LONDON (TrustLaw) - From policemen demanding bribes at roadblocks to senior officials embezzling millions of dollars, graft in Nigeria's police is so systemic that officers are regarded "more as predators than protectors" by the people they're supposed to serve.
That was the view of Human Rights Watch researcher Eric Guttschuss, who said failure to pay bribes often leads to severe beatings by the police, sexual assault, torture and even the killing of innocent citizens.
He said most abuses are committed either in police detention or at illegal police checkpoints - set up ostensibly to fight crime but, in reality, to extort money from bus drivers and their passengers.
"Police corruption not only leads to these very serious human rights abuses that are generally carried out by rank-and-file police officers, but it also undermines the rule of law in Nigeria," Guttschuss told a briefing based on a 102-page Human Rights Watch report published earlier this year.
"For many Nigerians, the police have come to be viewed more as predators than as protectors," he told Chatham House, a London-based thinktank last week.
With its entrenched culture of patronage, Nigeria is considered one of the world's most corrupt countries by watchdog Transparency International, and many Nigerians see the police as the embodiment of that.
With some 371,800 personnel, Nigeria's police force is Africa's biggest. In 2006, it was ranked as the most corrupt public institution in a survey by the CLEEN Foundation, a Nigerian civil society group focusing on security and justice.
Yet a lack of political will means impunity for both police officers who steal public funds and those who commit abuses, Human Rights Watch says.
PREYING ON ORDINARY PEOPLE
The Human Rights Watch report details how ordinary Nigerians are subject to mass arrests in restaurants, bars, bus stops and markets - referred to as "raiding" by police who then demand money for their release.
It also highlights the risk for women. Along with Nigerian rights groups, Human Rights Watch has documented several cases in which women, who had been detained and refused to pay all or part of the amount demanded, were raped or subjected to other forms of sexual assault.
The longer an individual was kept in custody, the more chance the police had to extort money, the report says.
"You have to pay to enter the station, to see your relative, for cleaning supplies like disinfectant to clean the cell your relative is in, and for privileged accommodation so your relative isn't in a place that's dirty, damp, unlit," the report quotes a lawyer as saying.
Entrenched corruption means money usually has to pass hands from victim to police officer before an investigation into a crime begins - unless the victim happens to be a high-profile individual.
"When I go for an investigation, the complainant has to pay transport, buy the pens, the paper to write the statements on and the detention order paper, applications for bail bond, medical papers to get them treated," a police corporal in the capital Lagos told Human Rights Watch.
Not only must the complainant pay the cost of an inquiry, but if he is unable to pay the money demanded or if the accused offers to pay off the police, the complainant risks being framed by police on false charges, the rights group said.
CORRUPT RETURNS
Guttschuss said corruption has been institutionalised in the police force through a lucrative system of "returns" in which rank-and-file officers are expected to give a cut of the money they take at checkpoints to officers higher up in the chain of command.
While low-ranking policemen are derided for their efforts to obtain small bribes, corruption on a much grander scale has been uncovered among the top brass - most notably, former Inspector General Tafa Balogun, who was convicted in November 2005 of laundering $150 million and sentenced to six months in jail.
Also speaking at Chatham House, Chris Murgatroyd, head of the director's office for West and Southern Africa at the UK Department for International Development defended DFID aid to Nigeria, despite the country's endemic corruption and huge oil wealth.
"I think we are justified in saying there's a valid role for foreign partners, there is a role for agencies," he said.
DFID has spent 8 million pounds ($13 million) since 2004 on community policing in Nigeria, working in 18 of its 36 states.
However, Professor Bruce Baker, director of the African Studies Centre at Coventry University, said DFID's programme offered little solution to the scale of the problems in Nigeria's police force.
"To take on police reform in Nigeria is daunting. I think it's worth trying but I think it's very, very difficult and we shouldn't be surprised that ... DFID and others have so achieved so very, very, very little for all their earnest efforts," he told the briefing.
Police reform is difficult not only because the top levels of police management are political appointees, but it is not in the political interest to have a single, cohesive police force, Baker said.
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