If someone were to ask me, I would describe members of the Nigerian police force as senseless brutes who rely on force and violence to make up for their lack of sense and skill.
My first encounter with the police offered me a front-row seat at the corruption and violence that underlies the entire force. It happened in 2010 while I was an undergraduate law student at one of the state universities. On that day, I sat in the front seat of a cab on its way to Yenagoa. Everybody who lives in Nigeria knows that it has become customary that at police checkpoints, commercial drivers pay a compulsory bribe of one hundred naira before they can go about their business. When we got to the checkpoint between Elebele and Opolo, the driver refused to pay the sum. He explained calmly that he had only started working for the day and had made no money yet. And just like that, what started out as a slow, cold morning became charged and explosive. The policeman felt insulted; how dare the driver not offer up hard-earned money to him? He started shouting and waving his gun at the driver. The driver challenged the policeman in response, visibly upset at his audacity while the other passengers behind us begged the driver to calm down.
A sound of the gunshot immediately went off, and everything became still for a moment.
“Blood of Jesus, e don kill am, e don kill am,” A woman in the backseat started shouting. The young man dressed in his NYSC uniform seated behind the driver is dead.
That day, I learned that in Nigeria, you can leave your family and the comfort and familiarity of your home for a mandatory one year service to your country and end up getting killed by a corrupt, trigger-happy policeman. I learned that after a policeman shoots you, his colleagues can lay you at the roadside and place a pocket knife in your hand. I learned that your story can be rewritten, that upon your death you become the aggressor, the cultist who engaged in a clash with policemen, and your loved ones would die without ever learning the truth.
Almost every Nigerian youth — the ones who survive anyway — has a similar story to tell. I know this because cases of police harassment and brutality are well documented on different social media platforms. Just last year, there was a public outcry by young Nigerians who, through media activism, created the #Endsars campaign which called for the reformation of the Nigerian police force and the dissolution of the Special Armed Robbery Squad unit – a unit created to combat armed robbery which now specializes in harassing and killing young Nigerians.
The situation remains the same. An April 2020 report by BBC states that at least 1,476 people were killed by state actors in the country over the past year.
In response to the plea of Nigerians to end impunity for police brutality and harassment in Nigeria, the Buhari led administration has signed into law, the Nigerian Police Bill 2020. This law amongst other things gives a police officer the right to arrest without warrant, “a person whom he suspects on reasonable grounds of having committed an offence.” Personally, it is hard to believe this law did not already exist even though I know better, because the police have always interacted with me like a suspected criminal. It is also very convenient that the law fails to define what qualifies as reasonable suspicion of a crime.
So what exactly do Nigerian policemen see as a reasonable suspicion of a crime? Here are a few examples, I was stopped in the afternoon by policemen whilst on a road trip with six women because it was suspicious for only women to travel as we could be sex workers going to meet rich men. It was also not right that responsible women should have tattoos or locs. I have also gotten harassed by policemen at midnight on my way back from a date because I was supposedly dressed like a man and in their words “woman no suppose dey think say e be man.” On this occasion when I showed my work ID, and they realized I am a lawyer, they were surprised.
Every time I have these encounters with policemen, I try to lock the traumatic experience away. I try to convince myself that I can learn to navigate the system better, that I can avoid or limit my interactions with the police. These days I have little conversations with myself before I leave my house. There is a tiny voice that tells me; “you are a good citizen, you pay your taxes and you have never committed a crime. You have no reason to be worried about policemen.” Then there is the other voice, louder than the first that says; “you are a queer woman, a masc presenting queer woman, the type that gets called a dyke. You don’t think the policemen know this?”
Last month, a couple of us visited a friend who stays in one of these gated estates. We took a drive (without my friend who is the resident), and I sat in the front seat. One of us had their head out through the roof and someone else was making a video of them. Unbeknownst to us, a police van had been trailing us since we left the house. They cut right in front of us like we were in a fast and furious movie and blocked our car from moving forward with their van. Four of them jumped down, cocked their guns and pointed it straight at us. What was the suspected crime? They had wrongly assumed we were making a commercial video, which was prohibited in the estate. As I sat there with my heart beating wildly in my chest, I wondered why trained policemen felt the appropriate response to a group of unarmed people making a video was to threaten them with fully loaded weapons. It was the most jarring experience because I realized that even in spaces I assumed were safe, I am still not free from police harassment.
When we got back home, we talked about what happened with the policemen and I learned one more thing about Nigeria, wealthy heterosexual Nigerians have a different police experience from homosexual, middle class, or poor Nigerians. I learned that I could be in a taxi or a private car, it could be in broad daylight or the middle of the night, it does not matter how I am dressed, it does not matter if my hair is locked or if my hair is shaved off, nothing matters to a group of irresponsible folks drunk on the power of their guns.
With this new law, I am reminded that even though the Nigerian police have never had an excuse to harass people like me, now they would not need one.
Timinepre Cole is a legal practitioner and writer based in Lagos. Her writings are published on sites like Writers Space Africa and The Republic Journal.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this Op-Ed by the Writer are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Rustin Times.
