OPINION BY AZU ISHIEKWENE: Why they shoot friends and spare the enemy | TheCable
Obviously, the autopsy would serve the legal purpose of demanding justice for Bolanle Raheem, given that legal subterfuge can sometimes undermine evidence and change the strongest of cases in favour of injustice.
The N5billion the NBA is demanding as restitution for her family won’t change the fact that her life was avoidably snuffed out. Unfortunately, the amount won’t be extracted from the killer cop, but from the state – not a good price to pay for hiring, training and arming questionable characters as law enforcement agents.
The Nigerian Police seem to have a shorter memory than its notorious short fuse – a tendency and reputation for letting fly bullets at anyone gutsy or just merely disagreeing with a policeman holding a firearm. Otherwise, the national outrage from October 2020 was more than enough to have tamed the sadistic instinct to release the safety catch and pull the trigger on soft targets.
The general public perception towards them is that of scorn and disdain and they are deemed to be more in alliance with crime and malevolence than they pretend about morality or justice. Just travel by road or mill around busy places in town – or indeed, walk into a police station in the backstreets.
As Nigeria struggles to raise its police-civilian population ratio from an abysmal 1:600, it’s fair to say that quantity alone does not guarantee fewer abuses, as we have seen from the US and, in fact, South Africa, just to name two countries with higher police numbers.
While that may sound extreme, only few would argue that the quality and structure of the force is serving anyone other than a privileged few who pay for special police protection and their bosses who profit not just from this elite indulgence but also from other sordid purposes in which they deploy policemen.
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