THUMBS UP; LAGOS POLICE IS WAKING UP TO ITS ROLE OF SECURING LAGOS

Cop bashing is a favorite past time of most Nigerians. We all get off on it. Next to the economy and corrupt public office holders, the much trumpeted inefficiency of the Nigerian police and the sleazy tendencies of its men is a subject for ardent discourse, so much so that a five year old at a check point told his dad to give the police man N20 so he will let them be on their way.
No doubt some men in the Nigerian police force are bad, a reflective on the decadence in our society today and the tendency of our people to cut corners . if they indeed are so bad, how come they win laurels in international peace keeping exercises for good policing. There must be something wrong in our system that taints and corrupts.

People only think of the police when they are in trouble; their carry is stolen or their home bugled, that’s when you will hear them scream, ‘Get the police”, then they expect magic, they want the car- jackers apprehended and the guys who fleeced them of valuables caught and status quo maintained. Most often, in Lagos where I live, the police are living up to their responsibility of securing the state. On Sunday between 10.00 and 11.00pm, The publisher of FORTUNE & Niyi Akinsiju and his wife, Ebony, had first hand serving of police efficiency.
They were enroute the Maryland traffic light when they heard rapid gun fire; it turned out to be a shootout between a group of car robbers and the police at Maryland. The way I heard it , the police probably acting on a tip off had stopped the stolen jeep which had three armed guys, the owner was tucked somewhere in the trunk, in the ensuring shoot out, two of the robbers escaped while the third was not so lucky. He was hit by bullets and died as he attempted to jump and flee through the independence underpass at Maryland. He miscalculated the distance of the jump. What was instructive was that not two minutes after the robber jumped and died, another contingent of armed policemen arrived screaming ‘WEY THEM’. Oh yes, this is not how the NYPD, (men of the New York Police Department) will behave, this is for laughter only, but they are doing the job. The owner of that jeep will forever be thankful; he got his car back and in one piece. I commend the officers who engaged those robbers in a gun duel, they made us proud. Men like that have made the crime rate drop by 85 percent in Lagos state. These officers and men who continue to risk their lives standing on the road doing routine checks and patrol duty ensure that we sleep at night without bandits over running our city. They deserve a pat on the back. And one last word, when next you are at a check point and a policeman stops you for whatever, don’t be rude shout at him, he is only doing his job; open your booth if he needs to check, in so doing most often they have arrested robbers with concealed weapons.