Juliana Francis
The Executive Director of the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC), Mr Okechukwu Nwanguma, has enumerated some factors why police personnel continues to find themselves in situations where they kill Nigerians despite the nationwide #EndSARS Protest in 2020, which kicked against police unprofessionalism.
Nwanguma explained that RULAAC, a non-profit organisation in Nigeria, is of the opinion that the persistence of unlawful police killings, calls for a deeper understanding of the root causes.
He said: “If after the October 2020 #EndSARS protests, extortion, torture, extrajudicial killings and other forms of police brutality remain prevalent, then there is a need for serious reassessment to understand the causes and apply the appropriate solutions. There is no doubt that impunity, a consequence of the state’s failure to ensure effective investigation of incidents with a view to bringing perpetrators to account is a key causative factor. But I think that alone will not suffice unless another factor is addressed.
“The compromised process of police recruitment which circumvents the established guidelines and allows unqualified, unfit and untrainable people to find their way into the police.”
Nwanguma noted that an additional factor was the failure of the police top echelon to ensure psychological evaluation of candidates before they were recruited, and then periodically evaluating them while in service to ensure that they were mentally fit to be entrusted with firearms.
“Other factors are the deficit in forensic capabilities and professional standards, and poor working conditions which impoverish personnel and make them prone to corruption and violence. All these contribute to the predatory behaviour and tendency to easily misuse firearms. Unless there is a genuine commitment to implement reforms that address these problems, we will only continue to lament and condemn after every incident and wait for the next to happen. And then police authorities will do no more than give assurances of investigation and that may be the end. Addressing these challenges calls for competent leadership both at the level of the police and at the political level,” said Nwanguma.
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