Seun Kuti: Snapshot of Nigerians, police toxic relationship

Some relationships can be toxic. So toxic that the small confines of such relationships could contain enough venom to kill a herd of cows, or burn down a house or village, or unleash a hail of blows, bullets or flying daggers.

Maryam Sanda has been convicted of murdering her husband. Geng Quandong, the Kano-based Chinese man is being prosecuted for knifing his girlfriend, Ummu Kulsum Buhari, because something went wrong in their relationship.

And when his love interest jilted him and accepted the proposal of another suitor, a certain Musa Abdullahi in Kano decided to torch the girl’s family house, almost leading to her death.

Relationships sometimes go bad. People have always reacted differently. Depending on the circumstances, the toxicity in relationships is in various degrees and gradients. Some more than others. But perhaps one of the most toxic relationships there has ever been is the entanglement between Nigerians and the Nigeria Police.

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This week, Seun Kuti, the musician and son of afrobeat legend Fela and his encounter with a Nigeria police officer that ended in the officer being assaulted and Kuti being arrested was a snapshot of this dangerously toxic relationship.

Something triggered Kuti enough to pursue a police officer in his car, catch up with him on the Third Mainland Bridge and physically assault the officer. In the trending video, a visibly irate Kuti was seen shoving the officer around and then slapping him. The irony of course was that the officer didn’t attempt to defend himself, had his hands down the whole time and took the assault like a . . . well, I will let you fill in the blank.

Kuti claimed the officer tried to kill him and his family. He says he has evidence and I suppose when the case goes to trial, he will be expected to produce the evidence. Of course, a threat to one’s family is socially accepted as a justification for, not exculpation from, certain actions or reactions. The problem here seems to be that Kuti has a habit of dazing police officers. In his own words in another video, he had said, “Some of una, police go slap una, una go come Instagram to explain. You know how many police I don tear slap?”

No, we don’t know exactly how many officers Kuti has thwacked. Perhaps someday he will give us his body count because clearly not all of them have been caught on camera like the last incident. But it is bothersome that anyone would take pride in such random acts of violence on law enforcers. 

Just some weeks ago, another musician, Portable, decided to practice his thuggery on two police officers. He would not be the first. Even lesser-known Nigerians have been known to beat up police officers in uniform. Not to talk about how soldiers tend to deal with police officers. There is general disdain and disregard for the police and there have been far too many assaults on them. The most pressing question here though, is why is all of it even necessary in the first place?

As the Hausa say, while investigating the thief, sometimes it helps to also look at the thief’s pursuer.

The disdain I mentioned earlier is mutual. The police harbour enough of it for Nigerians. You only need to look at their treatment of Kuti to see this. The moment Kuti turned himself in, after the IGP had ordered his arrest, the police proceeded to make a freak show out of him. His mugshot was soon made public. At least they let him keep his shirt on but they made him take off his shoes.

Perhaps someday, there will be an explanation as to why suspects are often being stripped down and paraded like cattle in the market. The way Kuti was presented to the press is not only retaliation for his public humiliation of an officer, it is honestly a manifestation of that disdain.

The officer assaulted by Kuti seemed rather meek and did not attempt to protect himself and the symbol of authority he represents. He might have apologised for the transgression that earned him the slap, as Kuti claimed, but an assault on a police officer is a crime. The officer, perhaps triggered by his own guilt, stood and watched that crime and desecration happen.

That is where the problem stems from. If we are being honest, the first party to desecrate the sanctity of the police officers’ uniform are the police force and the police officers themselves. No, I am not talking about the fact that senior police officers have been known to loot the budget for outfitting officers and therefore forcing officers to pay for their own uniforms out-of-pocket but I am talking about the conduct of officers in their uniforms.

A couple of weeks ago, a video of a drunk police inspector who shat in his uniform went viral. There is that infamous viral photo of two uniformed police officers fighting like rabid dogs supposedly over a disagreement on sharing their checkpoint taking for the day.

Checkpoints! Now, that is the sewer where the Nigerian police lost their dignity the most. The conduct of our officers at these checkpoints, erected randomly and most times with no objective other than to extort motorists and occasionally shoot those who refuse to part with meagre sums, is where that loss of dignity was brought to our streets and put in our faces. Over-the-counter trade between police officers and their customers, oops, I meant complainants, has been going on for long. Bribe-taking, bribe-demanding and extortion have become second nature to the police. No lie, this has created a lot of resentment for the police.

We have seen worse conduct from the police, from effectively turning themselves into VIP handbag carriers, to umbrella holders and uniformed muscle or muzzle for hire to celebrities, moneyed folks –legitimate business people and yahoo-yahoo boys alike — and gun carriers for criminal elements. The police have lost a lot of face, leaving what is left of that face to be palm slammed by men like Kuti.

While I commend the IGP’s intervention in the slap and determination to demonstrate that officers of the force cannot and should not be humiliated by the people they should be serving, this campaign must go beyond the cosmetics and ensure that officers are looked after and cared for. I have written here before about how suspected murderers of a police officer were allowed to walk out of court because the police prosecution team could not be bothered to turn up for the trial.

The police are as frustrated with themselves and with Nigerians as Nigerians are frustrated with them. It is a mutual relationship of fear and loathing that has built and deepened over the years. Unchecked, it will continue to deepen.

If, for instance, when Seun Kuti felt the police officer in the video had recklessly endangered his and his family’s life and knew for certain that there was a channel to report the officer’s misconduct with the assurance of fair, transparent and expedited investigation and appropriate sanctions, do you think he would have wasted his time shouting in the officer’s face and slapping the daylight out of him?

It is called the safety valve theory. The police have to create legitimate channels for people to let off steam, report officers’ misconduct and see that disciplinary measures are taken, transparently. In the absence of that, such arbitrary assault and abuse of officers will only continue.

The toxic relationship between Nigerians and the police must come to an end—the toxicity, not the relationship, and the first step to ending it has to be taken by the police. We simply cannot slap or crime-shame our way out of it.