Encounters with the Nigerian Police: Tales from Lagos"

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Hmmm, my encounter with the force, I believe if you live in Lagos Nigeria for a reasonable amount of years you would have had an encounter with at least one of the force, particularly the Police, maybe not directly but I think it's very difficult to not have had at least one.

Well, the first one I had was after my secondary school , that period in which we work while waiting for admission into the University. The day started as usual, I was supposed to be at home till around 4pm when I go to my friend's Game centre where I help to run, but my next compound friend called me to walk him to the bus-stop , on getting to the bus-stop he boarded a bus after which some of our friends met me at the bus-stop and we were just chatting, next thing I saw was one of us taking off , then I tried running but I was not moving from the spot, then I realized I was held by my belt by the police man, so I stopped trying to run, next thing that followed was a slap to my face that led me into their Danfo (Van).

While in the Van, the police van entered into our street and was picking people up, first after me was a guy on his way to work, they parked beside him and told him to enter, the most hilarious one was a guy sleeping on a bench in the compound of his church, they parked, woke him up and told him to enter the Van, it was so hilarious, it was not until few minutes later that the guy realized what just happened to him .

Arriving at the police station we were put behind the counter and we were told to call anybody that will come and bail us, so I called someone in my compound who came as soon as he could come, when he got there and asked why they picked me up, their answer was what really pissed me off. The police man answered and said, I was picked at the bus stop because I might be thinking of stealing a bike, it was just absurd that a police officer could say what that man just said . At the end they collected 5000 naira for bail and that's how I left the police station. My second encounter with them will be a story for another day .

After these encounter I was really mad at the entire police force, to the extent that if I had super powers like superman I will probably would have made sure there was no police force anymore in Lagos at least, but overtime I have also come to the realization that although we have some bad eggs among them, we do need the police force in our society for the society to function well.

The lesson I learnt from these experiences was that in Lagos you can not be too careful to avoid a force altercation ,you can just be very lucky not to have one