Endless Harassment and Extortion by Policemen

Despite measures put in place by the Nigeria Police High Command to ensure that officers and men of the force obey the rules of engagement in the discharge of their duties, many unscrupulous elements in the police have continued to dent the image of the force.

These elements have ignored the level of anger exhibited by Nigerians in the October 2020 #EndSARS protest and continued to harass and extort the youths after labeling them as fraudsters.

Some of the policemen that indulge in these criminal acts wear mufti or police uniform without name tag and police number to conceal their identities and escape the long arm of the law.

Some also patrol with commercial buses without number plates to cover their tracks.

The Imo State Police Command had on Wednesday arrested some police officers who allegedly collected a bribe of N60,000 from the indigene of the state travelling from Sam Mbakwe Airport in Imo State, to his Mbaise village.

Executive Director of non-governmental human rights organisation, Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Center (RULAAC), Mr. Okechukwu Nwanguma, who had brought the incident to the public notice, alleged that a young man travelled from Lagos to Owerri, en route to Mbaise for a burial. According to Nwanguma, the young man, who is also a computer scientist alongside his relatives who had gone to pick him up was stopped by police officers at Enyiogugu Mbaise, and all of them were immediately labelled as fraudsters.

The officers ordered the young men into their vehicle, lying that they were taking them to the police station, but were driven to a spot at Dan Anyiam Stadium, Owerri, and asked to pay a sum of N500,000 to secure their release.

The young men said they paid N60,000 to secure their release after which their mobile phones, which had been confiscated by the officers, were returned.

The policeman that collected the money changed to mufti and followed one of the young men to a POS terminal where the transaction was made.

It is unfortunate that many policemen have defied all the reforms put in place by the successive IGs to make their operations conform with international best practices.