Emmanuel Ikule, national coordinator of the Network of Police Reform in Nigeria (NOPRIN Foundation), has urged people to report instances of police violence in order to act as a deterrent, advance accountability, and improve the force.
He lamented that individuals are reluctant to come up because sharing their stories causes them to reopen wounds they’d rather have closed and emphasised the significance of justice in serving as a deterrent to wrongdoing officers.
Ikule participated at a public forum on police misconduct in Nigeria’s South West Zone that was held in Lagos and was organised by NOPRIN, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), and the Police Service Commission.
He noted that there had been consistent complaints of brutality, abuse, extortion and extra judicial killings over the years around the country.
According to him, this year they have had the public tribunal in four political zones.
Identifying gaps in training, Ikule called on the force to put in more efforts towards training officers and not just use the Training of Trainers (TOT) method, where selected officers are trained, who would in turn train others, which has not yielded the much desired result.
He said: “Access to justice is like a scarce resource in the country. A lot of people look for it, a lot of people don’t get it. Not speaking out makes the officers to consistently go on with the culture of torture and impunity. The public tribunal is to give people an opportunity to voice out their experiences and we ensure that access to justice is a reality.”
Speaking, coordinator, National Human Rights Commission, Lucas Koyejo, said the public tribunal was one of the vehicles the Commission uses to ensure that there is a closure for such cases that involve victims of human rights violation, especially by government functionaries.
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He noted that the issue of poor police welfare is not an excuse for the force to maltreat citizens.
Recounting his experience, an Okada rider, Cyprian Enyam, said he stopped at Sabo market to buy a traditional smoked spiced meat (Suya) on February 16, 2022 at about 8:00p.m. when five men, wearing mufti, asked him to come down from his motorcycle.
When he refused, Enyam alleged that they started hitting him, but the police officer that led the team later came out and asked them to stop hitting him, but it was already late as he fell down and was unconscious.
“After this they took my bike. Passers-by told them that since they had killed me they should take my body along. They took me and dropped me in a bush at Locus, Sagamu at about 12:30 a.m., when I regained strength and came out of the bush, I was told by some guys there that it was the police that dropped me in the bush. The men then took me to Ikorodu General hospital.”
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