Something evil, sinister and morally reprehensible happened in the ever bustling Mpape town, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory in January last year.This incident was the senseless massacre of eight persons by armed mobile police operatives which unleashed a reign of terror on a crowd that was protesting the dastardly and cruel killing of a middle aged pregnant woman and a staff of Bank PHB Mrs. Doris Okere. This innocent pregnant lady was killed alongside her unborn child by a yet- to- be publicly named trigger happy police operative who out of unnecessary and deadly overzealousness, discharged the noxious contents of his AK47 riffle on a commercial taxi that was reversing near the Zenith Bank in Mpape.The police authority claimed that it was wrong for vehicles to reverse near banking premises because of the possibility of the men of the underworld attacking the banks. But there is yet no explanation for the cruel murder of an innocent passenger who sat behind the driver of the Abuja coloured taxi that was violently and unprovokingly accosted by this trigger happy police operative who opened fire because he thought the driver would not respect his orders by refusing to stop forthwith the reversal of his taxi near the bank.Angered by this dare-devil act of the trigger-happy mobile police operative, the crowd spontaneously attacked the Bank because the offending police man took refuge inside the banking hall and his fellow police officers shielded him and did nothing absolutely to pacify the angry crowd who were fed up with series of abuses of their fundamental human rights by police operatives who are paid and maintained with tax payers' money to keep law and order and not to kill innocent citizens through extra-judicial means.Observers of the event in Mpape called what happened on that day as 'the Mpape massacre by Nigeria police'. One other unfortunate out- come of that needless violence unleashed on the innocent people by the police in Mpape is that the woman killed in this whole madness with her unborn baby also left a barely one year old baby Chidiebere and her [Doris's] husband. The implication is that a little Nigerian boy has been made motherless and a young Nigerian man made widower because of the wicked and reckless misuse of firearms by a certain police operative who has not yet been publicly identified and prosecuted for this crime against humanity.We are concerned about the fact that massive evil took place in Mpape and for nearly one year neither the then Inspector General of police Abubakar Ringim nor the Attorney General of the Federation, Bello Adoke, thought it wise to ensure that the perpetrators of these dastardly acts are prosecuted in the competent court of law and punished to serve as effective deterrent to other would ' be trigger happy police operatives. But it is better late than never in which case the new hierarchy of the Police should fish out the indicted police operative for appropriate prosecution.That the police hierarchy has made it a duty not to prosecute indicted police operatives for alleged involvement in extra-legal execution of Nigerians is no longer in doubt. In the same Abuja sometime in June 2005, six young Nigerians (now called Apo-6) were gruesomely murdered allegedly by a team of police operatives headed by a serving police Deputy Commissioner Mallam Ibrahim Danjuma and for nearly half dozen years, the Abuja High Court is yet to conclude the matter in which a Senior Advocate of Nigeria Chief Chris Uche is heading the prosecution team. The matter involving the dastardly killing of these six young Nigerians known as Apo-six was charged before Justice Ishaq Bello of the Abuja High Court on August 2005.In 2006, the Abuja High Court granted one of the key suspects Mallam Ibrahim Danjuma, the Deputy Commissioner of police, bail on health grounds. The Deputy Commissioner of police Mallam Danjuma has always made himself available at each of the court sessions but the draw back to the case is that the prosecution witnesses are afraid of their lives if they testify against the police operatives because of the fact that the key suspect who is still powerful in the police is out on bail. But will the Nigerian state not have institutional arrangement on protection of these kinds of prosecution witnesses'The acting Inspector General of police Mallam Mohammed Dikko Abubakar should set up a team of experts to compile records of all cases of extra-legal killings involving the Nigeria police so that he would activate internal mechanism for comprehensive in-house cleaning. The National Human Rights Commission with the new power it has been granted should also prosecute indicted police operatives involved in extra-legal execution of innocent Nigerians including the woman and others killed over a year ago in Mpape-Abuja. As far back as 1948, the United Nations enacted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which has a binding force of international law on all member nations of the United Nations including Nigeria which became politically Independent in 1960 and immediately signed on to the United Nations charter less than one year thereafter.In the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the entire humanity proclaimed thus; 'Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world'.The code of conduct for law Enforcement officials, Article 2, United Nations General Assembly, in 1979 proclaimed thus; 'In the performance of their duty, law enforcement officials shall respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the human rights of all persons'.Is Nigeria truly a democracy and what kind of democracy will thrive in an atmosphere of impunity' Why should the nation's police chief be the one to defend erring police operatives even before the incidents are properly investigated and taken to court for prosecution as was the case when the disgraced former Inspector General of Police put up spirited defense in favour of the police operative that allegedly carried out the Mpape massacre' Can somebody please tell the acting Inspector General of police that the anger of Nigerians against the police is approaching its peak and if concrete steps are not adopted to redress the various cases of human rights violations, then the bottled- up anger against the police by the civil populace may spill over and could result in popular uprising similar to what just happened in Egypt. Is the Nigeria's acting Inspector General of police not aware that the Egyptian police were the first targets of the popular uprising by the good and courageous people of Egypt which later toppled the four decades old dictatorial regime of Hosni Mubarak'Police massacre of the civil populace must stop in Nigeria if we must avoid a popular uprising and revolution against the grossly incompetent and inept Nigeria police force.It is a well established fact that the preamble to the universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the link between lack of respect for human rights, and the likelihood of disruption to the peace.Chapter four of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which specifies the Fundamental rights provisions should be transliterated or translated to Nigeria's major languages and distributed to all Nigerians and importantly to the police operatives for the benefit of those operatives who are not sufficiently educated in English language. Nigeria police force must be reformed comprehensively and only educated, competent and professionally-minded Nigerians must be recruited to form the new Nigeria police.Onwubiko heads Human Rights Writers' Association of Nigeria and can be reached on www.huriwa.blogspot.com; www.huriwa.com.
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