Personnel of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) are fast becoming an endangered species judging by the spate of attacks on them, ranging from assaults to being shot with livebullets while performing their official duties. In July alone, four major attacks on the staff of the organisation have been reported in different parts of the country. This is clearly unacceptable. That the personnel of this agency are not armed should be a plus and not a minus, especially, in a democracy where the rule of law, rather than force, should have a pride of place. But it would appear that these officials are being assaulted, abducted, runover, and even killed by some unscrupulous road users who find it difficult to be decorous and law-abiding unless the law enforcers could use brutal force. The reported involvement of the personnel of some sister security agencies, especially the police and the State Security Service (SSS) in the attacks on FRSC officials is unsettling.
At the front burner right now is the horrifying July15 episode of the shooting of two FRSC officials at Aro Ngwa on the Enugu-Port Harcourt road. The police/DSS escorts attached to the wife of the Speaker of Abia State House of Assembly allegedly shot and wounded the FRSC personnel. They were shot for daring to flag down the speeding and recklessly-driven car conveying the Speaker’s wife.
The innocent FRSC officers had earlier allegedly been beaten to a pulp by some SSS operatives. And in a stark display of callousness, the victims who suffered serious gunshot wounds in the neck and waist were abandoned at the scene of the incident. But for some road users who assisted in getting the victims to the hospital, they would have bled to death. They would have died as a result of the indiscretion of the police whose responsibility, first and foremost, is to secure lives and property of citizens! This is a staggering level of impunity that calls to question the state of the mind of the perpetrators. Even if the FRSC staff had done something wrong, the police/SSS men should have handled the matter in a civilised manner but they chose to behave as if no one could call them to account.
It is a relief, however, that the Abia State Commissioner of Police has reportedly ordered the arrest and orderly room trial of the aberrant police officers. The sanctions to be meted out to these violent police/SSS personnel should not be limited to those within the security agencies internal disciplinary measures. For instance, it will not sufficiently serve the cause of accountability and justice to merely suspend the officers from duty or even disengage them from service. They must be held legally accountable for their actions: they should be charged to court under the appropriate codes to answer to the law.
The average security personnel entrusted with official weapons is assumed to know the appropriate situations and circumstances to use the arms and when that critical assumption no longer holds good, then the official is no longer worthy of his calling.
The minds of some public officers tend to work in strange ways. Otherwise, why is it that the same people that ordinary Nigerians run to for redress when they are abused by overzealous security agents are the ones orchestrating such mistreatment in a brutal fashion?
Nigeria is by no means a lawless society even if there seems to be a preponderance of individuals in positions of authority who would rather observe the laws of the land in breach. Such persons, no matter how highly placed, must not be allowed to go scot-free whenever they run foul of the law.
Those who are privileged to hold power on behalf of the society and have ignorantly become power-drunk ought to be taught a lesson as to where the ultimate power resides.
This is why the law must take care of all those implicated in this unfortunate, even criminal incident.
