By M. B. Abdulazeez, Esq.
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“Prosecution, in principle, should uphold justice but too often in Nigeria, it becomes a cloak for personal persecution. Just as investigations should seek the truth, here they often serve as a prelude to deliberate incrimination.”
Somewhere in Nigeria, just about the time it will take you to read this piece someone is being dragged through the storm of what is called an investigation, but feels more like an orchestrated incrimination. At the same time, someone else is being paraded through a prosecution that reeks more of personal persecution than a genuine quest for justice. These person are being arrested, humiliated or persecuted. Not necessarily for committing a crime, but perhaps for bruising an ego, crossing a line of power, or daring to speak a piercing truth. That someone could be you. That someone was Mr. Scott Iguma. This is the unsettling reality many Nigerians face daily where the noble ideals of law enforcement collapse under the weight of ego, power, and payoffs.
I recently watched the haunting video of Mr. Scott Iguma, an acclaimed social activist, recounting his terrifying ordeal in the hands of the Nigerian Police, an ordeal reportedly orchestrated by PWAN Real Estate Company, which he had hitherto publicly called out on social media for allegedly defrauding unsuspecting customers and investors by selling receipts instead of actual land. His voice, though steady, carried the tremors of pain, injustice, and disbelief. But what struck me most wasn’t just his story; it was how familiar it felt. His experience, as horrifying as it is, is only a drop in the ocean, a piece of cake of daily abuse meted out by the Nigerian Police. An institution that, for many Nigerians, represents not protection, but persecution.
In Nigeria, the police force has become an easily accessible tool for oppression quite readily available to the highest bidder. A bruised ego, a fat wallet, and a whisper in the right ear is all it takes to unleash the wrath of the police on an unsuspecting citizen. As a legal practitioner, I have sat across clients whose lives were turned upside down by nothing more than someone else’s wealth-fueled grudge. I’ve watched the system contort itself to accommodate vendettas, manipulate evidence, and criminalize dissent.
Don’t get it twisted! If someone in Nigeria wants to “treat your fuck-up,” and they have the money to back it, the system is disturbingly prepared to oblige. All it takes is a phone call to a complicit officer, a nod from a pliant police station, unit, or formation, and the machinery of injustice starts rolling. Plans are hatched in hushed meetings; decisions taken in smoke-filled offices. Before you even realize you’re a target, the wheels are in motion. The next knock on your door might be the sound of your dignity being dragged out in handcuffs.
By the time you figure out the plan, it may be too late. You’d find yourself in a courtroom, usually after days of detention, mental and sometimes physical torture. The die is already cast. Bail may be denied. You’re remanded. The punishment has begun long before any conviction.
And so, the stories pile up: beatings in dark cells, arbitrary arrests, trumped-up charges, rights trampled beneath rusty boots all carried out at the behest of “big men,” vengeful business partners, or simply a begrudged fellow citizen with enough money to “make it happen.”
Did it begin with Scott Iguma? Absolutely not!
Will it end with him? We can only hope. But hope is a fragile thing in the face of systemic rot. The question lingers, heavy and unresolved: When will stories and experiences like that of Scott Iguma ever stop? When will the Nigerian Police stop being a weapon in the hands of the powerful and start being a shield for the vulnerable?
Until then, justice remains a luxury, and the fear of becoming the next Scott Iguma continues to haunt ordinary Nigerians like a ghost in the room unseen, yet ever-present.
M. B. Abdulazeez (Almubajal) Esq. is an Abuja-based lawyer and Partner at Lex Imperatores LLP. He can be reached via @mbjabdulazeez across social media platforms.
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