We Need More Healing After The Protests, Not More Afflictions -By Saliu Momodu

Only a couple of weeks ago, young citizens in this country, even though drawn mainly from the Southern parts, rallied in demand for a better deal and for an end to police brutality amongst several other grievances that popped up one after the other more or less.

As we see today, the police and other security agencies have now stepped in for retributions on those who were allegedly involved in the looting spree that trailed the said protests.

Some, if not many of those facing sanctions like dismissal from service at the moment is from the rank and file of the security operatives themselves. But this can’t possibly be a surprise about a police with a history of 20 Naira long go and of 5000 Naira more recently during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Left for me, however, no security personnel should be made to lose his or her job on this account. For insane cases of police brutality may be, but after thorough investigation followed by compensation to victims and their families. As a country, we need more healing now and not more afflictions. Our ethical and moral account is way too vacant to warrant such high-handedness that obviously is never meant to sincerely or constructively yield punitive or correctional outcomes.

How do you think such a dismissed officer would feel knowing what he knows about his colleagues, his superiors, and his overall boss even. What do you expect to be his countenance seeing his people continue their thing at the many extortion points that he would definitely be bumping into every now and then as a Nigerian alive in Nigeria? He must feel betrayed, used, and abandoned by a guilty Nigeria – himself being culpable.

To my judgement, it will amount to grave injustice to lay off any officer from the force on account of a “new” and “arbitrary” contravention that of course has existed in the force and in the country but only in the books. If you must cast a stone even while yourself a heavily burdened sinner who bears the yolk of his or her own caprices, then you should know better not to take a lethal aim. In fact, you may want to consider throwing last rather than first. Moreover, you don’t effect correction by cutting off the leg whereas the malady sits on the head.

If these investigations and punitive exercises would leave out superior officers in the police hierarchy especially the overall police boss the IG, past, and present, under whose watch and nod all these recorded atrocities were over the years committed, then my point would have been cheaply made.

So in a nutshell, I propose a pragmatic, altruistic, and futuristic practice and culture in our handling of the aftermath of whatever went down these past weeks and what may ensue afterward.

Reason rather than emotions should be deployed. Vision rather than wishes should be frontal. Conciliation and not acrimony should be the spirit. Rule of law, yes, but not in a legalistic pursuit of smokescreen satisfaction that would sooner or later show its counterproductive-ness in a broader sense.

In a laudable move, the police had earlier mandated psychological and perhaps psychiatric debriefing for former members of its now-defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit. This is definitely the way to go for the rest of the security officers, and even more for the defenseless citizens, they have brutalized for too long now.
What better way to rehabilitate a sickened population than through education and welfare. Brutality will never cut it again in Nigeria, even worse bad leadership.

Nigeria and her people are aching emotionally, psychologically and socio-culturally owing to myriad disappointments and abuses that have trail our just over half-century history together. Perhaps no other segment of our population shows the symptoms of these abuses more than our morally and culturally challenged youths. And they are very many and still counting. They would have faired a million times better had they even enjoyed the benefits of a decent and humane secondary school education- not to mention the tertiary through which over ninety percent of them would never be a privilege to sojourn.  So we must stop waiting where we are and instead intensify action, for without expert, compassionate and sincere leadership the game is upon all of us.

A biased and legalistic display of authority and functionality, however, cannot even keep us where we are but will take us even backwards into the abyss.

Let the wise take good heed and let all those civilians forcefully taken into custody on accusations of looting be released immediately. They have had enough molestation already from hunger, bad leadership, and from a brutal socio-economic existence. What they need now is good food, and then a decent life and living in the only country they know to be their own.

By Saliu Momodu.
saliumomoh123@gmail.com