Henchmen on duty

A report penultimate Friday by The PUNCH newspaper freshly highlighted a menace that dogs many Nigerians daily in transit, and from which only lucky ones emerge in one piece. No prizes here for making the right guess: the menace is the incidence of law enforcers who tyrannise motorists for purported traffic offences that could well be due processed and penalised, if proven, by civil means. You needn’t look too hard as you take a drive/ride along the country’s metropolitan and suburban highways, you’ll find them daily lurking there.

 The newspaper reported that no fewer than seven persons were burnt to death penultimate Thursday when a commuter bus in which they were travelling plunged into the valley flanking Milikin Hill road en route from Enugu. That mishap resulted as the bus driver was fleeing from officials of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), who were hot in his pursuit for a purported traffic violation.

According to accounts, the bus barely took off with passengers from the Enugu New Market when personnel of the civil defence corps, with its Enugu head office sited close to the market, flagged him down. Perhaps characteristic of his professional stock, the bus driver refused to stop, and he was given a hot chase by corps personnel along Milikin Hill road. Reports said the corps officials pursued the bus in a Hilux van, while additional personnel joined the chase in a tricycle. And just as the bus was heading beyond the precarious road stretch, the corpsmen reportedly opened fire, causing the driver to swerve and plunge into the valley where the bus immediately erupted in flames.

There were no accounts of swift intervention to salvage the bus and its occupants from the fire; and so, some seven persons were reported incinerated besides the driver. “Reports of the incident led to a protest by commercial bus drivers and other sympathisers, particularly natives of Ngwo town where the passengers were reportedly heading before they met their tragic end,” The PUNCH wrote, adding that the protesters were indeed denied space to vent their grouse as they were repelled from accessing the NSCDC head office with road barricades and corps personnel firing threatening shots.

The newspaper reported its correspondent to have sighted charred remains of one of the bus occupants trapped beneath the burnt-out vehicle that was lying downside up at the crash scene. When a towing van arrived to heave out the bus from the valley, the human remains were taken away to a morgue in an ambulance. The paper as well cited a Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC) official at the crash scene saying the remains of three others had been moved to a morgue.

It was by no means a remote incident and the Police confirmed one casualty, with Police Commissioner Mohammed Danmallam disclosing that investigation of the incident had begun and some suspects taken into custody. “This type of thing should not be allowed. We have made arrests…I learnt that they (NSCDC officials) were chasing the bus, but I don’t know for what offence. I want to assure the people that nobody is above the law,” he was reported saying.

But the corps whose personnel were linked with the mishap had a different version of what transpired and defended the officials involved. Enugu State Command spokesman, Denny-Manuel Iwuchukwu, was reported saying the bus driver abducted a civil defence staff who force-boarded his vehicle to stop him for violating some traffic regulation. It was in a bid to rescue their ‘abducted’ colleague, he added, that corps personnel gave the bus driver a chase.

Iwuchukwu, who denied that any life was lost in the mishap, explained: “The state government ordered that commercial buses should no longer pick passengers outside the motor park and our men are enforcing the order. Today (day of the incident), the driver picked passengers outside the park and he was asked to stop, but he refused. So, one of our men entered the bus and the driver took off with him, thereby abducting him. He was told to stop, but he refused. We chased him and he fell in the ditch. Our official has been found. He was injured; he can’t even talk at the moment.”

Going by NSCDC’s narrative, you would think it is standard operational ethic for security agents to force-board the vehicles of motorists accused of traffic infractions. Besides, you perhaps wouldn’t be hasty crucifying the spokesman for his presumption, because the experience in our country is that this practice is common to most agencies involved in traffic policing. And that is the issue here: it is crass, indeed lawless, for traffic law enforcers to force-board motorists’ vehicles over purported infractions. Global best practice when last I checked is to ticket offending motorists for penal fees; and if a motorist is not amenable to collecting the ticket as alleged in the Enugu scenario, his vehicle registration data could be taken down for future rein-in in a civil manner.

‘It is crass, indeed lawless, for traffic law enforcers to force-board motorists’ vehicles over purported infractions’

And we really could ask: since when has all-out huntdown become a standard tack for law enforcers in apprehending suspects of civil offences? Actually, my personal challenge with equipping paramilitary agencies with lethal arms has always been the implied democratisation of reckless use of those arms against the citizenry, which is what seems to have happened in the Milikin Hill road mishap.

Culprits of this mishap must be brought to justice, and be widely seen as such, to deter lawlessness by law enforcers.

Between Netanyahu and Khama

Two events on the international scene last week offered worthy examples that shouldn’t be ignored by other countries, including Nigeria. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hospitalised Tuesday at Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center, after his personal physician concluded he had not sufficiently recovered from health challenges he battled with three weeks ago. Following a series of tests, doctors found he was suffering from an upper respiratory tract infection; but he was discharged later same day to go recuperate at home. On leaving hospital, the 68-year-old announced his discharge on Twitter, saying: “I am on my way home. Sure some rest and hot soup will put things right.”

Meanwhile, the prime minister currently faces gruelling investigation by Israeli police for alleged sleaze. Only a day before he was admitted into hospital, he was questioned along with his wife and son by Israeli police over his alleged dealings with the country’s largest telecommunications company. In two other cases, the police have recommended that Netanyahu be charged with bribery, but the final decision to prosecute rests with the Israeli attorney-general.

It would be the day when Nigerian leaders are admitted into Nigerian hospitals for conclusive treatment, after which they could return home for some rest and hot soup to set things right! On another hand, there is something fascinating about the Israeli justice system that allows the leader no immunity and holds him fully answerable even while in office. Impunity thrives in our clime because statutory immunity shields.

Then, last Saturday, former President Ian Khama stepped down from office after a decade in power, but 18 months before the next election is due. He handed over the reins to his deputy and incumbent President Mokgweetsi Masisi.

The former leader toured all of Botswana’s 57 constituencies in a long farewell to supporters before leaving power. In his ancestral village last Tuesday, he rejected pleas to remain in office, saying he took office only because his predecessor, Festus Mogae, persuaded him to do so. “I was a soldier, I didn’t have interest to join politics, I had future plans away from politics,” he told the crowd of thousands.

Khama’s example is instructive in a continent where leaders at varying levels try to change the laws to extend their tenure limits.