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Crime 'flourishes' in Nigeria
30/11/2007 12:36 - (SA)
Edward Harris
Lagos - Men carrying AK-47s leap from late-model Mercedes Benz sedans and burst into a Tex-Mex restaurant, training their weapons on tables crowded with foreign workers, greasy fajita pans, Corona beer bottles and ashtrays.
"On the ground, you white monkeys!" one bearded robber shouted at customers scrambling to the floor, as another rifle-butted the skull of a man trying to instigate a diners' revolt. "Everyone empty your pockets!"
Nigerians said crime had flourished since the end of military rule in 1999. Debate on how the latest civilian administration was responding reached new levels in recent weeks after police announced they had killed hundreds of suspected armed robbers.
In the three-month period after President Umaru Yar'Adua's May 29 inauguration marked the first-ever hand-over of power between civilian government, 785 armed robbery suspects died in gunfights with police, while 1 857 were arrested, said the Inspector General of Police, Mike Okiro.
Cops kill 'armed robbers'
Okiro's announcement, which landed on the front pages of newspapers countrywide, drew ire from human rights organisations, commentators, and ordinary Nigerians.
They feared the focus on casualties over arrests meant the brute force methods pioneered by the military and mastered by criminals had been passed along through successive civilian regimes.
Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said: "It's stunning that the police killed half as many 'armed robbery suspects' as they managed to arrest during Okiro's first 90 days.
"And it's scandalous that leading police officials seem to regard the routine killing of Nigerian citizens - criminal suspects or not - as a point of pride."
8 000 people killed
While firm nationwide crime rates and killings involving police weren't available, Human Rights Watch cited fragmentary figures provided by authorities showing more than 8 000 people had been shot and killed by the police since January 2000.
Before the end of their rule in 1999, Nigeria's military juntas placed troops in major cities, where they patrolled streets and kept a lid on crime, along with political dissent and other freedoms.
When they went back to their barracks that left only the police. Few Nigerians pine for the military days, but they said civilian governments hadn't trained honest, civic-minded police to fill the security vacuum left when troops abandoned the streets.
Michael Padonu, a 57-year old school administrator in a Lagos slum, said: "Under the military regime, we had less crime. When we saw the army, we were fearful.
"Now there's less security. People don't respect the police. They're not trustworthy."
In Lagos, about two-thirds said crime was worsening in the city, according to a 2006 survey by a Nigerian think tank focused on justice issues, Cleen Foundation.
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