When law agents go rouge

Nigeria’s security architecture is at the moment in lethal disarray that leaves casualties across the societal spectrum. Nothing symptomises this more than the crisis of confidence lately raging between the police and the army on security operations purportedly aimed at protecting the polity, but which have left citizens’ collective safety rather more hazarded. Those operations, in which the agencies ideally should be collaborating, have pitched them at odds in a messy credibility face-off.

It must be acknowledged upfront that most personnel of the country’s security agencies are rendering heroic services to keep citizens safe from the hands of malefactors, like insurgents and kidnappers who ubiquitously threaten their safety. The military, by statutory delineation of role, ought to be confined to preserving the country’s territorial integrity against external aggression; but owing to the enormity of internal security challenges, they have been co-opted with the police in day-to-day law keeping functions. And really, the sacrifice of many of these personnel in the line of duty needs to be appreciated as patriotic offerings towards national survival. But it seems obvious that we as well face a mounting challenge from rouge security officials breaching citizens’ safety spaces and leaving fatalities in their trail.

In the last three weeks, the police have been at daggers drawn with the army over the killing of their men on Ibi-Jalingo Road in Taraba State by soldiers who claimed to be responding to a distress call. The soldiers, attached to 93 Battalion of the Nigerian Army, had opened fire on a police van conveying an arrested millionaire kidnap kingpin, Hamisu Wadume, and sprung the suspect free. Three officers of the police’s Intelligence Response Team – an Inspector and two Sergeants – as well as a civilian died from gunshot wounds inflicted by the soldiers.

The army has since argued that the mishap was a case of mistaken identity whereby the soldiers, in response to distress call, mistook the police personnel for kidnappers and the arrested suspect for the victim. But the police counter-argued that the soldiers’ real motive was to free the arrested suspect, as the IRT officers identified themselves to the assailants. Besides, their mission was aforehand documented at the state police command headquarters in Jalingo, the area command headquarters in Wukari and the divisional headquarters in Ibi.

Other than the utter failure of coordination and communication between the police and the army that is glaring in the case in point, it is suspected that the soldiers’ intervention may have been a rouge mercenary act considering the deep pocket of the arrested kingpin now on the run.

While that dust is yet to settle, two youths were reported killed on Monday, last week, at Isheri Day celebrations by soldiers believed to be from Ikeja Cantonment, but who were said to be on posting to Kara Market in Ogun State. According to reports, the soldiers left their duty beat to act as bodyguards for a market leader to the Isheri Day carnival that held at Isheri-Olofin, a border town between Lagos and Ogun states, where they got into an altercation with youths and resorted to brute violence in settling scores. Community representatives were reported alleging that the soldiers were drunk, fired gunshots and used knives on community members, resulting in two deaths and injury of three others.

It is curious how it ever became the call of soldiers to be assigned on security posting at a civil market, or how they thought it proper to serve as personal bodyguards at a socio-cultural event and not a battlefield. But even if you want to take the emotive narrative by the community members with some caution, the account of that incident by the police indicated a high level of lawlessness on the part of the accused soldiers.

‘Nigeria’s security architecture is in lethal disarray that leaves casualties across the societal spectrum’

The Ogun state police command, in a statement by its spokesman, said: “Credible information at the disposal of the command has it that on the said date, four personnel of the Nigerian Army believed to be from Ikeja Cantonment and posted to Kara Market left their beat and went to Isheri Olofin…where indigenes of the town were celebrating their annual ‘Isheri Day.’ The soldiers had a minor disagreement with some youths, which made them to start shooting sporadically into the air. Consequently, one (community member) was hit by bullets and he died on the spot. The ugly incident infuriated the people at the scene, who in turn reacted violently against the soldiers, leaving one of the soldiers and three other civilians injured.

“The soldiers quickly took their injured colleague to a local hospital, where they met one of the injured civilians being attended to by a medical doctor on duty. The statement by officials of the hospital revealed that the soldiers ordered the doctor at gunpoint to leave the injured man and attend to their colleague. They dragged the patient out of the bed and stabbed him to death with a bayonet attached to the muzzle of a rifle.”

The army gave a different account of what transpired and described reports that its personnel killed some persons at Isheri-Olofin as fake. A statement by the army said its troops merely responded to a distress call and intervened “to forestall a bloody clash among ‘Isheri boys,’ who are considered a dangerous cult group terrorising the community.”

The army’s statement added: “It is important to state that there was no firing or exchange of fire between the troops and the alleged cult group throughout the period of the troops’ intervention. However, one of our soldiers got a deep cut on his head arising from the troops’ efforts to avert lethal conflict in the community. The wounded was evacuated to (a local) hospital for first aid treatment, from where he was subsequently transferred to military hospital. He is responding to treatment at the moment. Peace has since been restored to the affected area.”

Whereas the army’s statement made no mention of fatalities, it is doubtful the police command would be so reckless as to acknowledge same, along with the affected community, without evidential basis. That is so even when you concede the disagreement over fine details of the incident. And as far as the army goes, that is not mentioning the recent rape of a female student of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko in Ondo State, over which a Lance Corporal has been booted out of service and arraigned in court for prosecution.

It isn’t by any stretch that the police fairs better as a security agency, with the conduct of some rouge elements within its ranks. Few days ago, a mob seized and beat three policemen black and blue in Ijegun, a suburb of Lagos, following the killing of a pregnant woman in her shop by a stray bullet fired by one of the men purportedly while pursuing a suspected kidnapper. If you thought that could be a genuine accident, you only need to look a few days before then when thousands of travellers were stranded for hours on the Abuja-Kaduna highway as drivers of articulated vehicles blocked the route to protest the killing of one of their members by policemen allegedly demanding one thousand naira bribe. “The one who (fired the shot) immediately ran and disappeared into the bush, while the remaining ones quickly entered their vehicle and zoomed off,” the partner of the slain driver was reported saying.

Beyond weeding out rouge elements, there is apparent need for thorough reorientation of respective security service, especially the army and the police, on rules of engagement within the polity. But more fundamentally, the chaos in operations by the security agencies seems to derive from the nebulous architecture, which is largely anchored on knee-jerk response by government to escalating threats of insecurity. Military personnel are randomly deployed to complement the police in internal law keeping, and that has helped to some extent. But there is perhaps need to fashion out a more harmonious institution for internal law keeping, say in the mould of the United States’ National Guard. Such a formation would intermediate between the civil functions of the police and warfare orientation of the military.