- Femi Falana, SAN, Human rights lawyer on Wednesday carried out a scathing evaluate of the Nigeria Police, tracing the reason behind the rights violations, extortion, and brutality that has sparked protests throughout the country.
During an appearance on Politics Right now, by way of a Skype call, the senior advocate traced the issue to how policemen and women are educated for his or her roles.
It’s a course of he believes is archaic and leaves officers with “no thought of human rights, human relations”.
“We’re actually not addressing the issues,” he warned referring to efforts made to reform the police.
“The training of the police is colonial; utterly primitive. A person becoming a member of the Police Force, he goes to the police college. A woman goes to the police college dehumanised. A cannot make her hair; she has to chop her hair. A person has to shave his hair to the cranium. The feeding is unhealthy.”
Falana’s feedback come amid widespread protests in opposition to police brutality, particularly the actions of the now-dissolved Special Anti-Robbery Squad that turned infamous for extortion, assault, and killings.
The human rights lawyer who has repeatedly condemned rights violations by the police just isn’t, nevertheless, shocked by the phobia unleashed on citizens by members of the unit and many of their colleagues within the drive time beyond regulation.
Police training within the nation, he stated, prepares them to ignore rights.
“They’re educated like colonial policemen to brutalise the society and that’s what’s going on,” he stated.
And it isn’t simply beginning.
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In keeping with him, way back to the Second Republic, issues of extrajudicial killings had emerged with the Nigerian Mobile Police unit on the receiving end of allegations of brutality.
“So, those that are in mobile unit – we used to name them kill and go within the Second Republic underneath IGP (Sunday) Adewusi (in office from 1981-1983), that has reworked into SARS.”
The brutality so far as Falana is worried is implanted of their psyche on the police school.
“What’s the training within the college? They (trainees) are teargassed in rooms with out home windows. And for them (the authorities) that’s the method to prepare them. They’re crushed, tortured, and the feeding is unhealthy,” he stated.
“So when the person or the girl comes out of the college, he needs to brutalise the society that dehumanised him within the college.”
Then there may be the problem of poor salaries and welfare with barracks and stations denied sufficient funding.
“Police stations aren’t funded. So, day by day, to run the station, the DPOs rely on extortion of cash from the general public, from suspects,” Falana added.
“Some stations aren’t constructed by the federal government however by members of the community.”
