As incidents of police violence against Black people in the United States wake up, campaigns against police brutality across Africa have also been targeted. Protestants in some of the continent’s most populous countries – Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa – are outside the respective US embassies there to condemn the death of George Floyd.
In Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with roughly 200 million people and one of the largest youth populations in the world, a report by the National Human Rights Commission found that in the first two weeks of the coronavirus lockon in the country in March more people died at the hands of the security forces than of COVID-19.
The report documents 18 extrajudicial killings in those two weeks, a period in which Nigeria had just 11 COVID-19 related deaths, and in total during the country five weeks ago, 29 extrajudicial killings were documented.
The abuse does not end there.
As a director in Nigeria’s thriving Nollywood film industry, Lanre Adediwura is a man of privilege and standing. That did not stop him from falling victim to the country’s infamous police.
When he was dragged across a road in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, last year, Adediwura expected his interaction with police to be rapid and uneventful. Instead, according to his account, he and his pregnant friend spent the day at a police station, beaten and arrested.
Adediwura said he was driving after a rehearsal in April 2019 when he picked up his friend at a bus stop on a busy city road. When he got back into traffic, a tuk-tuk – like a three-wheeled car – with four policemen pulled over him, he said.
One of the officers, a woman, stepped into the passenger seat of his car and told him he had been arrested for blocking the entrance to a bank, he said. They protested, and Adediwura said an official attached him to the steering wheel. His friend in the back seat screamed and the policeman punched his friend in the face with her elbow.
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Adediwura said he and his friend were arrested for abusing the female police officer. After the assessment, he was left with a broken rim and bruises on his face, he said. His friend also had an injury to her face, he said.
“I had to sell my car because every time I drove it, I remember my nightmare experience with the police,” Adediwura, 36, told NBC News by phone from Lagos State, Nigeria.
The case went to court, but Adediwura said the magistrate dismissed the case because the police did not attend the trial.
NBC News was unable to independently verify Adediwura’s account. Nigerian state police did not respond to several phone and email requests from NBC News for comment on Adediwura’s allegations.
Reports of police brutality have been intervened by those trying to mark police reform what they say are abuses on their own grounds.
Segun Awosanya, a civil rights and social justice lawyer who founded the Social Intervention Advocacy Foundation in Nigeria, said he was not surprised by the commission’s findings.
“We are asking police officers to add lockdown security to their duties, even though they have already failed in their normal day-to-day duties,” he said.
In countries that are particularly black, police brutality is not rooted in racism, Awosanya said, but rather stems from the history of colonialism, which “focused on protecting the ruling elite.” This problem is compounded by underfunding and lack of training, he said.
At the end of July, the Nigerian police force issued a statement online saying it had arrested three policemen and one civilian suspect neighbor for the ‘dehumanizing treatment’ and harassment of a woman in a firale video.
In the video, local police in the city of Ibadan, speaking in Yoruba, asked a woman indecent questions about her relationship with an armed robbery and abducted suspect, following a robbery at his home – including questions about whether the suspect took her. virginity and whether he was her sugar daddy.
Police said the three policemen were arrested for their role in ” discrediting behavior and conduct for a member of the public. ”
According to a report released in June by United Kingdom-based human rights group Amnesty International, there were at least 82 cases of torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial execution by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad within the Nigerian police force in May 2020. -robbery unit is commonly known as SARS.
“SARS officials have reversed their duty to protect Nigerians in an opportunity for extortion and theft of money, property and other securities belonging to suspects and their families,” Amnesty International wrote.
The report is based on five field research missions conducted by its researchers in Nigeria between January 2017 and February 2019. They interviewed 82 people, “including victims, journalists, human rights defenders, witnesses of abuse, relatives of victims and lawyers,” the report sei.
Since 2017, human rights activists, including those at Amnesty International Nigeria, have called for the dissolution of the unit, but it remains operational. In January last year was the Nigerian police tweeted that it worked to reform SARS and told the Nigerian public to “be patient.”
The Nigerian police force overseeing SARS did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the criticism.
Police abuse is not limited to Nigeria.
On the other side of the continent, in Nakuru County, Kenya, three policemen were arrested in June after a video showing men dragging a woman behind a motorcycle and whipping her went viral on social media, causing unrest over the continent arose. The Directorate of Criminal Investigations in Kenya issued a statement online confirm that “the suspects are in legal capacity and assist in further investigation into the case.”
In South Africa, a country with racism deeply rooted in its history, protests were underway in June about the death of a man who was seized by police. The country’s police watchdog, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, told NBC News that during the coronavirus lockon, 588 complaints were received from excessive police force and investigated 11 deaths by police action.
One of the main cases of police brutality in Nigeria lies in the history of how police offices were first set up, said Awosanya, the Nigerian civil rights lawyer.
“Most of the police system we have across the continent is the system that was set up during colonialism,” he said. The Nigerian government is still responsible for the law enforcement principles laid down under European rule, he said.
Colonial policing was designed to ‘protect the government and not the government’, Awosanya said. Even today, police in Nigeria work for the people in power, he said, an idea that recognizes the practices of European colonial forces from 60 to 100 years ago.
A report this year by the Awosanya Foundation said that of the more than 371,000 police officers in Nigeria, now about 100,000 are allocated to provide security for the elites instead of taking care of regular duties.
Amnesty International Nigeria spokeswoman Isa Sanusi agreed, telling NBC News that in Nigeria the police system is carrying out the legacy and impunity of the colonial era – and this is “in part the reason why the police are now better known. is for their brutality. “
But colonialism is not the only source of police violence in Nigeria.
Lack of funding for the police breeds corruption, and there is a great need for adequate training and pay for officers, according to Awosanya.
He said the entire Nigerian national police force needed reform, not just the SARS unit. Attempts have been made in the last 10 years to reform the police force, he said, but “any attempt to carry out or carry out police reform, restructuring, repaying the Nigerian police always fails due to lack of political will of the government and the people. “
Community policy initiatives should also be adopted to encourage police to build a relationship with the public they serve, Awosanya said. Those changes, he said, cannot happen without the support of legislators.
“Things need to change,” Sanusi said, “and policing needs to have a human face.”
