Let’s be honest, for possible psychological and environmental reasons, trust, and confidence of the public in the Nigeria police is generally nil.
The culture of corruption and impunity exhibited by many within in the Nigerian police is just too massive.
The police or law enforcement forces in Nigeria are infamous for their spirit of corruption, their use of deception and intimidation, and their ties to poor integrity.
As I write this, from different angles and directions as it usually happens, possible internal and collaborative ways are being sought after on ways to undermine real police investigations on this case.
Just some hours ago, at a public presentation of Chief Bisi Akande’s autobiography titled “My Participation” in Lagos, Akande said that Nigerians as a people, “we are fraudulent, we know we are deceitful, we know we are cheaters…”
As such, a criminal case of this magnitude, outcry, sensibilities, and seriousness, simply requires a foreign forensic criminal investigation.
This will not be the first time that outside investigators are used. It has happened with forensic accounting investigation of public sector corruption in Nigeria. Meaning that even the governments have lack of trust in themselves, and reduced legitimacy in the Nigerian law enforcement investigators.
Nigerians have long lost confidence in their police.
The police can’t help itself. True. For possible psychological reasons, the police embrace deceit. As such, it must not be trusted to handle the case of Sylvester Oromoni’s death.
Multiple efforts are noted here why the Nigerian police should not or be allowed alone to handle this case.
The failures of all recent successive leadership and their men and women. In fact, the police as an institutionally corrupt body, there is a possibility that right now it could be trying to find who will be “good” to handle the case, that officer(s) that is darkly bright, illicitly driven, and bold to give arbitrary report at the end. Who is good at witness intimidation and harassment tactics to the point of conditioning other interests involved, including medical examiners, witnesses, lawyers, judges, or even the dead if they can wake up the body?
For decades and continuously, the Nigerian police is guilty of systemic failings, failings of individual officers and leadership, and lack of candor. Filled with self-serving leaders, they do not even obey each other’s directives across ranks in criminal investigations matters especially, thereby leaving the men and women of the police equally bewildered.
The police are known for been corruptly meddled in shoddy investigations including cases of murder involving high profile persons especially and will do everything to provide disinformation to the victims and media.
Due to the inherent nature of addictive dishonesty of the pilots of the institutions as Akande pointed out about Nigeria, police officers remain corrupt as they are not closely controlled and threatened with punishment for misconduct.
The need for what I call intra-bribery and inter-bribery persists, meaning bribing that goes on between the police employees and supervisors to get favors like case assignments and bribery between the police and citizens to alter cases.
Empowered by social media, the Nigerian people are benefiting from social media monitoring of the police.
We need more of these protests, as we just saw with the good-hearted women coming together in front of the Dowen college with written demands as they echo the national wave of outrage sparked by the bullying and killing of Sylvester Oromoni, and other devastations.
So as a psychological institutionalist with interest in honest and fact-based law enforcement, which does not occur in our police forces due to lack of proper pre-selection psychological readiness of candidates with state -of the -art psychological instruments, I say let us bring in ‘correct head’, independent, professional, and impartial investigators into this case. I hope this is possible because we cannot continue like this. Meanwhile, Nigerians should continue to harness social media against police insanity, dishonesty, and distrust. Walahi, to an extent, it is working, believe me.
John Egbeazien Oshodi who was born in Uromi, Edo State in Nigeria, is an American based Police/Prison Scientist and Forensic/Clinical/Legal Psychologist. A government Consultant on matters of forensic-clinical adult/child psychological services in the USA; Chief Educator and Clinician at the Transatlantic Enrichment and Refresher Institute, an Online Lifelong Center for Personal, Professional and Career Development. A former Interim Associate Dean/Assistant Professor at the Broward College, Florida. The Founder of the Dr. John Egbeazien Oshodi Foundation, Center for Psychological Health and Behavioral Change in African settings. In 2011, he introduced the State-of-the-Art Forensic Psychology into Nigeria through N.U.C and the Nasarawa State University where he served in the Department of Psychology as an Associate Professor. The Development Professor and International Liaison Consultant at the African University of Benin, and a Virtual Faculty at the ISCOM University, Benin of Republic. Founder of the Proposed Transatlantic Egbeazien University (TEU) of Values and Ethics, a digital project of Truth, Ethics, Openness. Author of over 40 academic publications/creations, at least 200 public opinion writeups on African issues, and various books.
John Egbeazien Oshodi wrote in via transeuniversity@gmail.com
