Justice by trophy parade

Criminal suspects whose fingers, in practical terms, got caught in the cookie jar by security agents had the rights abuses they suffer thereafter coming to them.  They invited those abuses in the first place by derailing from the path of rectitude and flirting with crime. But they are nonetheless entitled under Nigerian law to a presumption of innocence and fair hearing until pronounced guilty by the courts.

Abuse of suspects’ fundamental rights by security operatives before court trial becomes more grievous when those suspects’ involvement in the crimes they are being accused of is circumstantial rather than practically established. That is particularly so in cases where they stand some chance of proving their innocence before the law and are not beyond the contemplation of acquittal.

Either way, the writ of the law provides that a suspect is deemed innocent until pronounced guilty by a court.

Our practical experience of the dealing of justice in this country, however, has been by way of security agencies parading suspects as trophies of their operational exploits; and that, even ahead of concluding investigation into the suspects’ alleged guilt and arraigning them in court for trial. Past experience showed that some of the ‘trophies’ subsequently secured acquittal by the courts, but the publicity that attended their acquittal was never of the same intensity as when they were paraded as (atimes, self-confessing) suspects.

Early last week, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Oyo State paraded a 41-year-old father before the media for allegedly tying up his 10-year-old daughter to a ceiling and setting fire under her to extort her confession, thereby scorching her private part. The state NSCDC commandant said the corps arrested the father as well as the victim’s stepmother for the gross abuse of this little girl whom they accused of stealing N3,000 from a neighbour, out of which N600 was reportedly found in her bag. “It was gathered that the victim later brought the remaining N2,400 from where it was hidden in the house,” the corps chief added.

He further said the victim was receiving treatment at the hospital “as a result of the injury caused by the fire,’’ warning that his agency would not condone people taking the law into their own hands or resorting to self help. According to him, the suspects will be charged to court as soon as investigation is concluded.

Also speaking with journalists, the man on parade reportedly said his intention was to scare the victim into confessing the theft and not to harm her. He described himself as a caring parent and pleaded for leniency, adding that he did not know the fire would hurt the little girl.

‘The moral from Transparency’s latest index is that we need go beyond showing off momentary ‘trophies’ to tackling the multiple dimensions of corruption at the roots’

Let me be clear that going by his self-confession at the media parade, this so-called father needs an appointment with a psychiatrist and does not get a drop of my sympathy over his entanglement with the law. He deserves his upcoming day in court and whatever penalty is handed down from the altar of justice to retribute his alleged wickedness to the victim. My interest in his case is only to highlight the trend of suspects getting paraded as pre-trial trophies in the dealing of Nigerian justice.

Of all the security agencies, the police are most notorious for media parade of suspects, some of whom have faded out after their being fielded before press cameras and without being conclusively prosecuted in court. Ace lawyer and human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana, is noted for having been on the frontline of a crusade to rein in this practice, which he always held “illegal and unconstitutional” as well as prejudicial to the fundamental right of criminal suspects to fair hearing and dignity.

The Senior Advocate of Nigeria often argued for, in his words,  “the presumption of innocence, which inures in favour of criminal suspects by virtue of Section 36 of the Constitution and Article 7 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights Act.” He holds the police and other law enforcement agencies in violation of these provisions when they expose suspects to media trial before arraigning them in the courts.

In a position paper he once penned on the issue, the senior lawyer wrote: “To compound the human rights abuse, the suspects are subjected to ‘cross examination’ by law enforcement officials at crowded press conferences. As if that is not enough, media personnel are given the liberty to interview and interrogate the suspects with a view to confirming their involvement in the criminal offences alleged against them. In the process, the suspects are compelled to make incriminating statements (that) are prejudicial in every material particular.”

Falana went further to accuse the police in particular of extra-judicial killing of armed robbery and kidnap suspects after media parades, under the pretext that those suspects were trying to escape from custody. To illustrate the tendency, he cited some cases handled by his law office. One of these was when a kidnap suspect vanished into thin air after being paraded before the media, with the police denying having ever arrested the fellow until a video clip of the media parade was sourced from a television station and tendered in court as evidence to the contrary. Another instance was a lady factory worker alleged to have led a bank robbery gang and shot dead by the police, who displayed her body before media cameras draped with charms and a pistol. But the lady’s husband showed up to convince the court the accusation against her was false, and he won substantial reparation from the police.

The rights activist is also reported to have instituted a suit at an Abuja Federal High Court, asking it to declare that pre-trial media parade of criminal suspects by security and anti-corruption agencies in the country is illegal and unconstitutional.

Trouble is, the ‘show your trophy’ mindset is a pervasive tack of justice dealing in Nigeria today. When Transparency International (TI) recently outed with its 2019 Corruption Perception Index showing Nigeria slipping to 146^th position among 180 countries, as against 144^th position in 2018, and dropping one point on its ranking for the previous year to close at 26 points, the spontaneous response by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), among other spokespersons, was to angrily reach for the trophy-flag button. Of course, we can’t fail to acknowledge the fact that Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed recalibrated that response somewhat by telling international media in London last week that the Federal Government has never sought to impress anyone with its war against corruption.

Still, the lesson must not be lost that TI made clear its understanding of corruption to be abuse of entrusted power for private gain at three levels namely grand, petty and political. “Grand corruption consists of acts committed at a high level of government that distort policies or the central functioning of the state, enabling leaders to benefit at the expense of the public good. Petty corruption refers to everyday abuse of entrusted power by low and mid-level public officials in their interactions with ordinary citizens, who often are trying to access basic goods or services in places like hospitals, schools, police departments and other agencies. Political corruption is manipulation of policies, institutions and rules of procedure in the allocation of resources and financing by political decision makers, who abuse their position to sustain their power, status and wealth,” the agency wrote in its guide.

The moral from Transparency’s latest index is that we need go beyond showing off momentary ‘trophies’ to tackling the multiple dimensions of corruption at the roots.