by Eketi Edima Ette

The Police Force. An institution of corrupt bullies that Buhari should look into, instead of telling us how he’s reducing presidential fleet upandan.

Something happened on Friday that brought another event to mind.

I’d just finished having lunch at Jevinik Restaurant with my sister and my friend, Chigozie. I flagged down a cab and told him our destination. Jabi. We were going for the Open Mic Night held by the Abuja Literary Society. We haggled, a bargain was struck and we piled into the car. At the nearby junction where we were to make a left turn at the traffic light, the driver went a little past the white line where cars should stop.

The policeman directing traffic didn’t like that.

“What are you doing?” he bellowed at the driver.

“Ya kuri,” the driver pled, two hands joined together and lifted up in supplication.
“Officer, no vex.” He said it over and over.
Pacified, the policeman turned away.

For some reason, the driver took his leg off the break and the car jerked forward. That was all that was needed for the policeman to become angry.
The driver began a fresh litany of pleas; I even joined in, but the olopa was having none of it.

“OFFICER!” he shouted, motioning to one of his colleagues who was standing on the sidewalk. “Arrest this man!”

His colleague, who must have eaten the mushroom of madness spiritually manufactured in Enugu-Ezike, shouldered his gun, came to the front passenger seat where I was seated, and yanked the door open.

“Madam, shift inside!” he barked, with his buttocks nearly in my face.

I stared at his behind for one stunned moment.

“Are you mad? As in, something told you that you and I can sit together in the front seat of this car. Tell that something that it can never happen.”

It was their turn to be shocked. Then Officer 1 said, “WHAT? Come on, get down or shift inside! Officer, push her and sit inside.”

I laughed, one derisive, sarcastic kind of laughter.

“Try it,” I said. “Push me and sit inside let me see. Mtscheeeew! You think it’s everyone you can bully, abi? Una don jam stone today.”

Officer 2 stepped back, carrying his offending behind away, muttering something about not wanting woman wahala.
Officer 1 was almost foaming at the mouth, so great was his anger.

“You don’t want to get down, abi?” he whipped out his phone and started taking pictures abi videoing, I couldn’t tell which.

Me? I brought out my own phone. Officer, you and me, we’ll see who wins. I will make you famous on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Just give me two minutes. Nonsense!

A third police officer came to the door and politely asked me to get down.

Lailai!

“Sir, you people don’t have a problem with me. Go and settle your issue with the driver and leave me out of it. I am a taxpayer and my taxes pay your salaries. Your colleagues have no right to speak to me with such disrespect.” Me, myself and I, we wee not tekkit!”

He kept pleading. Eventually, I got down, but not before giving Officer 1 a proper tongue-lashing.
*
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That incident reminded me of something that happened last year. I’ll give a brief version. My friend’s father owns a hotel here in Abuja. One day, a woman came to lodge there, along with her son, a toddler.

The next morning, one of the housekeeping staff went to clean the room and found the little child, a boy of about two or three years old, lying under the bed, wailing. A search for his mother yielded no results.

They took the boy to the police station, where they were made to pay money to convince the police that they didn’t kidnap the child. Shebi you see the Nigerian police?

Then they were asked to pay a weekly stipend of twenty thousand naira for the boy’s upkeep. According to the police, “Oga, na sand we wan feed am?”

The story made it into the papers. I can’t remember if it was the Leadership or Daily Trust.

Anyway, FOUR months later, a civil rights group went on a prison visit to Kuje prisons. They were asked to speak to one of the prisoners, a woman whom the wardens said had been crying since the day she was brought there.
One of the team happened to be holding the newspaper which carried the story of the abandoned boy. Immediately this woman saw it, she began to scream like a banshee.

“My son oooooo. That’s my son ooooooo!” she cried, her tears falling fast. No one could get her to shut up.

“Madam, how is he your son?”

“He’s my son. I left him one morning, four months ago, in a hotel in Nyanya. Please, please, where’s my son?”

When she was calmer, they were able to get the whole story out of her.

Things were tough for her. She knew she shouldn’t have, but that morning, she thought it would be alright if she could pop into the market, sell a few things and return before her son woke up.

A police van drove by just as she stepped outside the gates of the hotel. The policemen in all their olodo glory, did the math.

6: 30 a.m. + Lone woman + coming out of a hotel = ashewo.

So they picked her up for prostitution. She refused to “settle” them with sex, insisting that she was a single mother on her way to make an honest living. She had no money to bribe them either.
So they said she was “proving stubborn,” trumped up charges and threw her in jail, where she cried every day for four months, agonizing over what had become of her child.
*
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I have several stories like these, but these ones will do for today.
Just know that the police is not your friend. Not in Nigeria anyway.

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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Eketi Edima Ette is a writer. She can be reached on Twitter @Ketimay