- Policemen who killed Akapson must not be shielded from justice
When 31-year-old Anita Akapson, relation of a former finance minister, Nenadi Usman, returned to Nigeria after her university education in the United Kingdom, one of her plans was certainly not to die in the prime of youth, her dreams largely unfulfilled. But then, in the ‘state of nature’ that is contemporary Nigeria, a veritable jungle of insecurity where life is ‘solitary, nasty, brutish and short’, Akapson’s existence this side of eternity was abruptly terminated at about 11 pm on October 13.
Was this innocent lady murdered by armed robbers or some other variant of hardened criminals? No, she ironically died while driving out of her residence at Katampe Extension by Gwarimpa Estate in Abuja, from the bullets of policemen who are paid to protect citizens and their property. This tragic incident only reveals how difficult it remains to distinguish between the law enforcement agent and the blood-thirsty felon in Nigeria today.
Indeed, so routine has the wanton killing of civilians by security agents, particularly the police, become in Nigeria that the news of another life needlessly snuffed out hardly shocks anymore. This is one measure of how much human life has become devalued in the country.
The implausible tale of the policemen responsible for this dastardly act as reported by the media is that on the night in question, two thieves attempting to steal a car, which they had already demobilised, were intercepted and arrested by a police patrol team. One of the suspects, however, reportedly escaped from the police and jumped the wall into the late Akapson’s compound.
The implication is thus that the police mistook Akapson for the absconding criminal as she drove out of her residence and shot her in error. Even if this story is to be believed, and the driver of the vehicle shot at by the police was actually the car thief being sought after, should professionally trained policemen have shot the suspect dead in cold blood? Was it not possible to demobilise the vehicle or shoot in extreme circumstances to incapacitate the suspect without recourse to what amounts to extra-judicial killing?
Of course, the deceased’s family in a petition to the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Ibrahim Idris, signed by their lawyer, Mr. Kayode Ajulo, offered a completely different version of what actually happened. According to the family, their daughter was gruesomely shot in the stomach and killed even after the police had effectively disabled her vehicle through several bullets shot at the tyres. In the words of Ajulo, “The circumstances of the trailing, tracking and gruesome murder of the deceased who had a strong affinity with Senator Nenadi Usman, a member of the leading opposition political party in Nigeria, and who is presently facing continuous prosecutions from the state, calls for thorough and comprehensive investigation”.
We cannot agree more. The IGP has reportedly asked that the affected policemen be detained while directing the Commissioner of Police in-charge of the Federal Capital Territory to thoroughly investigate the incident. Those who take such information with a pinch of salt cannot be blamed. Too many inconclusive investigations have been ordered into several such police killings in the past, creating the impression that the police hierarchy is ultimately more interested in protecting its own than ensuring that justice is done.
In our globalised world of free and fast information flow, this kind of news instantly goes viral, generating understandable fears in the minds of Nigerians in Diaspora and indeed foreign citizens as regards the wisdom of coming to live in a place perceived as being as unsafe as Nigeria.
We commiserate with the deceased’s family and urge the IGP to ensure that this matter is urgently and diligently investigated and justice speedily done.
