Bring those lawless Navy ratings to justice

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ON November 30, Tochukwu Agina, an Anglican priest, was riding in a commercial bus in Okpotouno, Ogbaru LGA of Anambra State when Nigerian Navy ratings at a road checkpoint ordered the vehicle to stop.

His “offence?” Holding a mobile phone. The ratings demanded to know if he was making a call or filming them, and he replied no to both.

Unsatisfied, one rating ordered him out of the vehicle, sought permission from their commander, and proceeded to beat the priest with a combination of slaps, punches, and sticks, targeting his head and midriff, until his clerical collar and clothes were soaked in blood.

His head wounds required heavy bandaging in the hospital. This is barbaric, sadistic and highly condemnable.

The priest later told journalists that the checkpoint had nothing to do with maritime security; it was an extortion point where motorists who refused to “settle” were punished.

The Naval ratings who nearly murdered a cleric for holding a phone were illegal toll collectors and a disgrace to the military.

Those uniformed thugs must be identified and given the maximum punishment under the law.

Sadly, this brazen assault is not an aberration. It is a regular occurrence.

Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999 was supposed to end the military’s culture of impunity.

Instead, that culture simply changed address, from the barracks to police stations, highways, and neighbourhoods.

Today, members of the Armed Forces behave less like defenders of the people and more like an occupying army contemptuous of the civilians they are paid to protect. This is at odds with global practice, democracy or common sense.

The day after the Anambra abomination, on December 1, soldiers and police officers traded punches in Jos, Plateau State, because a police officer stopped soldiers from abducting a roadside phone repairer whose only crime was failing to fix a soldier’s handset to satisfaction. The repairer was to be dragged to the barracks for “discipline.”

That is the mentality: might is right, and civilians, uniformed or not, are subjects. This must stop.

Memory is short, but the roll call of shame is long.

In August 2022, six soldiers driving against traffic in Lagos dragged two police officers to Ojo Cantonment and flogged one of them, Saka Ganiyu, an inspector, to death.

That same year, soldiers shot and killed a police officer in Eleme, Rivers State. In 2020, another police inspector fell to army bullets in Badagry.

In 2018, soldiers from 174 Battalion, Odogunyan, Lagos, allegedly beat a civilian to death in a landlord-tenant dispute. The Army denied the charge.

In early 2023, Operation MESA soldiers summoned to quell political violence in Makoko, Lagos, simply opened fire on arrival, killing a secondary school pupil, Pelumi Sulaimon, and a motorcycle rider, simply identified as Aloma.

In August 2023, soldiers in Babana, Niger State, murdered a commuting nursing mother and her infant because the commercial motorcyclist refused to pay a N200 bribe.

Just as indelible in memory is the November 2008 incident in which naval ratings attached to Harry Arogundade, a senior naval officer, assaulted a young woman, Uzoma Okere, in traffic on Victoria Island, Lagos.

These events reveal a disturbing military mindset: superiority, lawlessness, and violence as the default reaction to perceived disrespect.

While soldiers terrorise priests, nursing mothers, and police officers, real terrorists ravage villages, abduct schoolchildren, and hold large regions hostage. Yet the military targets defenceless civilians, rather than confronting the real threats.

The proliferation of military checkpoints is another scandal. From Lagos to Maiduguri, soldiers who should be in Sambisa Forest or in the Lake Chad islands are mounting roadblocks, demanding “roger,” extorting traders, and meting out instant jungle justice.

The country is over-militarised in the wrong places and catastrophically under-militarised where bandits and jihadists reign.

Military-police rivalry has become a national embarrassment. When police kill a soldier, even in self-defence, soldiers retaliate by burning police stations and murdering officers.

In one particularly grim episode in Badagry, Lagos, a Divisional Police Officer, a Divisional Crime Officer and eight other police officers were slaughtered by soldiers avenging a colleague’s death.

Contrast this with the 2013 murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in London. The perpetrators, British citizens of Nigerian origin, were arrested by police, tried in open court and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The British Army did not storm the streets, burn police stations or drag suspects to barracks for torture. That is the difference between a professional army and an armed gang in uniform.

The Chief of Naval Staff, Idi Abass (vice-admiral), must take personal responsibility for the barbaric assault on Agina.

The tired refrain of “we are investigating” or “the erring personnel will be sanctioned” will not suffice.  The ratings who beat the priest, and the commander who authorised it, must be identified, court-martialled, dismissed, and jailed. Anything less is complicity.

But punishment alone is not enough. This incident must trigger the long-overdue reform of Nigeria’s entire security sector.

Clear, enforceable rules of engagement with civilians must be published and drilled into every recruit: soldiers have no business in civil policing.

Landlord-tenant disputes, traffic offences or debt recovery are sorted out by individuals, lawyers and civil authorities. Military personnel must steer clear.

Checkpoints must be drastically reduced and placed under joint civilian oversight.

Body cameras must be mandatory for personnel on internal security duties.

An independent prosecutorial mechanism, outside the military chain of command, must be created to handle cases of rights abuses by security agents.

The thugs in uniform must be weeded out. Such odious conduct has permeated even the senior ranks. Until officers are held accountable, the rot will continue.

Nigeria cannot claim to be a democracy when its citizens live in fear of the very institutions meant to protect them.

A soldier who slaps a priest for holding a phone, or shoots a nursing mother for N200, is not defending the country; he is waging war against it.

The National Assembly, the President, the Service Chiefs and civil society must act decisively.

The era of impunity must end. The Nigerian military must align itself with 21st-century practices, where the uniform is a symbol of service, not a licence to kill.

Until that day comes, every Nigerian remains a potential victim of the men who swore to defend them but choose instead to degrade.

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