New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) Tue sday urged the Nigerian government to rein in the pervasive problem of police corruption in Africa’s most populous nation, saying “it’s time the Nigerian government at all levels took the devastating problem of police corruption seriously”.
“They should start by investigating and removing senior officers who tolerate and encourage extortion, and who deprive hard-working members of the force of the resources they need to do their jobs effectively,” Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at HRW, said in a report released by the organisation.
The 102-page report, entitled: ‘Everyone’s in on the Game’: Corruption and Human Rights Abuses by the Nigeria Police Force,” said widespread corruption in the Nigeria Police Force was fueling abuses against ordinary citizens and severely undermining the rule of law in Nigeria.
The report said police officers in Nigeria routinely extort money from drivers a nd passengers at roadside checkpoints, in some cases resulting in confrontations that escalate to violence and other serious abuses.
In the report, which HRW said was based on interviews with ‘more than 145 victi ms of and witnesses to police corruption in Nigeria’, the rights group documents how, on a daily basis, countless Nigerians traveling on the country’s roads, buy ing or selling at markets, running daily errands, or working in their offices are accosted by armed police officers demanding bribes. To extort money, these officers frequently threaten victims and commit human rights abuses.
It also found that some senior Nigerian police officers enforce a perverse system of “returns,” in which rank-and-file officers are compelled to pay up the chain of command a share of the money they extort from the public, thereby institutionali zing and driving extortion-related abuses.
“If we don’t have money at the end of the week, we will get money. We will pick someone and arrest them,” the report quoted an unidentified police corporal as saying.
HRW said senior police officials were also allegedly embezzling staggering sums of public funds meant to cover basic police operations, noting that though the 2009 budget for the Nigeria Police Force totaled US$1.4 billion, ‘the daily reality is that embezzlement and mismanagement has left the police with limited investigatory capacity and government forensic laboratories at a near standstill.’
The report said crime victims were routinely forced to pay the police to conduct every stage of an investigation from the moment they enter a police station to report the crime until the day their case is handed on for prosecution.
‘Those with no means to pay are left without justice, while criminal suspects with money can simply bribe the police to drop a case, influence the outcome of a criminal investigation, or even turn the case against the victim,’ it said.
HRW said the report also showed how government ministers and officials charged with police oversight, discipline, and reform had failed to root out systemic corruption, adding: ‘Public complaint mechanisms, internal police controls, and civilian oversight remain weak, underfunded, and largely ineffective. Victims of police abuse and extortion also cited fear of further victimization as a key reason for not reporting these abus es.
‘Successive Nigerian administrations have acknowledged many of the problems described in the Human Rights Watch report, and have set up panels and committees to examine and make recommendations for police reform. Unfortunately, the recommend ations of civil society groups and the various government panel reports have been largely ignored,’ it said.