.

The caller demanded N150,000 from the father of the girl as a ransom before releasing his daughter.

These were revealed in a media statement issued to journalists in the state on Saturday by Ahmed Wakil, the public relations officer for the Bauchi State Police Command.

After questioning the suspect, SP Wakili stated that the kidnapper teenager confessed that he learned about kidnapping when his friend was kidnapped some years ago, and money had to be paid as a ransom before he was released.

“Upon interrogation, the suspect stated that he is from Kano state and came to Bauchi state in search of petty business with his siblings. From the little he earned while hawking fried yam in Magama Gumau, he raised money and bought a mobile phone, the Tecno Camon model.

“The investigation also revealed that the suspect got to know about kidnapping when some time ago his friend was kidnapped in Kano state until a ransom was paid before he was released from his captors, that is how he learned about kidnapping and money must be paid to set a victim free.

“He also said he would have used the ransom money to buy his desired clothes and phones, but cut short upon his arrest by the Police operatives,” the police said.

By Aliyu Nuhu

Police authorities were angry for having the Nigeria police force ranked among the worst police in the world. But the police is its own worst enemy because it lacks effective Internal control and cleansing mechanism.

In 2019 NDLEA arrested a policeman in Borno who has been supplying drugs to Boko Haram. Two days ago a very bad video of a policeman went viral. He not only collected bribe, he short-changed his colleagues. The Police posted to guard former president Jonathan’s house stole everything including his clothes.

In 2017 when the people of Rijana said kidnappings along Kaduna-Abuja highway were carried out in collaboration with the police, the police authorities only transferred its men from the area and replaced them with another set. The bad ones were taken to another place to go and continue their trade. In the same year, the policemen sent to guard former president Jonathan’s house looted it bare and sold all the furniture and electronics. They broke doors and windows too. In short they vandalized the house!

Three years back, villagers on the Abuja highway blocked the highway to protest killing of vigilante informant by the kidnappers after he was given away by the police. In an interview, the kidnappers claimed to purchase their weapons from the police.

Nigerian Police is not only the most corrupt force in the world, it is also the most shameless and dangerous.

Imagine a former IG himself telling the world that he was free to sleep with any police woman of his choice. And he kept his words by impregnating and marrying one and promoting her in the service in return. Now retired, the former IG is said to be under demonic spell with the woman imprisoning him in the house. Where on earth but Nigeria can this happen without retribution?

The police had admitted being involved in kidnappings, the best thing is for the force to parade those men and dismiss them and at the same time prosecute them in courts.

There are good men and women in the police force no doubt, but one rotten egg in the bowl can spoil an omelette of thousands eggs. And there are more rotten eggs in the Nigeria police today.

The federal government should draft the military to restore sanity on the expressway. Military are involved in internal policing jobs because the police has failed to do its job.

It is that bad!

Aliyu Nuhu is a renowned social commentator. He writes from Abuja, Nigeria.

By Hassan Idris 

As students of sociology and criminal justice, we can’t debunk the fact that social control is a compelling discussion subject in the criminal justice system.  There has not been any society that exists without a social control mechanism to oversee the behaviours of its members. The Nigerian police, my discussion subject, is regarded as the ‘gatekeeper’ of the criminal justice system because it’s the nearest social control mechanism to the people. However, social control is unarguably the most preponderant static aspect of every human society. It’s the prerequisite for maintaining decorum, orderliness, and stability, which becomes a vital thing for every human society to develop a social control mechanism, be it formal or informal, to oversee the behaviour of the members of the society and bring about development and stability.

Marshall, in 1996 defined Social control as “the process of keeping individuals in check, moderating their behaviours, and maintaining social order”. Social controls tend to encompass the strategies and mechanisms put in place to oversee the behaviours of the members of human society. Social control is the birth of human social relationships which may be informal (comprising written norms, values, or customs) or formal (typically practised by the personnel of constitutionally acknowledged agencies. But we cannot discredit that formal and informal social control mechanisms are derived from the habituation and rationalization that arises from repeated interaction. 

Okoye, in 2011 posited that the word” Police” comes from the Latin word politic, which means” civil administration”.  However, the first Professor of Criminology in Nigeria from the Prestigious Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria-Nigeria, Professor Odekunle, in 2010,  defined the police as “the government officials most proximate to crime, temporally and procedurally, and the leading figures in crime prevention, control and law enforcement processes”. The fundamental objectives of policing in society are to provide security, or at least a social and psychological feeling of security, for a majority of citizens, in a majority of places, and for most of the time. The police, the “gatekeeper” of the criminal justice system in all contemporary societies, is the most apparent agent of formal social control. This is why Bittner, in 1990, asserted that “social control and reactions to deviance are intimately bound up with the functions of the police because they all address the central problem posed by events or behaviour which ought not to be happening”. 

However, the fact remains that the police assist other social control agencies through many of their actions. The paramount role the police play in ensuring societal laws, norms and values are kept and regulated made it one of the cogent institutions of the criminal justice system. Most Nigerians would not refute that the police institution is the nearest institution with regular contact with the people, making it distinctive amongst other criminal justice institutions. The uniqueness of the police clenches the evidence that its decision and action on the street or in society is vital to the existence of the criminal justice system. The police are the “gatekeeper” of the criminal justice system, and it decides who moves into the system and who comes out. Therefore, every action or activity carried out by the police have myriad and huge implications for the criminal justice system and other institutions.

Furthermore, to understand the contemporary Nigerian police and the anti-people administration they portend, it’s paramount to trace back to the history of policing and the colonial policies that influenced the current bureaucratic policing we have today. The history of policing predates the modification of the police as a permanent occupational group within bureaucratic institutions providing the primary state response to crime and disorder.  In the past, before the emergence of the contemporary police we have today, it was traditionally the duty of all adults in the community, especially male adults, to prevent, control, and guide people from internal and external inversion and aversion. However, the emergence of the state with its wide bureaucracies brought about centralization, hierarchical authority, power structure and professionalism and the traditional strategies of policing were transformed from everyone’s business to the state business.

The historical emergence of the conventional police over the globe occurred independently; nevertheless, the historical emergence of policing in Nigeria is categorized into three. The first category is the pre-colonial category which policing then includes the use of cults, messengers, secret societies and palace guards. Crime surveillance and curtailing then in Nigeria were executed by indigenous institutions which are regionally based.  The Northern and Southern Districts of the country’s system of policing were established on centralization and formalization. In the Northern parts of Nigeria, monopolized by the Hausa-speaking ethnic group, the Dogarai was employed as the bodyguards of the Sark( Emir or King). They refine full-time policing in the community. Under the leadership of the Dogarai, the Sarkin Dogarai was charged with capturing and disciplining offenders and protecting the town from internal and external invasions. Similarly, in the Yoruba-speaking ethnic group of Western Nigeria, the Ilari, Emese, or even the Aguven was responsible for apprehending or arresting criminals.

In the secondary category, which is the colonial period, the system and principles of policing changed and became anti-people. The vitality of establishing the formal police by the colonial masters was essentially to serve and protect their commercial interests and not the people. It’s a reason we have brutal and anti-people policing in Nigeria today. I’ll justify that in the next paragraph when I’m discussing the post-colonial category of policing. The third category, which is the post-colonial category, the leftover system in the pre-colonial category, which is anti-people policing, was still carried to this period, even when the colonial masters left, and this is evidence of why the style of law enforcement used by the Nigerian police today is not for the masses. 

The Nigerian police, without a doubt, have lost confidence in the hearts of the people, and there have been accused of unnecessary arrest and even breach of law. But we can’t deny that the Nigerian police from inception was built upon the wrong foundation because the British established a predatory police administration for Nigeria for the fundamental purpose and strategy of sustaining, promoting, and ensuring the socio-economic and political orientations and occupations of the colonial masters. 

In conclusion, the current pervasive feelings of insecurity and the near-total breakdown of law and order as a result of the upsurge in different criminal activities, like terrorism, kidnapping, armed robbery, political assassinations, and ritual killings, in Nigeria is an indictment of the failure of the Nigeria police force as the most visible agent of formal social control and the gatekeeper of the criminal justice system in the country. However, despite these shortcomings, the Nigerian police force remains a vital pillar through which conformity and maintenance of order are installed.

Hassan Idris is a sociologist and poet and sent this article via idrishassan035@gmail.com.

By Muhammadu Sabiu

Reports reaching The Daily Reality have revealed that the Sokoto State Police Command has detained one Nasiru Idris of the Sabon Birni Local Government Area in possession of 101 permanent voter cards (PVCs).

The suspect was apprehended on October 10, 2022, in Sabon Birni, Police Commissioner Hussain Gumel said to reporters during a briefing.

He, according to the police commissioner, was unable to explain where he obtained the 101 PVCs, adding that, “It is envisaged that owners of these cards are not only from Sabon Birni local government but could be from other parts of the state because we could not trace the rightful owners of the PVCs.”

The CP promised that after a month, the police would hand over all of the unclaimed PVCs to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

He also urged members of the public, especially those whose identification cards were lost or stolen, to visit the command headquarters and check for identification.

By Uzair Adam Imam

The police operatives in Bauchi State killed two suspected bandits during an exchange of gunfire and also recovered machine guns and N8.4m ransom generated from victims in the state.

A 20-year-old bandit was also arrested by police in the incident that took place on Tuesday at Maina-Maji village, Alkaleri Local Government Area of the state.

CP Umar Mamman Sanda, the Bauchi State Commissioner of Police, made this disclosure to journalists while parading the suspect on Tuesday.

He added, “Security concerns in our society have assumed alarming dimensions ranging from gender-based violence, thuggery, armed robbery, kidnapping, and banditry, among others.

“This necessitates a review of our modus operandi to contain the current security challenges bedeviling our dear state.

“On 07/09/2022, a patrol team attached to Maina-Maji Divisional Police Headquarters, in collaboration with a vigilante group, acted on credible intelligence and raided a suspected kidnappers’ den.

“On arrival, the kidnappers opened fire on the Police operatives. While returning fire, two of the kidnappers were neutralized at the spot.”

By Uzair Adam Imam

A 51-year-old man, Oluranti Badejo, has been arrested by Police in Ogun for allegedly beating his 40-year-old wife, Folasade Badeje, which resulted in her death immediately.

On Thursday, the Police Spokesman, Abimbola Oyeyemi, confirmed the development to journalists in the state, adding that the suspect has been apprehended.

It was gathered that his arrest followed a complaint lodged at Mowe Police Divisional Headquzrter by the younger sister of the deceased.

Several reports indicated that the incident occurred at Orimerunmu, Mowe, in the Obafemi-Owode Local Government area of the state.

Oyeyemi said the husband beat his wife to death after they had a minor misunderstanding.

The DPO Mowe division, SP Folake Afeniforo, quickly dispatched the divisional detectives to the scene where the suspect was arrested.

“The lifeless body of the victim was there and then evacuated to the mortuary in Sagamu for post-mortem examination. Preliminary investigation revealed that the suspect strangled the deceased during a scuffle as a result of a minor disagreement.

“Having realized that he has killed his wife, the suspect used a hot iron to burn parts of the body of the deceased so as to look as if she was electrocuted. But unfortunately for him, their 8-year-old daughter was there and witnessed the whole thing.

“It was the daughter who testified seen her father strangulating her deceased mother,” Oyeyemi said.

The Commissioner of Police, Lanre Bankole, to have directed that the suspect be taken to the Homicide section of the state Criminal Investigation Departments for further investigation.

By Uzair Adam Imam

The Imo State Police Command arrested five persons for allegedly killing a man whose wife died in a car accident a few days ago. 

The incident took place on Monday, October 11, 2022, and her demise stroke terror and threw the community into deep mourning. 

The man was identified as Apostle Wisdom Mbakwe and hailed from Umuduruchukwu Aboh, Isu, in the Nwangele Local Government Area of the state. 

He was said to have been making the burial arrangements for his wife when he was brutally murdered. 

Speaking to journalists in the state, one of the deceased relatives recounted, “Our brother was observing his morning prayer according to the Jewish religion he professes. 

“Just then, Chidiebere said he heard the shout of ‘Yahweh, Yahweh’ and rushed into the house just in time to see the deceased struggling with some men.

“One of them tried to use a machete on his head, but he dodged, and it landed on his shoulders. He ran out to alert some neighbours and the youth of the area. 

“When they came, they did not see my brother or the assailants. So they started combing the bush, thinking that if they were kidnappers, they wouldn’t have gone far.

“But they combed everywhere without seeing anyone. When they eventually returned to the house, they observed blood all over the sitting room and saw my brother where the killers had pushed his body in between some chairs and covered him up with curtains,” she added. 

Police Public Relations Officer, CSP Mike Abattam, said the Police are still investigating to fully discover the circumstances surrounding the incident.