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Backdoor return of police checkpoints

Published by Tribune on Tue, 30 Sep 2014


The decision of the Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Suleiman Abba, to start an extensive stop-and-search by the Nigeria Police, through the setting up of Tactical Operation Points, could be seen as a return to the notorious days of checkpoints by the police in spite of his public pronouncement about the dismantling of checkpoints. This is because the so-called stop-and-search points would still operate like the typical police checkpoints, stopping vehicular traffic for police scrutiny at very odd places to justify the appellation of tactical operation.We recall that one negative feature of police operations in Nigeria that many Nigerians have come to find unsalutary is the setting up of checkpoints at many places, including awkward and unnecessary settings, essentially to extort money from members of the public. Whereas checkpoints are a part of the normal tactical operations of the police all over the world to provide an avenue for apprehending those who violate laws and regulations, the way checkpoints have been conducted in Nigeria over time has turned them into a negative reality that many Nigerians have come to associate with corruption in the Nigeria Police.Rather than aiding security and the apprehension of criminals, goals which the police hope to achieve through the Tactical Operation Points, checkpoints in Nigeria are notorious as avenues for unnecessarily delaying motorists and commuters in the quest by the police operatives to extort money from them, even as criminals take advantage of such settings to pay the necessary toll and evade apprehension.It was this negative perception and reality of checkpoints in Nigeria that must have informed the decision of the former IGP, Mohammed Abubakar, to outlaw the setting up of indiscriminate checkpoints by the police and ensuring during his tenure that the ubiquitous checkpoints did not return. The Acting IGP must have been aware of this negative perception of checkpoints by Nigerians for him to publicly announce the dismantling of all police checkpoints in the country, even while reintroducing them through the setting up of the Tactical Operation Points.The excuse for this unprogressive decision is that the level of security challenges the country is facing now calls for special counter-insurgency efforts, such that the police would have to introduce special Tactical Operation Points as part of the review of their operations. But it is also the case that the country has not benefited in any concrete sense from the operations of checkpoints or other special points in the past and the Acting IGP would find it difficult to convince Nigerians that the only way he could propose to properly confront the insurgency and the growing insecurity in the country is through the re-introduction of something akin to checkpoints.Nigerians know that no remarkable security screening gets done at the various checkpoints beyond the taking of bribes and the extortion of money from motorists by the police operatives. Indeed, this position has been further confirmed by the report of an unscrupulous policeman who was so moved by the windfall he expected to start coming to him and other police operatives with the setting up of the Tactical Operation Points by the Acting IGP that he pronounced fulsome blessings on him for the decision. And we know that if the rank and file of the Nigeria Police is aware of what the real objective of such points on Nigerian roads is, the Acting IGP would not be able to claim ignorance and pretend that the points are for security control. The case could, therefore, be made that the Acting IGP is perhaps much more interested in satisfying his officers and men and helping them to revive their cash cow than addressing the security and corruption concerns of Nigerians.The former IGP obviously did not succeed in totally cleansing the Nigeria Police and turning them into what they should be, but it has to be acknowledged that he started on the right path with the ban on checkpoints and Nigerians would have expected his successors to build on this modest positive step by further strengthening the police, removing other negative traits and not seeking to re-introduce those negative traits already removed.There is nothing to show that police operatives have changed from their old ways of extorting money from Nigerians under various pretexts and this should make the Acting IGP to realise that the return of checkpoints through the setting up of the so-called Tactical Operation Points would only amount to a return to extortion on the part of his officers. We advise him to look for other ways to strengthen the operational effectiveness of the Nigeria Police rather than treading a beaten path that would only return them to their old ignominious ways.
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