By Lanre Olagunju
A few days into the administration of Olatunji Rilwan Disu, inspector-general of police , one sentence from his inaugural address appeared to stick in the national memory: impunity is over.
Many Nigerians understandably heard that as a warning to policemen. But perhaps the more interesting interpretation was that the warning was broader: impunity, whoever wears it, has no uniform.
That distinction matters.
In April, when 28-year-old Mene Ogidi was shot dead in Effurun, Delta State, after police operatives reportedly intercepted him over a parcel containing a Beretta pistol and four rounds of ammunition, the response from the Force was unusually swift. The principal officer, ASP Nuhu Usman, and other members of the team were removed from the command and subjected to disciplinary proceedings. The Force Disciplinary Committee found Usman had acted in gross violation of the rules governing the use of firearms. He and four others were subsequently dismissed, with the police saying they would face prosecution.
The message was unmistakable: the badge is not a licence to break the law.
But here is where the story becomes more complicated.
In March, the Federal High Court in Warri affirmed citizens’ right to record police officers performing their duties in public. The judgment naturally appealed to a society increasingly accustomed to using mobile phones as witnesses when institutions themselves are being questioned.
Then, this week, the issue walked straight into the room when the new President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, met the IGP in Abuja.
Disu raised concerns about the indiscriminate filming of officers, particularly for social-media skits. He pointed to officers manning checkpoints, highways and remote, often dangerous locations for long hours. Turning such encounters into online entertainment, he said, can be deeply demoralising.
The concern is valid. So is the principle behind the court’s judgment.
The NBA President did not dismiss the concern, nor did she surrender the principle.
Her argument was essentially that there must be a distinction between recording a police officer in the performance of a public duty and invading the private space of a police officer. A policeman stopping a vehicle on a highway is not the same as a policeman eating lunch. Transparency is not voyeurism, and accountability is not entertainment.
That distinction may be the beginning of the conversation Nigeria actually needs.
For what is a camera in the hands of a citizen? It can be a shield, a weapon, a witness or, sometimes, a toy.
It can expose an abuse of power. It can also turn a difficult police encounter into viral entertainment before anyone can establish what actually happened.
The police, therefore, should not fear the camera. Also, the citizens shouldn’t confuse the right to document public authority with a licence to humiliate public officers.
And this is where the police themselves must rise to the challenge.
If an officer knows that his conduct can be recorded, reviewed and tested against the law, that should not produce fear. It should produce confidence in doing the right thing. Equally, if an officer is working in an isolated forest or standing at a dangerous checkpoint at 2 am, the public should understand that the uniform is occupied by a human being, not a prop in somebody’s next skit.
Perhaps the better question is not whether Nigerians should record policemen.
It is: how do we build a police culture where accountability is not perceived as hostility, and scrutiny is not perceived as persecution?
There is another opportunity here. If phones have become ubiquitous witnesses, perhaps the Police should think beyond resisting the camera and towards owning the technology of accountability themselves: body cameras, better digital evidence systems, clearer protocols for public encounters and transparent mechanisms for reviewing complaints.
The citizen should not have to become the police officer’s unofficial body camera.
But no policeman should have to work under the assumption that every phone pointed at him is an accusation.
The police need the public’s trust. The public needs the police’s protection. The courts need evidence. Lawyers need access. Officers need dignity. Victims need justice.
These are not competing ambitions.
The recent meeting between the NBA and the Police may therefore be more important than the argument over who is right about the phone camera. Both institutions have recognised that recurring confrontation serves neither justice nor public safety.
What Nigeria needs is a relationship in which the Bar can question the badge without disrespecting it, and the badge can enforce the law without fearing the Bar.
That is what “impunity is over” should ultimately mean.
Not that the police must always be right.
Not that citizens must always be right.
But that, whoever is wrong, the law must be allowed to say so.
Lanre Olagunju wrote in Abuja
