To borrow a popular slogan in the country, “Nigeria has happened to” Bolanle Raheem, albeit on Christmas Day of all days! The lawyer, who was seven-month pregnant was on her way to buy pizza with members of her family when she was shot dead by one ASP Drambi Vandi of Ajiwe Police Station, Ajah, Lagos. She died on the front seat of their car driven by her husband.

In a statement on Monday, Lagos Police Spokesman, SP Benjamin Hundeyin, said Vandi and other officers who were with him have been taken into custody for interrogation.

The police statement is not new. There is nothing reassuring to Nigerians about it. It is the usual ‘sound bites’ Nigerians have become accustomed to hearing from the Nigeria Police authorities almost from time immemorial. “I will kill you and nothing will happen” is the catchphrase for every killer cop in Nigeria. They brag about it, and nothing really happens each time they kill an innocent Nigerian. After all, a resident of Happy Land Estate in Ajah, Gafaru Buraimoh, was similarly shot dead by a policeman on December 6, 2022.

Bolanle Raheem’s murder is not an isolated case. The cold-blooded murder of innocent Nigerians by trigger-happy policemen is like a recurring decimal. It is a continuation of the trajectory that has been imposed on Nigeria by deep-seated corruption of which politicians who are now expressing surprises and sending condolence messages to the family of the slain lawyer have been part and parcel.

Police brutality, especially against young people, was the subject of the 2020 EndSARS protest – the biggest uprising ever by young people against established authority in the history of Nigeria.

Yet, the issues raised by the youths and other well-meaning Nigerians against police high-handedness were glossed over. In the end, only cosmetic changes were made, such as renaming of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, to Special Weapons and Tactics Team, SWAT. Mrs. Bolanle Raheem’s cold-blooded murder on Christmas Day again brings to the front burner the need for the much-talked about state police. If President Muhammadu Buhari could confess that Nigeria was too large for him to rule, surely, the country is too large to be effectively policed from Abuja.

As Nigerians go to the polls next year on February 25, 2023, to elect the next president and other leaders of the country, the sore issue of police brutality and needless murder of innocent Nigerians with guns bought by taxpayers’ money must be top on the minds of the electorate. Without security of lives and property, which largely depends on effective and responsible policing, no meaningful socio-economic and political activity in any country can succeed.

Nigerians must, therefore, seize the opportunities offered by the next election to elect only leaders whom they can trust to bring the required reforms in the Nigeria Police; leaders that have the capacity to stamp out corruption which is the root of the problem in the Nigeria Police.

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