"Animal Kingdom" - A Friend Said

Whereas policemen carry bags and umbrellas for "big men" and politicians, whereas they are assaulted by celebrities in daylight. These same policemen go about harassing ordinary people for no just cause..

Seun Kuti slapped a policeman in daylight and he was not arrested there and then. It tells you that Nigeria is a lawless country. Police kill many Nigerians daily and nothing happens, but when one is confronted by a celebrity artist, he lost himself as the officer of the law and allowed himself to be humiliated publicly - it does not happen in a sane world. Seun knows he could not repeat the same abroad and not be arrested immediately and jailed.

You know, many Nigerians are daily assaulted, maimed, raped, and extorted, and we see it as the norm - they carry guns and wear uniforms that symbolize they are the face of the laws of the land. I was almost killed by one in 2010 on the Iwo-Ibadan road when I challenged him for intimidating and harassing innocent road users. I just returned to Nigeria after completing my Ph.D. abroad. I was going to Ibadan from Lautech, and a senior colleague who was fresh from abroad too was the driver driving us. His Nigerian driver's license had expired but his foreign license was still valid, and the policeman stopped us for no just cause, demanding what we refused to give. He said he would impound our vehicle. He said that as educated as we were, we should know better not to drive without a valid document. But his colleagues were collecting N10, N20 from bus drivers and Okada riders in our presence. When I pointed to him that he has no moral justification to make such an accusation because of what his colleagues were doing, he started cocking his gun and threatened to kill me. If not for my colleagues who started begging him, he probably would have shot ....

Two wrongs can never make a right. The policeman had a taste of what he and many of his colleagues have done to many Nigerians - breaking the law, killing, extorting, and intimidating the people they are supposed to protect and serve. From the video, Seun was in the wrong - his utterances and behavior did not show him as someone who is mature., and he may (I wrote MAY because it can be swept under the carpet as usual in Nigeria) pay dearly for it. It does not matter what the policeman did, he was captured slapping and assaulting a policeman. That is flat-out wrong. He may go to prison for it. The policeman exercised restriction, maybe when he realized who he was assailing and may be in awe of Seun because of his father and his own reputation. He could have arrested and assaulted Seun back and nothing would have happened to him. He was under his right as a lawman.

This has been said times without number, the Nigerian Police need to improve. They need re-orientation, they need to be better trained, educated, and enlightened, and there is a need to make the profession more dignifying. They are paid peanuts, their superiors send them out to go and make money to be shared, they are poorly paid and sometimes, some of their bosses sit on their salary, claiming they make money from the street. This nonsense needs to stop.