As a security columnist writing on the back page of The Dawn newspaper which is a police newspaper, I had written a piece titled “Constable Cause Trouble”. That was when constables and their ‘senior brothers’ ,the corporals, were attracting odium to the police. They brazenly collected bribes from members of the public at road blocks and inside police stations despite the bold inscriptions, “ Bail is free”.
Though, operation wise, constables are the foot soldiers of the police, they find it difficult to restrain themselves whenever they are provoked while on duty, often times embarrassing the police hierarchy when they go off guard to perpetrate illegality while in uniform. Many innocent civilians have lost their lives through their activities, especially through the mishandling of the fire arms allocated to them while on duty. One of the police rules is that a policeman should not go for a duty that is not officially approved neither should he be found with a gun that is not approved by police armourer. A case in point is the killing of an innocent student in Ibadan by an alleged drunken policeman . Police rules abhor a police officer carrying a gun while drunk or when sufferng from a mental health issue . According to reports, a stray bullet had killed the student who was heading to the examination centre to sit for the ongoing School Certificate Examination organised by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
A report carried by PUNCH Online indicated that the victim was in his father’s car together with his twin brother, heading to the exam centre, when he was struck by a bullet fired by one ofthe police personnel chasing a Hilux van. Now, let us analyse the entire scenario. Why did the driver of the car take a one-way lane when he knew he the traffic rules? Drivers him operate without drivers license or obtained their licenses illegally.Incidentally, the driver of the car is the father of the shot school boy. Unfortunately, the police sighted his car and aimed at his tyre but the bullet missed the target which is the tyre and penetrated through the boot and hit one of the sons at the back seat who later died. If blames should be apportioned, it will first go the driver who disobeyed traffic rules, and then to the police officer who shot at a moving car instead of copying the number plate or use the walkie-talkie to alert his colleagues ahead. On the alleged unstable mind of the police man who was said to be drunk while on duty because he was officially drafted to the morning duty post after being on night duty where must have got himself drunk and intoxicated ,a case can be established against him for being drunk while on duty.Now, apart from the driver and the pliceman, I think the children in the vehicle also share in the blame.Being students, one had expected them to be converasnt with traffic rules and ought to have drawn their father’s attention to the fact that he was breaking the rules. Had the children courageously cautioned their father against the illegal act he was embarking upon, maybe he would have listened to them and changed his mind thus averting the catastrophe. This underscored the importantance of enrolling our children in either the boys scouts or the girls guide where courage, discipline and fearlessness while communicating to elders are imbibed. Impressively, the Oyo state governor, Oluwaseyi Abiodun Makinde swiftly issued a press statement describing the incident as “sad,shocking and painful” . In other words, the incident was shocking to the Governor because he never expected a police officer to shoot at a moving vehicle just because of a traffic offense. Meanwhile,it took the office of the Inspector- General of police days before reacting to the incident.The Inspector-General of Police condemned the incident and assured that the officer involved in the shooting had been taken into custody, while a full-scale investigation was underway.
The Ibadan shooting has reingnited the clamour for state police. stakeholders are of the view that if there was state police, the incident wouldn’t have attracted the attention of the Inspector-General of police, instead it would have ended at the state command level where both the state commissioner of police and the state governor would have effectively handled the situation with outstanding result.
If the Oyo state was operating under state police system it wouldn’t have been necessary waiting for the police headquarters in Abuja to take over the investigation of the incident nor would it had warranted dispatching police officers from Abuja to Oyo state to embark on an investigation into the incident.Such procedure is not only cumbersome but time wasting and costly. State police system would have urgently addressed the situation without much ado. A call for state police is a call for the decentralization of the Nigeria police system, it is a call for the restoration of discipline in the Nigeria police system, it is practicable policing system,cost effect and brings efficiency to the police and noticeable in other climes.
State will address the insufficiency in police man power and cut down the cost of investigating matters. Many African countries have established state policing systems which had cut down the rate of criminality in these countries