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END POLICE BRUTALITY: WHAT WE TRULY MEAN
I was in a Bus-Imo that fateful day. Having stayed at home for two days, I just had to get out, to feel the air, to understand what new mystery the Sun will reveal, the road, humans, how we laugh, cry, to give my own quota to the general frustration of being a Nigerian.
Then it began –as the wave of EndSars protest ravaged the country –a conversation about the burning of the Nworieubi Police station, how boys with “tested selina” defiled logic and science burning down a ruthless Police Station and how the proceeded at once to Orji Police Station like a court bailiff to effect the same judgment. You see, both police stations were rumored to have committed mortal sins. The one at Nworiubi was known by the rate suspects disappeared and their frequent visit to the morgues like a chronic whoremonger. The other at Orji, had a woman who broke men with slaps, it was rumored once she had slapped an old man in front of his son and the old man unable to explain to his son how he’d let a woman not even his own mother slap him –committed suicide. One of the commuters, a man in his late twenties who looked old but his frail body would make you think he is in his early twenties spoke up and said…
“See… the boys on getting to the station at Fire Service Wetheral road, on sighting the DPO there changed their war songs and began to chant his name, they applauded him for his good work and continued to chant his name, until he (the DPO) had addressed them. I licked my lips at this. It felt good; the whole business of “Karma” at this point made sense to me. The bad gets their pay and the good of course gets theirs too. What bravado…
*****
This would have been my post a week ago if I hadn’t spoken to a police friend. If he hadn’t brought to the fore, that shift, the slight shrug, the uneasiness on my feet I had earlier ignored when I saw an online video of a Police Officer ablaze, screaming and desperately going nowhere.
****
You see, without knowing it that post encouraged violence, burning of police station and as well as the murder –nay murder is to soft a word to denote the vicious cutting down and burning of human beings.
Let me tell you a story.
A YOUNG girl age six. She has an assignment to draw her favorite person in the world; she lies on her bed a green gaudy crayon strangled between her fingers. She starts to paint tenuously, her eyes simmering with admiration as she draws a rough green image of a man, with an inscription dad. With the ‘dad’ boldly written in the middle of the image away from the green, the green crayon couldn’t get it. The dad was pure. You see her dad was a police officer, and this was dangerous at this point, protesters had just been massacred and there was a presumed face off between Citizens and everyone in uniform. He decided to rush home to be with his family. He thought about his daughter what he could get for her… and as he stepped out, a machete lodged at his back slightly missing his spine, but enough to bring him to his knees and before he could turn to identify his assailant a rugged looking wood appeared –the wood seemed to have been used for this job so many times –and made sure he eyes-ed-right. All these were just foreplay for what really came, tire-fuel-fire triplets of doom. They were inseparable. And just before his heart gave out he remembered what he would get for his daughter –His Portrait.
Just so you know the story ended after the drawing.
You see that wasn’t all, there was another at Anambra, who after he was burnt alive –his body denied his relatives who would maybe want to burial what is left of him, had his body eaten up parts of him scattered in angry bellies. And that’s not all. There was another burnt alive too, and then beheaded and had his head demonstrated with, his fried up brains dangling while the shouted EndSars or whatever it is the shouted.
You see nobody has spoken about this, well until now where few comments have been sputtered here and there as the Police feeling betrayed have refused to pick up their uniform. The media has been silent on the brutality meted on the police. You see when we say end police brutality we don’t only mean end the brutality meted out by the police to the innocent masses but also the brutality meted out to the police; the low salaries that render them simply as uniformed hoodlums. You see the same hunger that motivates us to steal, kill, hate, their uniforms are not immune to it.
Let’s speak out for police. Show them that truly we are their friends and want the best for them… that we want the best for us
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