...ANOTHER SAD PROOF OF THE BESTIALITY OF THE NIGERIAN POLICE
The barbaric killing of a female lawyer, Bolanle Raheem, by a supposed law enforcement agent of the Nigerian Police, is another sad tale of the worsen institutional failure in the Nigerian state under President Mohammadu Buhari.
For a police officer who should be maintaining law and order to kill an innocent, defenseless Nigerian is the height of institutional impunity. The said Bolanle Reheem doesn’t deserve the unjust death in the hands of a depraved law enforcement officer.
Sad at it sounds, it is not an isolated situation. Extrajudicial killings, in the manner the latest incident has happened, are rampant among the nation’s security agencies, including the military. Many cases are hardly reported and brought to public attention. Annoyingly, there is hardly any commitment to appropriate consequence action taken against those found wanting.
We have not forgotten that a couple of years ago in Port Harcourt, Rivers state, the Eagle Crack Team, a tactical team of criminal minded police officers under the Rivers Police Command, tortured 5 mechanics in their death chamber at the Mile 1 Police Station, on trumped up charges that they were cultists and robbers.
The only known offence of the Ikoku 5 was driving against the right of way during a Yuletide as we currently are. Even when owners of the cars they were test driving at the point of arrest came to claim ownership and vouched that the suspects were law abiding mechanics, the criminal police officers continued the torture awaiting bail extortion from their families.
In the end, one of the Ikoku 5 died in the torture chamber, a female officer among the death squad reported to have repeatedly pulled wickedly on the late suspect’s scrotum.
The Rivers Police Command, knowing the consequences of their action, fabricated an autopsy that the victim died of high sugar level in custody. Under due diligence, a proper autopsy exposed the police lies, proving the victim died of severe torture just as the four who survived the torture had scars from life threatening injuries to share to the world after a court granted them unconditional freedom from Police detention.
Till date, more than three years after, even with the hefty body of evidence, the head of the police killer gang that carried out that atrocity among others unreported is walking a free man, declining court trial under frivolous, indefensible legal technicalities that have stalemated the trial.
The Nigerian police must ensure the said officer who killed Bolanle is prosecuted accordingly. However, there is hardly any hope that justice will be done. The police, from the Inspector General, top to bottom, are known to disrespect the laws they are supposed to enforce.
I sympathise with the family of the victim who was brutally murdered by the depraved policeman.
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