LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Police extortion

By Sunny Ezekwe

On Wednesday 1st of June 2011 at about 10am, I was at Yaba looking for some items to purchase when a commercial danfo bus pulled up beside me and an armed man clad in mufti accosted me and introduced himself as a policeman. 
I looked into the bus and saw other men, some in uniform; some in mufti. The man who stopped me demanded to search my bag and pockets. I obliged. In the course of the search, he saw money which I later realised was what actually kindled his interest in me.

He leafed through my documents, found faults with a couple of them and asked me to accompany them to Iponri police station. The reasons he gave for impounding my documents were absolutely stupid and baseless, but I followed them all the same, not wanting to argue with armed men.

On the way to Iponri, they arrested some other men, also found faults with their documents and took them along. At Iponri, they threatened to lock me up unless I gave them my money. All pleas fell on deaf ears.

When I gave them all the money I had, they released me and the documents they had earlier faulted. The Iponri police station was full of men, respectable men, negotiating their release from the police station. They had committed no offence other than being in possession of their hard earned money.

The policemen did not arrest even one thug or area boy because such people will not fetch them money. If that is the type of police we have, it is no wonder that Nigeria is the wretched, useless, rotten, God-forsaken country it is today.

People who are paid to protect the citizens from robbers are those engaged in robbery. I no longer have any sympathy for the police whenever they are shot by soldiers, like in the recent Badagry episode.

In a normal country, people feel safe and protected when they see the police. In Nigeria, they feel intimidated. How can a police boss send his men out on a daily basis to go and arrest innocent men, intimidate them and rob them of their money?

I understand the policemen have a target sum of money to deliver to their bosses. No wonder their children turn out to be robbers and assorted miscreants. How different are the policemen from the armed robbers on the highways, who people say are off-duty policemen anyway?

Shame on all children whose fathers are policemen! Shame on all women whose husbands are policemen! Shame on all parents whose sons are policemen. I am a blessed man because there is no policeman in my family.