Eze, Lame, and The Police

Comfort Obi

For the Nigeria Police, this is an unexciting period. I know the NPF has always been under attack, and I know it has been the butt of jokes. Yet, nothing prepared it for the deluge of attacks against it penultimate week. It started on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday, March 4, and ended with an unkind cut from the Minister for Police Affairs, Dr. Ibrahim Lame.
Distinguished Senator Ayogu Eze, (PDP. Enugu North), had set emotions running high when he drew the attention of his colleagues to an alleged horrendous armed robbery attack on innocent Nigerians along the Lagos-Benin Road. According to Eze, who moved the motion on behalf of 58 other Senators, the incident took place in the afternoon of Tuesday, February 23, 2010. Eze: “After robbing a luxury bus that fateful afternoon, they commanded those who had nothing on them to lie face downwards, and commanded the driver of the bus, at gunpoint, to run over them several times. Among those affected were women and innocent children.” The Senator presented his motion with pain and emotion. By the time he finished, emotion ran high. David Mark, Senate President, lost his composure, almost. In an emotion laden voice, he said: “In a serious country, by now, heads should have rolled over this matter but, so far, nothing has happened. I think it is almost a week now, nobody has been arrested." He then descended on the driver of the alleged luxury bus. Mark: “If to spare his own life is to let the lives of other people go, he is the most guilty in this matter."
Enraged by the alleged incident, the Senate set up a committee to investigate why the police is unable to combat the rising crime wave in the country. Twenty-four hours later, it was the turn of Minister Lame to hit the police. He called the institution a failure.
Now, I don’t know when Lame realised that the Police Force is a failure. Was it after the incident on the floor of the Senate, or before then? But both the Senate and Lame are right. Cases of armed robbery, kidnapping, and assassination may not be on the rise, but the rate is still embarrassing. My problem, however, is in two-folds. One, the Senators and Lame know exactly why the crime rate is high. They know why the police cannot perform. Indeed, every sincere Nigerian knows why the police is handicapped. They need training and re-training. Their colleges are in a mess. Their morale is low. They are ill- equipped. They work with nothing, almost. The weapons available to them, compared to what these criminals use, are like toys. They are poorly funded. Crime has become sophisticated. For the police to combat crime, they have to have the right weapons. Their welfare must be improved. And so should their work environment and their barracks. Most of them work, and live in an environment worse than a pig sty. Until the Yar’Adua administration, the take-home pay of a police constable, expected to protect the citizenry who live in mansions, flaunt money, buy cars worth millions of Naria, was N8,000. Added to this is the unemployment rate in the country which has made crime an attractive option to millions of the unemployed.
More than any other person, Minister Lame should know the problems of the police. Perhaps, he has a police orderly. He should find out where he lives, and/or how much his take-home pay is? How much money has been released to the Police since Lame’s appointment? And what has been done to improve the lot of the Police?
Of course, the Police have their blame. Their men on the roads have reduced road blocks to toll gates where they shamelessly harrass innocent citizens and collect money from motorists. Some aid crimes. But unless funds are made available to the police to take care of the deluge of needs, there will be no improvement.
The second point is on the alleged incident of February 23 along the Benin-Lagos Road. Those horrifying photographs have been on the internet for almost a month. Senator Eze and his colleagues meant well. But they must be embarrassed by now that they acted on a fictitious story. They must be embarrassed that their action came almost a year late. They must be embarrassed that no such incident took place on February 23; that no luxury bus driver rode over his hapless passengers on the command of armed robbers.
Indeed, as has been made public now, the awful incident, which is not the story told by Eze, took place on July 31, 2009. And was reported in a couple of newspapers. The innocent passengers, 19 of them, were accidentally run over by a truck driver, Osayande Idahosa, who was running away from armed robbers in the night, not in the afternoon. He was arrested by the police. Outrageous as that incident was, questions arise. Why is it being presented as if it happened today? How come the Senators neither heard, nor read the story when it happened in July 2009? Who is behind the circulation of the photographs of the dead bodies meant to paint Nigeria in bad light before the world? Some Nigerians abroad were already planning a protest. But there are lessons to be learnt. The first: Before stories are reacted to, especially, at the level of the Senate, its authenticity must be verified. Senator Eze and co. had the means of verifying the story before bringing it to the floor of the Senate. They never did.
I read Idahosa’s belated, horrifying, account of how he crushed the armed robbery victims. Even though it was an accident, it does not excuse him. When he saw the luxury bus, and knew that armed robbers were on rampage, why didn’t he park? He saw human beings, and took them for logs of wood. It shows one thing: his eyes are bad. He had no business driving in the night. He should be prosecuted for carelessness, and manslaughter.
Finally, we must take note of the account of the driver of The Young Shall Grow luxury bus, Okechukwu Okafor. He said but for the bad road at Ore which necessitated a traffic gridlock that kept them on a spot for over three hours, he would long have been in Lagos before the 50 armed robbers blocked the road. That should worry the federal government.