Banker Funso Afolabi has still not recovered from the day he went out for a drink with friends in Lagos after work only to be attacked by armed robbers on the lookout for cash, watches and cellphones.
”We thought it was a joke, until one of them fired some shots into the air. A stray bullet hit one of my friends and he has been unable to use his right leg ever since,” the 40-year-old laments. ”I have stopped going to nightclubs. My family is happier for it because I now get home early.”
Hardly a day goes by in Lagos alone without one or more bank robberies, hold-ups and hijackings, some of them quite audacious.
Nationwide, in the three months to mid-November alone, 62 police officers were killed in clashes with armed robbers, police chief Mike Okiro says.
His men, meanwhile, killed 785 presumed armed robbers — a rate of about nine killings per day — and arrested about twice that number.
Armed robberies also seem to be on the rise in the federal capital, Abuja, despite its ”safe” reputation, and in provincial capitals. Some of the attacks are carried out with police connivance, security consultants say.
”People can no longer sleep with both eyes closed. The government has to do something about the climate of insecurity in the country,” retired police commissioner turned security consultant and TV presenter Frank Odita says.
He blames massive unemployment and the lack of any social safety net for the rise in crime country-wide.
”Around 70% of Nigerian youths are unemployed. Those who cannot withstand the harsh economic situation are turning the heat on those they perceive to be rich,” he says.
A gang of eight recently staged a series of attacks on upmarket hotels and restaurants in Lagos. Many of the robbers do not set out to kill, but will shoot or beat up one or two people in an effort to encourage the others to comply with their demands.
Some attacks are carried out in broad daylight on motorists stuck in traffic.
The latest trick in Abuja is armed robbers in taxis. The passenger gets into the back seat, the cab sets off and the driver’s accomplice pops up from behind the back seat and sticks a gun into the passenger’s neck.
Denial
Police, however, deny any real increase in crime.
”The present crime rate is normal and manageable when you compare with the previous years,” Kaduna state police chief Haz Iwendi says. He adds that police have beefed up security at the ”most vulnerable spots”.
”The crime rate is not rising at all. It is a seasonal problem. Each time Christmas and New Year are approaching, we experience this kind of situation,” Lagos police spokesperson Bode Ojajuni says. ”Our rapid-response squad is under strict instructions to smoke out criminals and rid society of violent crime.”
He says the authorities can no longer tolerate a situation where the police lose men to bandits.
But at least two rights groups have recently complained that what they call Nigeria’s trigger-happy police, best known for mounting illegal roadblocks, are just as much of a nuisance to the civilian population as the armed robbers.
”It’s stunning that the police killed half as many armed-robbery suspects as they managed to arrest during Okiro’s first 90 days,” Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a report last month. ”And it’s scandalous that leading police officials seem to regard the routine killing of Nigerian citizens, ‘criminal suspects or not’, as a point of pride.”
He urged the Nigerian government to launch an inquiry into ”official statistics indicating that police have shot and killed more than 8 000 Nigerians since 2000”.
By Nigerian standards, 8 000 in seven years is positively conservative. Former police chief Tafa Balogun a few years ago boasted that his men had killed 7 198 ”robbery suspects” between 2000 and 2004 alone.
A local NGO, the Network on Police Reform in Nigeria (Noprin), also disagrees with the police method of eliminating criminals.
”President [Umaru] Yar’Adua’s commitment to the rule of law rings hollow as long as his administration takes no steps to bring an end to the epidemic of police killings and other abuses in Nigeria,” Noprin coordinator Emeka Nwaneva said earlier this month.
”What use is the rule of law if it cannot guarantee the right to life? A police force that kills this number of people cannot guarantee public safety,” he said. — AFP
