In a democracy, we expect that our public institutions will be accountable to us. Rarely are the implications of that trust as profound or the results of its violation as devastating as they are when it comes to the police.
As an institution, police are entrusted with the power to take away life and liberty in order to “protect and serve.” This system places an extraordinary level of trust in the people policing our communities. For many of us, however, that trust has been violated repeatedly with impunity.
Perhaps there is no country where lawlessness is “law’ like Nigeria. Ours is a country where law enforcement agents are trigger happy at snuffing life out of an ordinary citizen either by threat or their new found love for the use of the word ‘stray bullet’
Many lives have been lost and one can say that it has become part of the everyday news to hear that the police has taken a life or more, either in custody or in pursuit of ‘criminals’ and most times deliberately to cover up a crime committed by one of their own.
Our entire understanding of justice is built inside of a system that constantly denigrates people, one that can only exist with the violent dehumanization and oppression of innocent and most times powerless people. Therefore, any definition of “justice” within that unchanged system cannot truly be such. If we define justice for police brutality victims as a trial, conviction, and the imprisonment of killer cops, we are relying on the very structures we are fighting against to both define justice for us and to provide us with recourse.
The nation woke up few days ago to the news of the killing of a promising Nigerian by a pot – bellied policeman who claims it was a stray bullet while in pursuit of ‘criminals’ that killed the young man. For whatever it is worth, we see and hear of this often and the nation and her leadership within few days rationalize the killing and moves on like nothing happened.
This non accountability for life has been seen as some kind of movement toward justice by many activists, including local organizers mobilizing around police violence, because so many cases of police violence in Nigeria end with no indictment for the officers involved. But a guilty verdict of an individual officer is not an indictment of the brokenness of the Nigerian criminal justice system. Likewise, a guilty verdict is a reflection of both the individual innocence of a slain person and the exceptional guilt of the single officer in question, rather than a broader critique of policing.
In many respects, the slogan, ‘Police is your friend’ should provide succor but I bet many Nigerians will rather beg their tormentor than to fall in the hands of the reckless men of the Nigerian police and the worst of them called the ‘SARS’
It is perhaps easier to understand why we have failure in governance than wear a lens through which to understand how police in Nigeria can run amok.
When today across the country, citizens embarked on protest against police brutality, it is an obvious lack of trust for safety and security by the police as well as the institution of state. Protesters across the country took to the city streets to demand police-reform and is sweeping the nation only God knows for how long. Revolution starts like this in many nations when the people can’t trust those assigned to protect them but then, aren’t Nigerians conventional cowards?
Now the country at large is wrestling with questions about the very nature of law enforcement: How far do we let cops go in the pursuit of law and order, and how do we hold them accountable when they go too far?
With the dismissal and charge to court for murder against the officer who killed Kolade Johnson, we may well be testing ground where some of the new answers to these old questions are fashioned.
Hopefully, the lesson is that violence for violence in no way fixes anything. Violence in no way brings any person back or provides any comfort or solace to the family or to the community as a whole. Rage and outrage should be focused toward extracting some sort of change by bringing more communication and a demand for those things around assessing these individuals.
Fatal interactions between police and the public has become the subject of increased scrutiny following the recent shooting of Kolade Johnson in Lagos, and several previous controversial police shootings.
These fatal interactions are objectively rare in the context of all contacts between police and the communities they serve, but they can evoke strong emotional reactions from the public. They are typically complex and dynamic events, the details are slow to emerge, and to the public the legal structure and process surrounding these events are confusing, if not frustrating. Police use of deadly force is perhaps the most powerful expression of state authority and it can be equally powerful in undermining the public perception of police legitimacy.
Trust has to be earned. Police can start by acknowledging the ways in which they’ve violated the public’s trust and committing to repair the damage they’ve caused. But so far, few appear to be trying. Instead, we continue to see police departments place the blame for their own violence on the very communities they’re supposed to be serving.
If we don’t collectively bring an end to the police brutality against the people they are meant to protect, we are all just been primed for death and it is a matter of time.
Ayo Ologun is a writer, human right activist and a broadcast Journalist and he writes from Osogbo