Benin Police Kill 3 Innocent Nigerians

[Richard Akindele]

Three innocent Nigerians lost their lives in controversial circumstances in Benin City recently.

The Nigerians were felled by the bullets from the firearms of the policemen in the Edo State anti-robbery squad. The policemen claimed they were in hot pursuit of a robbery gang who had earlier attacked some people at the foreign exchange parallel market at Sakpoba road, Benin City, on the fateful day.

It was reported that shortly after the incident, a police team near the robbery scene was informed that the robbers came in a white bus. The policemen reportedly went after a white bus and opened fire on it from a distance. The driver of the bus consequently lost control and ran into a ditch. While in the ditch, the police were said to have fired their guns at the bus again, killing three of the passengers, two males and one female. At the end of the day, it was discovered that the policemen had killed innocent persons in error. Those they killed were not armed robbers.


The Edo State police command, indeed, admitted that its men killed the innocent passengers of the commuter bus in error but claimed that the conduct of the bus driver led to the error of judgment on the part of its officers. The driver was said to have ignored police order telling him to stop. The bus driver, it claimed, refused to stop even after the policemen had identified themselves as law enforcement agents. Instead, the bus driver allegedly made a U-turn on the highway and sped off.


It is, however, not clear how the policemen were able to identify themselves to supposed armed robbers in a moving vehicle that was far ahead of them. It is doubtful whether the police would have owned up to killing the victims in error if Patrick Ojezele, a journalist, had not interviewed one of the survivors of the ill-fated bus who gave a vivid account of what happened. The journalist’s camera and tape were seized by the police but released to him much later after he made a strong and open complaint to the Edo State Commissioner of Police. It was the same journalist that informed the crowd that had gathered at the mortuary where the police deposited the bodies of the victims that the police actually killed the wrong persons instead of the robbers.


Though the police had attributed the unfortunate incident to judgmental error, a few questions beg for answers. One, even if the deceased were robbers fleeing from police arrest, are the police permitted by law to carry out extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals before their apprehension and subsequent trial and conviction by the law courts? Two, why did the police fire at the fleeing bus with the intention to hurt its passengers rather than bring it to a halt so that the suspected robbers could be arrested? Deflating the tyres of the bus with gunshots could have achieved that purpose.


More importantly, why did police re- open fire at the trapped passengers of the bus that was already in a ditch whose passengers did not attempt to escape or attack the police? The Edo State police command cannot glide over its officers’ criminal culpability in the tragic but avoidable incident by simply blaming the bus driver. It must answer the preceding questions satisfactorily.


The state’s commissioner of police, Mr. Muktar Abbass, should, therefore, make good his promise to investigate the incident thoroughly and make his findings public.


The truth is that some members of the Nigeria Police feel so much at ease exhibiting gross unprofessional conduct under various guises. In many cases, they have killed or hurt people for not giving them bribes at checkpoints. There are several cases of harmless citizens being mistaken for criminals and killed instead of being arrested. There are so many instances of extra-judicial kilings, like the Benin incident, that people often wonder about the type of training given to those who are saddled with the responsibility of protecting life and property. And because the culprits are hardly held accountable for their dastardly acts, they continue to indulge in those acts with a sense of impunity.


We condemn in strong terms the police’s questionable but very costly and irreversible error that cut short the lives of the three Nigerians in Benin City. We urge the authorities of the Nigeria Police to probe the incident and sanction any of their men that is culpable. There is the need for the police to also carry out reforms quickly with a view to ensuring that their officers and men are properly recruited and trained to carry out their assignments professionally. With a more professional police, who were properly schooled in the art of municipal crime prevention and control, the story of the Benin tragedy could have been different.

Source : Nigerian Tribune