My four-day unjust remand in police custody provided me a window into the plight of Nigerians afflicted by institutional corruption within Nigeria police. It was an eye-opener worth its weight in gold. I am glad I did not express the will to avoid skin pain and buy my way out of a crowning glory of my life as a 70-year-old Nigerian who has served his country in many theatres of life and qualify for some respite from injustice of any kind that was largely undeserved, save in spiritual terms. Yes, certain experiences are meant for higher tasks, inconveniences of the instant moments notwithstanding.
One Chukwuma Nwachukwu vowed that he would spend his filthy lucre ensuring that I was prevented from being king of a community, Amohuru in Aboh Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo State, which I share with him. He fraudulently foisted a surrogate, one Anthony Anyanwu, of doubtful antecedents on my community under a ruse that his name was used for negotiating and obtaining autonomous community status and so negating the will of the community enshrined in a constitution.
His main reason was that an honest man could never bring joy to any community in present day Nigeria. Despite a constitutionally-conducted election from which I emerged as Eze (king), he vowed to pay his way towards stultifying the will of his people. Forged documents were used in the ministry in charge of community government to make good his objective. To make good his boast, he induced various arms of government to sustain his goal. He got the Nigeria police to harass my majority supporters and herd them before security agencies, and failed to establish his case against me in any of them. He bought off Community Government Ministry and had a report to the effect that Anthony Anyanwu was Eze-elect of my community, and this was written and sent to the Nigeria police in answer to a query from there as to who was Eze of Amohuru Community.
My coronation was to be shelved by this report extracted with corruption at various levels of the Nigeria police. My people resisted this, and coronation was planned and executed with aplomb even as I was physically whisked away as a common criminal under the undue influence of money paid to Nigeria police authorities to ensure that coronation did not take place.
I spent three nights and four days at Criminal Investigation Department (CID) cell at the Police Headquarters, Owerri, to give Chukwuma Nwachukwu and his doomed cohorts of rape of public will some respite from strings of crimes perpetrated against my people and their will for their own choice of Eze. He walked tall and proudly announced the fall of the big tree of Amohuru. Little does he know that my name is ‘Sacrifice’.
The lesson of my experience is that it is possible for government and its institutions to be afflicted unwholesomely by corruption to the extent that the fate of over 5,000 members of a community could be imperiled by bribery of a small number of police officers in our midst who could, as law enforcement officers, be turned into terrorists by wads of naira notes in paper bags.
Come to think of it, this means that the Nigeria police could be sold to the highest bidder. This is a monstrous foreboding for impending elections in Nigeria. It is both disconcerting and rueful that we are in an election year.
This present article is a first in a series during which I intend to let the country know how much Nigeria police has been personalised by intrinsic and external distortive factors into a gold mine for those paid to protect the people whose patrimony is being used for self-enrichment by officers whose mandate is to ensure that laws are kept for the welfare of the majority of citizens.
Since I do not give a damn whose skin will be hurt, having lived in public glare through 70 years in this country, with no record of cutting corners for my escape from hardship, I do not intend to leave any important statement unmade in the series. I thank God for the media, for internet, and devotion of some civil society organisations interested in the welfare of states and their peoples. The series will be worth their while in setting their agenda for change.
The bottom line is that the Nigeria police can be bought and used as a terrorist organisation for as long as someone is prepared to pay operatives high and low for tasks which may be diametrically opposite their real mandate. That indeed is the sad story I shall tell.
To garnish my story, I will tell of cases of people in custody whose Investigating Police Officers (IPOs) have long been transferred out of station and whose records may never be available for consideration by the high and mighty officers of Nigeria police. Those have society as their real foes, if they find their freedom somehow. A jail-break was contemplated the first night I was there. And fellow ‘animals in the zoo’ worsened their woes. Nigerians languish in police custody without any state provision for food and with no relief in sight as members of human zoo which inmates are warped, out of alignment with real human beings. And our country gambols as a nation with doomed prospects of nationhood.