The duty of protecting the lives and property of citizens in usually the responsibility of the police anywhere in the world. However the recent events playing out in the Ikorodu axis of Lagos state has citizens of the state and the country at large asking the question - how well are the police handling these responsibilities?
The horrible crimes committed by the notorious group called "Badoo" should be handled in a more professional manner by the police.In every society, there are peaceful and law abiding citizens and among them there would be people who engage in criminal activities. A professional police department should be aware of this fact and therefore carryout proper and in depth investigations and root out the perpetrators of these heinous crimes without injury to it's law abiding citizens. However the system adopted by the police as a solution to this problem was to cast a large drag net, by making random and indiscriminate arrests of citizens who were not members of the dreaded cult.
About a 100 persons or more were arrested by the police who had no tangible evidence linking a number of the persons who they termed as "suspects" to the crimes committed by the dreaded cult. Most of these unlucky civilians had their photos taken and pasted on the pages of some Nigerian dailies regardless of the fact that they were yet to be adjudged guilty by a competent court. It was a typical tactic of "arrest first and get evidence later". Mr. Okewunmi Omotoyosi Daniel was among the unfortunate persons who were bundled into a police vehicle and detained without prior evidence linking him to any wrong doing. In a country were there is sanity and equity, such a person who has been traumatized by this incidence ought to be appropriately compensated, but can we expect that?
A more significant presence of the police in the Ikorodu area would most likely have curtailed this problem and the resulting backlash of the community who had begun taking the laws into their own hands by killing persons they suspected to be members of the group.
As citizens of Nigeria, are we not entitled to better? Should we not have a police force who should actually protect us rather than subject us to unlawful imprisonment?
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