Police Officer Sentence to Death by Hanging.
HE Nigerian Police lived up to its unsavory universal reputation as a 'kill and go' outfit last month. One of its senior members was sentenced to death by hanging for the cold blooded murder of a Nigerian citizen. The convict then had tried to pass off the unfortunate victim as an armed robber.
It was not the murder of 26 year old Perry Samuel that had incurred the ire of Justice Olushola Williams in sentencing 60 year old Inspector of Police Muslim Folorunsho to death by hanging, however.
Grievous as the crime of murder is, the presiding Lagos High Court Judge had, according to reports, been irked by the fact that the Policeman murderer, his colleagues in the act, and the Police establishment had all worked assiduously to cover up the crime by not being forthright with their submissions and in not co-operating during the trial.
Inspector Folorunsho, according to evidence before the court, on August 2, 2005 had shot and killed Mr. Samuel as he drove with other friends in a Mercedes Benz 230 car at the CMS bus-stop in Lagos, allegedly, in broad daylight.
According to evidence made available in court, a commercial bus with four or five plain-clothes policemen had been parked along the route of the car in which Samuel and co had been traveling. Apparently without provocation, Inspector Folorunsho had shot at the car from behind, shattering the rear windscreen and hitting Mr. Samuel in the process.
Seeing that one of the occupants of the vehicle had been hit, the plain-clothes Policemen had ordered the surviving occupants to board their unmarked bus, an order that onlookers resisted, forcing the killer-cops to ferry the wounded Samuel to the hospital. There, in the hospital, Mr. Perry Samuel spent close to three months before he died.
Meanwhile, the killer-cop had refused to own up and take responsibility for the act, forcing the family of the slain young man to take the matter to the Office of Public Defenders of Lagos State which took up the matter in court.
In ruling that Inspector Folorunsho must die for his crime, Justice Williams had condemned efforts by the Nigerian Police to frustrate the case. "The defendant's colleagues who were eye witnesses to the crime did not attend court to testify", she rued.
But the instructive point of this all-too-familiar story is that the Police tried to confuse the whole process of convicting one of their officers for extra-judicial killing by claiming that the innocent traders had been nothing but 'armed robbers'.
Howbeit, the Inspector General of Police, Ogbonna Onovo has had occasion to warn serving Policemen to be careful about how they use and handle the guns placed in their custody by the tax payers.
This is because hundreds of Nigerians have been brutally murdered by those in whose hands they have reposed their trust and security. The global human rights watch group, Amnesty International (AI) had occasion late last year to indict the Police for the unconscionable habit of being judge and executioner at the same time in its operations and killing hapless citizens in this cold-blooded fashion under the guise of combating crime.
It may just have been possible that Inspector Folorunsho at age 60 had been unlucky and had committed a grave error by being too quick with the trigger of his rifle under the stress of his job.
It may also have been possible that this clearly overage officer, who should have no business being a field operative, may have unmindfully shot at an unarmed citizen. Whatever be the reason, he is still liable to prosecution and conviction.
But what is very troubling about this whole saga was the attempt by Folorunsho's mates to cover up this crime and shield him from the consequences of his action.
One or two issues stand out in this very unfortunate saga. First is that those who commit crimes must own up to them before pleading for leniency on grounds of extenuating circumstances.
It does not help the polity when armed public officials who betray their oaths of office resort to legal, constitutional, or semantic gymnastics to wriggle out of the crimes they have committed against citizens.
It was bad that Inspector Folorunsho killed a man in cold blood but it is even worse that he and his colleagues did everything to deny his nefarious act.
It is an aspect of the rule of law that people like Inspector Folorunsho would appeal their sentences. Without prejudice to the outcome of any such appeal, the point at issue is that security agents, paid from public funds should not have the impunity to kill Nigerian citizens at will.
That is why, though we acknowledge Inspector Folorunsho's right of appeal, we applaud the judgment of Justice Williams.
This will probably and hopefully serve as a check on other trigger-happy police and military personnel who see the wanton killing of un armed citizens as a mark of valor.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201002150110.html
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