I bet there are countless articles just floating around the internet talking about police brutality. Police is your friend! Police is your friend!! But are they really? Do your friends constantly rob you, beat you, slap you for absolutely no reason at all? Well, maybe sometimes but it’s all fun and games. However, it’s all whole other narrative when it comes to the Nigerian Police force. The sad truth is that some of us don’t even see it as police brutality anymore. We’ve just come to term that it’s just the type relationship that exists between some policemen & civilians in Nigeria.
Police is your friend. This has to be the biggest “scam” in Nigeria right after “Call me after you graduate” and “I haven’t even started reading”. Their numbers will stop being reachable as soon as you collect your certificate and he definitely has finished reading and even moved to the next course.
Quite interestingly, the only time I ever heard the slogan “Police is your friend” being uttered is, when it’s used is sacarstically to ridicule the failing police force of the country. Also, In a campaign advertisements for the NPF on television.
So what went wrong and where exactly did it go wrong? I watch some films and documentaries from other countries and I’m impressed. Well, except for “the few bad eggs” who like shooting unarmed black men from time to time. Apart from this heinous crimes, I’d say the police officers are dedicated to fighting crime and stopping perpetrators in few other countries. What I like most is their response time and how some of the officers treat all human lives with respect, a police officer usually won’t kill a criminal unless it’s the last option.
Another fact is that we are all humans, everybody has a tipping point and you’re eventually going to break when put under extreme pressure. Plus as we all know, fighting crime and catching criminal is a high stress job. Exposure to long hours of these can have drastic effect on their mental well-being. I feel that the government does not do enough to equip police officers with and avenue which will serve as an outlet for stress. Consequently leading them to oppress innocent civilians. In my country, you could get a series frog jumps just by looking at police man funny.
In other countries, there are countless stress management courses officers could take when they’re not working, but I doubt if that’s even going to be green light in Nigeria due to budgetary concerns.
Furthermore, Nigerians don’t know their right, most time these officers go beyond the boundary set to keep their act in check. However, when we are oppressed we don’t even notice or are too lazy to do anything about it. Could it be the fear that even if we do, the crippled justice system won’t be able to take significant action? Civilians should be encouraged to fight back against injustice by taking necessary action when brutalized by any law enforcement officers especially the police.