Many Nigerians were shocked last Wednesday when the Adamawa State Police Command Headquarters in Yola, was invaded by soldiers, who killed an inspector of police identified as Jacob Daniel.
The Nigerian Army’s continued attacks and killing of policemen and other soft civilian targets have persisted over the years because soldiers notoriously take laws into their own hands without any consequences.
Though soldiers had attacked police stations and Police Area Commands, including Ojuelegba Area Command in Lagos, the brazen assault on a state command headquarters was the height of this depravity and lawlessness.
Apart from killing policemen, soldiers have set ablaze communities on several occasions under the guise of searching for the weapons of their colleagues killed by criminals around the vicinity as if an entire community conspired to commit the crime.
While policemen that engage in extrajudicial killings are always publicly sanctioned by the police high command, military authorities often cover their officers and men involved in similar crimes with the promise of investigation.
Reacting, the helpless Adamawa State Commissioner of Police, Afolabi Babatola, called on his men to be careful and guard against any attack on fellow security personnel.
In its characteristic style of defending the acts of brigandage of its officers and men, the Nigerian Army, through the Brigade Commander, 23 Armoured Brigade, Brigadier General Gambo Mohammed, claimed that one of his men was shot and hidden by the police, and his men went to rescue their own.
Has the Adamawa Police Headquarters become a Boko Haram or bandits’ enclave that the military should attack to rescue their own? Is the military too big to use the instrumentality of the Nigerian laws to secure the release of their own and ensure that the policemen involved in the shooting are sanctioned?
In his reaction, the Adamawa State Governor, Ahmadu Fintiri, instead of calling on President Bola Tinubu to order the Chief of Army Staff to fish out and prosecute the soldiers involved in this criminality, merely urged the Nigerian Army and Nigeria Police in the state to peacefully resolve their differences.
Comments like Fintiri’s embolden soldiers to take laws into their hands. President Tinubu should stop this despicable conduct of the military, which has become a tradition and force its officers and men to subject themselves to the Nigerian laws. This is the practice in advanced democracies.
