Alert: CP, Help, Iniobong Essien’s Police Aide is After my Life By Augustine Akpan

For ages now, the Nigeria Police Force has been grappling with a battered image that seems to defy all the redemptive measures that it has put in place to give the force a new face and restore the confidence of the masses in their onerous task of protecting both the lives and property of citizens. The Police futility in achieving this all-important goal is largely due to the excesses of some of the bad eggs among its ranks whose ignoble acts have continued to paint the force in bad light.
While the slogan “Police is your friend” ought to be (both in principle and practice) the lullaby that drives both distraught and dismayed citizens to sleep with their both eyes closed or elicit feeling of security in the face of any seeming threat to their life at the sight of the Police, the sad irony is that some bad eggs in the force have bastardly reverse the slogan to now read “Police is your foe” thereby unconsciously sending a message of insecurity and fear among citizens whenever they see men of the force. What a sad twist!
As one who have over the years enjoyed a robust working/personal relationship with men of the force, I mean both the mighty and the not-too-mighty, I have been reading about Police brutality, molestation or harassment of any sort on the pages of newspapers. Probably because I had learned the Force’s elementary rope of “Obey before complain” right from when I had my eyes on my knees, I had never come close to falling a victim of any harassment until September 30, 2017 when one overzealous policeman attached with the Commissioner for Environment and Mineral Resources who must have sworn by only-God-knows-what to make me have a feel of it.
It happened so sudden like one of those well-planned but transient action-packed scenes in Hollywood movies where before you could recognize the ‘actor’ (protagonist), the antagonist has been killed and the film ended.
For those of you who probably have not read the story I did capturing the brutality and terror unleashed upon citizens who defaulted the last monthly environmental exercise in the state that led to this assault, the long and short of the story is that, the policeman whose picture appears above deliberately attempted to harass me for trying to take shots of traders being manhandled and dragged on the floor as common criminals under the supervision of the authorities of the Ministry of Environment and their hired security personnel in the name of enforcing compliance with the exercise.
The said policeman (whose name am yet to unravel, reason am linking him up with his boss), after watching the lawlessness by the sanitation monitoring team dragging and inflicting serious decree of injuries on their victims thereby provoking me to start taking shots and probably video the extreme human rights abuse by agents of government, in a contrived manner swoop on me to ‘treat my fuck up’ as he later boosted.
Launching his attack on me, the said policeman, had after jumping at me with his gun hung on his neck, in a split of seconds asked more than five questions that he barely spare me a second to answer before holding me by the neck and started dragging me.
Incensed by his madness and approach, I resisted his assault and as well demanded that he should stop dragging me. Infuriated that I had freed myself from his grip and refused handing him my phone, he took hold of his gun and started threatening that if I resisted his commands any further that he was going to deal with me boosting that he has been trained to that.
It only took the efforts of my journalists’ colleagues to separate us, telling him that I was a journalist, since he pretended he never knew me as one. A remark that got me more infuriated asking him if a Policeman must only treat people right based on recognition.
To prove his intent, even after he had so embarrassed and harassed me in a way that no policeman had ever attempted and could not come off his high horse to apologize or at least showed some soberness and remorse, he went ahead to tell my colleagues that if they had not intervened, he would have dealt with me seriously to his satisfaction bragging that after all he would only be “asked to apologize when the harm had already been done”.
On hearing this, I was so enraged by this overzealous cop’s braggadocio and haughtiness all through the period the exercise lasted. While he thought of himself as the most powerful person on earth as a man with a gun, he probably didn’t know what I thought of myself as a man with a sword that is mightier and powerful than the one he knows.
After some colleagues pleaded for me to allow the sleeping dog lie, though his ego and lack of remorse hurt the more each time I looked at him, I had to heed their plea. Though I almost changed my mind moment later when he came around on seeing me chatting with my colleagues and suspecting that I was inquiring about his identity and boastfully threw a challenge that I should do whatever suites me.
But just as I wanted to address his issue the following day, it dawned on me that Tuesday October 3rd was the day that the South South Zone of the Nigerian Police Force had a summit in Uyo.
Being that I had other good policemen as friends, coupled with the fact that the State Commissioner of Police is my very good friend that I have high regards for, I didn’t want to give the police in the state a bad image. So, I decided to belly the insult of the said arrogant cop which by virtue of my position as the CEO of my own company, I could hire him to serve me in the same capacity he was currently serving, if I were to be one that needs such attention. But I simply gave up and ceased fire.
But to my greatest surprise, I woke up to a rude shock Friday morning when one of my colleagues who was part of the team of journalists that monitored the terror-like sanitation exercise called me that I should be careful that the same policeman was looking for me.
He said that he met him at the Police Headquatres, Ikot Akpan Abia, where the said policeman asked after my identity so that he could teach me a lesson as he put it.
Therefore, knowing how mischievous some overzealous policemen could be, in the face of the targeted and contrived assault the said policeman earlier launched against me on the said sanitation day after which instead of apologizing, he resorted to boasting, demand that the Commissioner for Environment and Mineral Resources, Dr. Iniobong Essien (who hired him for the exercise) and the Commissioner for Police should prevail on the said policeman who is now combing everywhere in search of my identity to “teach me the lesson of my life” to tender an open apology and as well sign a surety that should anything happens to me he should be held responsible.
The letter should be published between today 9th October to Wednesday 11th October in any state-based tabloid of his choice. Failure to do so would force me to petition the IGP officially about this threat to my life.
Figure 1Dr. Iniobong Essien's Police aide who is after my life.