The South-East Is Over-Policed

There is hardly any part of Nigeria that can compare with the Southeast in terms of police presence. The police: population ratio may not be markedly different from what obtains elsewhere in the country but these uniformed men are ubiquitous there.

A resident of any other part of Nigeria travelling to the S/East can tell he has arrived. Border signs may be absent, but the traveler will immediately notice the upsurge in number of police checkpoints. If you encounter a traffic hold-up on a highway in the region, there is a 95% chance it is caused by an illegal police roadblock.

I live and work in Nasarawa State and have traveled extensively in the North. I have also traveled to other parts of the country in recent times. Only 3 weeks ago I traveled from Nasarawa, past the FCT to Minna in Niger State and all I encountered throughout those hundreds of kilometers was 1 police checkpoint. A week after, I had to travel to my hometown, Afikpo in Ebonyi State. The journey through the FCT, Kogi and Benue States was smooth, as we were not stopped at any checkpoint. All that was soon to change.

Immediately we crossed the border into Enugu state, the roadblocks and accompanying traffic jams appeared. In most places the checkpoints are less than 3 km apart; it would appear the police authorities in their wisdom have decided to place checkpoints on the roads such that no stretch beyond any curve is without one. The effect is that one checkpoint is almost always visible from the other.

The idea may be a noble one in light of the rate of violent crimes in the region. But true to character, policemen have turned these checkpoints into nothing more than toll gates. Different force types man the checkpoints: mobile police, regular police, federal highway patrol types, joint army-police patrol, or one special force or another. Regardless of the type, the purpose and the method remain the same: revenue generation at gunpoint.

People travelling in their private cars are often worse off as they are made to present vehicle particulars and all manner of documents at each point. No certificate is issued to you if you have all the necessary papers at one point; the process is repeated at every checkpoint.

Commercial vehicle drivers have become wiser: torn between generating revenue for their employers & the need to take their passengers or cargos to their destinations on time, they have learnt to pay the minimum amount acceptable to proceed on their journeys. Each bus driver knows which checkpoint will accept twenty naira, which will accept fifty naira, which will accept hundred naira etc. If you do not have these denominations, no problem, the policeman will give you change, after all the police is your friend, the police is known for honesty. Those travelling in their own cars that are prepared to get to their destinations on time have no choice but to silence their consciences and pay up otherwise it may take them 12hrs to travel from Enugu to Aba.

I thought I had seen enough until I got to the checkpoint mounted by the joint army-police patrol team (Operation MESA) in front of Amasiri General Hospital Afikpo. There the minibus I took from Okigwe was waved down by a Mopol member of the team and the following scenario played out:

Mopol: hey open your boot (driver opens his boot)
Mopol: wetin dey inside these cartons? (Giving the sealed cardboard boxes perfunctory kicks)
Driver: na motorcycle parts
(A soldier strolls over)
Driver: Sarg. Good evening
Soldier: evening. To Mopol: you don tell am how much him go pay?
Mopol: oga your money na one thousand naira.

At this point the owner of the goods alighted from the bus and presented the receipts he was issued where he bought them.

 The soldier did not even bother looking at it. The argument continued, the driver offering to pay two hundred naira with the passenger offering to add one hundred naira. Eventually the soldier’s patience began to wear thin. The driver and the trader knowing better than to annoy a gun-toting soldier walked off and sat in the bus. At this point I tried to intervene. I went to the policeman and introduced myself, he told me to go and explain to the soldier, which I did. He apologized for the delay and called the driver to bring the three hundred naira. ‘Na this doctor save you today’ he snarled.

By the time we were let off, a line of lorries had built up behind us, the drivers refusing to pay the unreasonable fees imposed by the MESA men.

The case of the Mopol men manning the checkpoint at Ndibe beach road just beyond Amizu-Amamgbala Primary School Afikpo is an entirely different matter. There, when a commercial motorcyclist arrives, he pays twenty naira and is assigned a number. His motorbike number is then written down alongside his unique number which he is expected to quote each time he gets to the checkpoint and woe betide you if the number you quoted does not agree with what they have on their paper. The whole process is repeated several times each day.

The saddest part is that when the policemen are finished with their daylight robbery, they do not bother to remove the obstacles placed on the highways to force drivers to slow down. These checkpoints are left at night at the disposal of the non-uniformed robbers. The accidents and attendant loss of lives caused by the checkpoints have attracted overwhelming media attention since last week, but the police authorities are more preoccupied with the denial of the existence of them.

Now I ask: how do the guns and bullets used in the bank robberies and kidnappings in the South East get past these countless check points. How do kidnappers manage to get their victims past these ‘vigilant’ security operatives in these ever-present checkpoints?
One does not need to be security expert to realize that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between the police presence and the high crime rate in the S/East. These uniformed men know much more than they are willing to admit about the high rate of the crime in the region.

We have heard stories of how policemen lobby to get posted to the ‘lucrative S/East’ and how they call parties to celebrate their posting when it materializes.
May be we should try an experiment to rule out the involvement of our ‘beloved’ policemen in these crimes; gather them in one place with their guns and bullets and ensure they do not get out for one week and then see what will happen to robberies and kidnappings during that week.
May be we will stop looking for solutions to crime in the S/East and look for solutions to the Nigerian Police Force.
 
Dr. Okpani, Arnold Ikedichi
 Keffi, Nasarawa State.