I have a confession to make. A few weeks back, my younger sister was chatting with me when she blurted out that the police arrested my youngest brother for video recording!
You heard right! The details weren’t important to me. My immediate response was terse – he’s on his own. Good luck to him.
In our beloved country, Nigeria, life is brutal. In our encounters with the average uniformed person, it is even worse. Apologies to the few good ones out there. In the first days of the Covid19 lockdown, human rights groups reported that in Nigeria more people were killed by law enforcement than the pandemic.
This is why shame would not allow me to join the global voices of condemnation against brutal murder of brother George Floyd by America’s historically racist police. I have a problem pointing to a mote in someone else’s eyes with the huge log nestling comfortably in mine. On the other hand, I ponder whether there would ever come a world in which only those who live in the best societies have earned the moral rights to condemn global inequality.
As I prepared this piece Thursday morning, I listened to press review on three Nigerian radio stations. Punch reported that Olaoluwa Bolarinwa, an Ibadan-based man and his own brother, Oreoluwa Abiona, both residents of Ibadan, Oyo State were arrested for a robbery allegation pinned to a friend of one of them. They were kept in a police station in Ibadan until Madam Blessing, the wife of one of the detainees fulfilled bail conditions for Oreoluwa who was kept in vicarious captivity. Her attempts to secure freedom for the sibling proved abortive. They later discovered three days later, that Olaoluwa had died in custody.
The Nigeria Police were yet to inform the family officially. They were yet to disclose where they are keeping his body. It is assumed that the police tortured Oreoluwa to death, as usual. May 13, soldiers gunned down Rinji Peter Bala in Jos. They later excused his murder by saying he was a suspected armed robber as if suspicion justifies exrajudicial murder.
Last week, it emerged one Jolayemi, an ewi (Yoruba poet) was declared wanted by the police in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital. Rotimi Jolayemi released an audio piece that laced accusations against two federal ministers. While looking for Rotimi, the police picked up his wife and two siblings. They detained the wife for eight days without trial, obvious bait to the broadcast journalist in. To justify the vicarious detention of the brother, Joseph, they accused him of phone theft. But a report in PremiumTimes says they played back an illegal wiretap between him and his fugitive brother rather than stick to their phone theft suspicion.
When Rotimi finally presented himself he was charged with Cybercrime. I am yet to come across a law that allows police officers or prosecutors to detain wives for presumed misdemeanor of their husbands; or the detention of siblings for the infractions of their kin.
My little knowledge of law would limit vicarious liability as it applies to Nigeria. In other parts of the world, it may be criminal to harbour a fugitive where and when there’s proof usually not before the fact. Sureties forfeit their collateral if the person they surety bolts. They could never be charged for or detained for the offence of the people they surety.
Those familiar with the war against the excesses of Nigeria’s uniformed thugs would remember a hashtag to dismantle SARS an outfit set up to combat crime that ends up being used to terrorize the citizenry. Wives being vicariously detained for the sins of their husbands, or siblings going into long unlawful detention for the purported crimes of their wanted siblings are common occurrences in our country. So is extra-judicial murder and after the act cover-ups.
The courts have granted huge fines for illegality, but the uniformed agencies hardly pay up. It is not unlawful to take picture or video where no express signs preventing such. But in Nigeria taking pictures or video recording is ‘an offence’ for which some have been beaten and others killed. Those in doubt should attempt a picture of the Federal Secretariat, the cenotaph opposite it, NNPC, CBN or any other building including the imposing National Assembly.
It is embarrassing to see Nigerians crying more than the bereaved for racism on which today’s America was built when their lives count for nothing on home soil. No black person would have value anywhere if they have no value anywhere in Africa. It does not justify the racist carnage but it’s worth bearing in mind. For all its violent adventure across the globe, nobody messes with an American outside America, even a black one.
The reason racism persists against black people is because you cannot be treated as disposable in Africa and be valorized elsewhere. Every minute, a black life is wantonly wasted in a police raid or on the road somewhere in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. We no longer even feel bad about it, we tuck such stories into the inside pages and carry on as if a fowl has just been slaughtered. In Nigeria, and most parts of Africa, the life of the African is cheaper than that of the chicken or cow.
Rest in peace George Floyd. I hope your killers meet the full force of the law. Unfortunately justice is never served where willful murder is committed. No amount of money brings back a lost life. But seriously speaking, most of us have no basis to kick against Floy’s killers, more blood have been spilled on our soil where people are arrested for making video recordings.
