Dada Ogunsanya, a member of the Nigerian Police Force, brutally
assaulted Mr. Ejeh Smith and his wife, Grace some days ago in Ikoyi,
Lagos. According to reports, the couple didn’t deserve Ogunsanya’s gun
butt or his boots in their body but then again, that’s the meaning of
force in Nigerian police—brutality, senselessness and barbarity.
What’s
more interesting was when Ogunsanya’s Divisional Police Officer, Mrs.
Aisha Haruna, shamefully ordered that the recorded event captured by the
victim’s wife on her phone be deleted and went ahead to blast the
couple for not “knowing how to talk” to authorities. By not “knowing how
to talk” to members of Nigerian authorities, one could be inviting
brutality and at times, even death.
There are numerous examples
and cases of police brutality and it is still an on-going event in
Nigeria. How can Nigerians, therefore, ensure that victims like Ejeh
Smith and his wife, Grace, who got a generous thrashing from the police,
get justice?
The
Nigerian army recently displayed another meaning of force. Recently, a
Facebook post by one Mr. Fahat Fahat, a member of the Nigerian Army
Force and who, unfortunately, is among the Fifty-nine soldiers being
court-martialed in Nigeria after being accused of refusing to fight
militant Islamist group Boko Haram, went viral when he posted a chilling
status: “Hello ladies and gentle men. I am soldier and I am sentence to
death by the Nigeria army (sic). Cause we did not go to fight boko
haram with out equipment (sic). We ask for weapon insted dem gave *
death sentence (sic).
If,
for sure, Mr. Fahat posted that status himself then he should be given
an award for bravery. In a country like Nigeria, where the military is
defined by craziness and zombie attitudes, one cannot imagine a mere
sergeant going on social media to report his bosses.
The soldier’s
cry raises pertinent issues and there are two views gaining space in on
going debates. Fahat, one group argues, should be ready to face any
type of battle regardless of the type of weapons because he has signed
to serve his nation. Another group argues that any one, who joins
Nigerian army office, has already signed their death sentence because
the pay is bad, the soldiers are treated with disregard and the country
treats them like shit. They blame the Nigerian government for their
insensitive acts.
Fahat and his colleague said, No!, they won’t go
to a bomb fight with mere guns. For their disrespectful nature, the
Nigerian government wants to sentence these stubborn heads to death.
Soldiers have to always follow orders but sometimes these orders can be
termed illegal and unlawful. In this Nigerian situation, can we term the
rejection of orders by Fahat and his crew as unlawful or can we term
the order has illegal?
Whatever
side you support, the tales of forces in Nigeria is always laden with
confusions and labyrinths that cannot be deciphered easily. Nigerians
must begin to debate on how to remove the force within these forces if
they need concrete answers.
Twitter: @moshoke
Email: moshoke@yahoo.com
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