Trial By Media, Time To End It -By Tunde Asaju

So let’s give it to those people who unilaterally declared themselves our ‘’friends’. Yes, I mean, the Naija police. After a series of curious murders of women in Port Harcourt; the usual – the devil knows the culprit delays and protests by concerned women, the police believe they have their man. With a video camera rolling, they have named him as Gracious David West. They gave his age as 26. They claim he’s from Buguma and that he belongs to the Degbam fraternity. Their usual ‘crack detectives’ grabbed him as he prepared to travel to Uyo.

Give it to the police, our officers are not always all ‘wetin you carry’. There are crack detectives in their midst. If you have no tattoos, sport no dreadlocks and carry no expensive iPhones, or laptops tucked in a trendy backpack; you may be that friend in the police advert. If you wear any of the above accoutrements, your survival depends on whether you are a soldier’s child or the relative of a big man or woman whose surname commands respect in the mind of a megalomaniac cop.

The police are rebranding or so it seems. The new police that showcased in this Port Harcourt picked up a dapper suspect, in jeans and a fine shirt. He bears no trademark sign of torture – a puffy face, whip lacerations, broken bones or open sores. As a matter of fact, in one of the clips I saw, the suspect was given a bowl of jollof rice, which he wolfed down with glee. In the first clip, there were no handcuffs. Then, with the expertise of a rookie reporter, the police began the interrogation.

In a normal society, when the police finally catch up with their man, you expect a press briefing. The guy, still being a suspect by legal definition doesn’t show in the media while the police build an iron clad case against him. In Canada, there could even be a court-sanctioned publication ban where revealing the suspect’s identity might jeopardise investigations.

In Naija if you think that a suspect has rights then you’ve been binging on Hollywood movies or American live shows. Like the movies, the police, in the absence of legal counsel, no evidence of his Miranda rights begin to fire leading questions, the type that forces conscientious judges to throw off otherwise good cases. The Naija police hurriedly released a small clip to show Scotland Yard how to do it in the 21st Century.

On social media, relieved citizens rush to view and to make comments the kind of remarks that shows why a nation gets the kind of police befitting its psychological status. They show that majority don’t understand who a suspect is, or that a suspect, even one caught pants down has any rights. With raw emotions they demand summary execution. ‘Don’t waste the time of the courts,’ they demanded ‘just finish him off’.

Days earlier, these same people were looting shops aligned to South African allegedly in retaliation for reported xenophobia against their own citizens. You realise that these are the people who rush to strip accident victims of valuables or loot broken down trucks carrying valuable goods. The apostles of summary execution have been victims of police raids themselves. They are not unaware that with our ‘friends’ the innocent often become victims and that the real criminals wear chieftaincy titles and have police escorts.

It might shock you to realise that these apostles of jungle justice are the same ones that wanted to #EndSARS. These ones do not exercise any possibility of this one being a victim too – victim of mental health. Mental health means nothing to them, or the police. We blame suicide victims and wonder what drives them to ‘kill themselves’. Don’t blame us, we live in a country where attempted suicide is a criminal offence and success earns the victim a spot in the hottest part of hell.

The police know they can count on the support of their friends as they portray him as guilty in the court of public opinion. So, they make him describe how he lured his victims to hotels to ‘kill’ them. The next you’ll probably hear is that he tried to kill a policeman or a cellmate and had to be ‘executed’.

In a country where those who deliver ‘favourable’ judgment for the government in power get instant rewards, how do you trust a trial? How do you convince that only the courts have a right to pronounce people guilty? Idiots like me have read too many books, including the constitution, the penal and criminal code and the many conventions on human and people’s rights. We actually believe that people have rights.

The likes of me make the police job difficult. For we never forget how the summary execution of Mohammed Yusuf unleashed Boko Haram on us. We are enemies of those who think that the Hobbesian state in which the emperor and his lieutenants decide who lives or dies is the best. Fools like me believe that it is wrong to try any suspect by media. That Omoyele Sowore, Elzakzaky and other detainees should be free. We are not normal!