Police lobby to be posted to S’East – RULAAC boss * Says S’East, now cocoa farm for security operatives

 

Police lobby to be posted to S’East – RULAAC boss

* Says S’East, now cocoa farm for security operatives

 

By Steve Oko

The Executive Director of Rule of Law and Accountability and Advocacy Centre, RULAAC, Mr Okechukwu Nwanguma, has alleged that police personnel lobby to be posted to South East geo-political zone, for quick money.

This is as he decried multiple checkpoints on South East roads, saying the zone has become “a cocoa farm security operatives”

Nwanguma who spoke while featuring on Ikengaonline town hall meeting, regretted that “corruption, brutality, incivility, and all sorts of things”, still characterise policing in the South East region.

He said:”Southeast has historically been seen as a cocoa farm for law enforcement operatives. Police officers lobby to be posted to the Southeast.

“I did a research in Onitsha during which I asked questions about why this is the case. I know about a police officer who had spent 15 years in the same place, and he was to be promoted and transferred out of Onitsha.

“He lobbied to be retained in his old rank, rather than promoted and sent out of the Southeast, because they make a lot of money.

“Our people are business- minded. They’re always on the move. So police exploits their impatience and their willingness to part with something. For them, it has become normal to offer bribe to police and move on. In the Southwest, they resist that. In the North, you can’t even contemplate it.

“So I think it’s a sociological and cultural thing. Our people don’t have the patience to challenge them and demand their rights, and the police understand this psychology.

“Along the major roads in other parts, you won’t see the kind of siege that you see in the Southeast. If you’re traveling from Lagos to Onitsha, for example, it’s only, maybe between Shagamu and Benin, you might see one or two, customs checkpoints, but once you enter Asaba, you begin to see multiple checkpoints. There must be an explanation for that.”

Nwanguma in the town hall meeting monitored by Wawa News Global,  regretted that despite the multiple checkpoints littered on South East roads, violent crimes still occur in the region, thus casting doubts on the actual motive behind the checkpoints.

“Most of those checkpoints that you see, they’re not there to provide protection. They are there to make illicit money – extortion! The checkpoints are nothing more than avenues for extortion, harassment, and sometimes extra judicial killings.

“They make a lot of money from it. It’s all about money making. It’s not about providing security. After all, with all those checkpoints, you still see kidnappers pass through those checkpoints undetected. They’re not there to protect the people. They are there to prey on the people.

“This is part of the conquest attempt to keep the Southeast down as a conquered territory, to subjugate. That is why there’s this expedition, and it’s only Southeast that an IG could go and say: ‘go after IPoB members, kill them, and nothing will happen.’

“You can’t say that in the Southwest. It will provoke a protest. It will lead to resistance. So, I think it’s about the culture of our people, who are basically business people. They’re willing to part with money just to move on. They don’t want anything to affect their business.

The RULAAC boss expressed disappointment that despite repeated orders by several Inspectors General of Police, IPGs, to the multiple checkpoints on South East roads to be dismantled, the illegality had persisted.

“You know how many times successive Inspector Generals of Police had ordered the dismantling of those ubiquitous checkpoints in the Southeast. They will make those pronouncements. Within a few weeks, they return. They return because they (operatives) make returns.

” Those security operatives you see at those checkpoints make returns. So it’s an institutional corruption. So they are sent there actually to make money from people – people who are vulnerable and impatient. They don’t care about their rights.”

He advocated sensitisation of the people on their rights to resist intimidation and molestation by security operatives.

“There’s a need for a reorientation of our people to learn how to resist injustices, to ask questions. Even if police arrest you, don’t be quick to offer bribe. If they want to detain you, say, okay. I think our people need to change.”

Nwanguma regretted that despite various reforms introduced to the police system, the force is still fraught with anomalies.

“Talking about reforms, there’s resistance to police reform. There’s institutional resistance. There’s no genuine political will to implement far-reaching reforms.

The Police Act that came into force in 2020, September 2020, introduced a lot of innovative provisions that, if implemented, will address some of these challenges in policing.

“Government is not interested in implementing the reform. And the police themselves are not comfortable too. For example, there is this Complaints Response Unit that was set up by former IGP, the late Solomon Arase, which was meant to receive complaints from people and act in real time.

” But internally, this unit, which has the potential of addressing impunity within the police, is not being supported. Instead, it’s being sabotaged by the police leadership.”