RIGHTS-NIGERIA: Taming Armed Robbers and Vigilantes

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Oct 3 2002 (IPS) - -Two years ago, when a vigilante group, popularly known as Bakassi Boys, was invited to get rid of armed robbers in Nigeria’s crime-ridden Anambra State, residents greeted the move with a sigh of relief.

Armed robbers were so ruthless that women used to take refuge in the church at night, recalls Chinwoke Mbadiniju, governor of Anambra State.

The Bakassi Boys were invited after the police ‘’had failed” to combat crime in Anambra State, where 2.8 million people – the state’s population – became hostage to armed robbers.

‘’We called upon the police; they did not rise to the occasion. The failure of the police to effectively check the sudden upsurge in armed robbery made us look inwards and eventually, we remembered there was something on ground … we invited Bakassi Boys,” says Bandiniju.

He says the population used to run away from Anambra State. “Now, we are pursuing the armed robbers and they are running away from us. The tide has changed. But when everybody saw that we have virtually reduced crime to its barest minimum the argument changed, they now started raising the issue of human rights because we are killing armed robbers,” he says.

Last week, some 120 members of Bakassi Boys, officially known as Anambra State Vigilance Service, were paraded, along with 46 other suspects, in Abuja, the administrative capital of Nigeria.

During the exercise, the police displayed charms and weapons that were used by the group in its fight against the armed robbers.

The Bakassi Boys — who are believed to be 5,000 in Anambra State — use voodoo and unorthodox means in ‘’detecting” suspected criminals before chopping them with machetes. No trial is required.

Hundreds of perceived criminals have met their death in the hands of the vigilante. Prominent persons in the state also have been harassed.

On two occasions, leaders of the Bakassi Boys, Gilbert Okoye and Emeka Udegbunam were detained in Lagos and Abuja over the activities of the group. Okoye was arrested last year after the murder of Godwin Okonkwo, a local official of the All Peoples Party (APP), in Feb 2001.

Udegbunam, who was briefly detained in 2000, insists all victims of the Bakassi Boys have been on the wrong side of the law. “If anybody comes complaining that there is anybody killed by the group who is not a criminal, I should be held responsible,” he says.

Ifeanyi Ibegbu, an opposition leader in Anambra State Assembly, was arrested and tortured in Aug 2000 for allegedly harbouring suspected armed robbers. He was later cleared by the House, which ordered Anambra State government to compensate him.

Ibegbu accused a prominent politician in the state of instigating the Bakassi Boys to settle scores with him because two days before his arrest, he had a brawl with the politician.

Last week’s arrest of members of the Bakassi Boys has generated mixed reactions.

Emeka Ibe, a trader in Lagos, believes ‘’some criminal gangs”, set up by politicians seeking to settle old scores, were tarnishing the image of the Bakassi Boys.

“If the Federal government should ban the group, it must be ready to provide adequate security in the country,” he says.

James Ucheoha, a Lagos-based political scientist, describes the activities of the Bakassi Boys as similar to the Sharia (Islamic laws) proponents in northern Nigeria.

“The activities of the Bakassi Boys are not different from the mode of Sharia in the north, because of the way they kill people without proper trial,” he says.

“The Nigerian police should interrogate those arrested to determine if they have a hand in the assassinations of prominent people in Anambra State. These people (Bakassi Boys) are an aberration and they have to be kept away. They run an illegal organisation and they have no right to be around, let alone to kill people,” he says.

Rosemary Njoku, a civil servant in Lagos, who hails from Anambra State, fears that ‘’politicians will use the Bakassi Boys to unleash mayhem during the 2003 general elections”.

The fall of Bakassi Boys and other militia groups in Nigeria began late last year when the Nigerian government outlawed all such gangs.

Prominent persons and rights groups and newspaper editorials have condemned the operations of the groups and called for their dissolution.

In a recent editorial, the privately-owned “ThisDay” newspaper warned: “Putting faith in the militia is a hollow solution and giving the faith a legal backing amounts to encouraging illegality. The Nigerian constitution places the police under exclusive list. So the state has no right to legislate on police matters”.

“While appreciating the fact that the Anambra State Vigilance Service is very popular in Anambra State because it has chased out of town armed robbers who terrorise people day and night, legitimising an ethnic militia is not the way out because the idea is fraught with so many in-built dangers. Apart from the fact that the militiamen are not trained for the job they are supposed to perform, there are endless possibilities for miscarriage of justice, extra judicial execution and political victimisation and proliferation of ethnic militia and warlords,” the paper said.

“We believe that the solution to the grave security problem in the country is not in encouraging ethnic armies that could transmute into political armies. It lies in reforming the police and in overhauling our concept of policing,” it stated.

Crime is a big problem in Nigeria. Lagos, the country’s commercial capital, is the worst hit.

Police statistics show that between August last year and May this year, criminals killed 273 civilians. Within the same period, they also killed 84 policemen and injured 133 others.

In the past couple of months, criminals have been operating with impunity, snatching cars on the highways, raiding banks and breaking into homes.

Poverty spurs crime in Nigeria where 49 percent of the country’s 120 million people live below the poverty line, according to the latest official statistics.

RIGHTS-NIGERIA: Taming Armed Robbers and Vigilantes

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Oct 3 2002 (IPS) - Two years ago, when a vigilante group, popularly known as Bakassi Boys, was invited to get rid of armed robbers in Nigeria’s crime-ridden Anambra State, residents greeted the move with a sigh of relief.
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