“I have a Phd and head a @PoliceNG tactical unit, myself and my unit work with pains and bitterness because they work under pressure to give returns to those above and nothing for them.“
What do you do when your “friend”, turns his back against you. When he who is called to scratch your back, comes with carpenter nails attached to his fingers. When the one call to blow dirt from your eye, comes with a mouth filled with pepper. This has been the relationship between the average Nigerian and officers of the Nigeria Police Force. The harsh reality of Nigerians, dying at the hands of those who swore oaths to protect them.
Over the last three years, however, the music changed, and in the cause of a week, the music became louder. The streets of major cities and states in the country witnessed agitations of thousand of Nigerian youths. They trooped out in large numbers with placards and megaphones in protests against these brutality, high-handedness, extortion and other infamous criminal acts of the force, more precisely, of the defunct Federal Anti Robbery Squad, FSARS.
In the middle of all of these pandemonium, the question of ‘Why?‘ was raised. Why are the officers killing? Why does your friend become your enemy? Why are police Officers behaving the way they are?
In answering this question, a Police officer who spoke to anonymously to pro-democracy and civil rights activist, Kayode Ogundamisi, exposes the rot in the police force. His revelations are presented below as published on the Twitter account of Kayode Ogundamisi.
- The Nigeria Police Forces as institutional problem. Corruption flows from top ranking officers to the officers on check-points. The rot as eaten into every fiber of the force, thereby, leading to state of “every man for himself”.
2. Godfatherism
3. Lack of trust from the public.
The anonymous officer also revealed some of the atrocities of some police-men.
