Police and Torture in Nigeria

Abstract

The Nigerian police force was set up by the British colonial government to deal with ‘unruly natives’, some of whom dared to question the right of the British occupier to issue commands to and make laws for the owners of the colonised territory. The police force was established to facilitate British administration and commerce within the colony, in other words, to make life easier for British administrators traders who had the ‘misfortune’ to encounter African natives in the course of their work or business, while inevitably making life harder for the locals. This was thus from the outset a top-to-bottom, we-and-they police force, condescending to discipline the ‘savage’ Africans. This psychological profile of the police as a ‘superior’, emotionally removed component of a foreign occupying force has not changed. It remains today the mindset of the police in Nigeria. So, although the colonial power has left, the police remains a colonial police. Nigerians still do not own it. The police force in Nigeria is a leprous, foreign imposition and people’s business is to do their utmost to avoid contact with them. My thesis is that to understand this topic, one must bear in mind the history and psychological profile of the police. Therefore, attempts to improve police behaviour by addressing structural variables and cognitive reorientation alone cannot work; attention must be paid to attitudinal variables and affective reorientation. Municipal, regional and international instruments forbidding torture are necessary and desirable, but without the softer, more informal and more foundational factors of shared humanity and ownership, the police will for a long time remain the pernicious and nefarious occupying army it has been for a century or so.In this presentation I often use the term ‘police’ to include other law enforcement agencies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). I justify this generalization as follows. In the first place, most of the personnel in such other outfits are drawn from the police, thus importing from the police into the allegedly new agencies the inbuilt deficiencies that bedevil law enforcement and security in this God’s own country. Secondly, and perhaps more insidiously, the other security or law enforcement agencies view the police as their template for organization, operations, and discipline (or lack of it).