Nigeria Police Watch demands sack of police officer who threatened to murder airport official

The Nigeria Police Watch, an NGO policing the Nigeria Police Force by crowd-sourcing information on the activities of the Force, has called on the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, to immediately sack the officer who publicly threatened to “gun down” a citizen in Lagos.

The threat by the officer signifies the high-level abuse of power in the force and lends credence to the numerous accusations of harassments and extra-judicial killings against the police.

If such a public show of brute force is not disowned by the police, it will only heighten public distrust for the police and discredit the Force as a murderous organisation.

The police are already discredited by several cases of extra-judicial killings and widespread impunity by officers. Therefore, a strong reprimand for an officer who was caught on tape threatening to kill an innocent citizen with a state-owned gun is one of the ways the police can begin to convince the public they are committed to better and citizen-centred policing.

Police officers are not empowered to kill innocent people who have minor disagreement with them. Therefore, for a police officer to assume the role of both the prosecutor and the judge, convicting and then threatening to gun down a citizen out of anger is not only a breach of the constitution but it also undermines the efforts at entrenching civility in the conduct of police officials and other security agents.

The video of the threat is below.