27th May, 2011
The Lagos State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria has described as shameful and disgraceful the latest bloody clash between men of the Nigerian Police Force and those of the Nigerian Army in Badagry Lagos, where several policemen, including the Divisional Police Officer were killed.
The party said that such shameful conduct speaks so low of both forces and must be comprehensively addressed to prevent such conducts in the future.
In a release in Lagos , signed by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the ACN, Joe Igbokwe, the party says that what these clashes portend is a clear picture of indiscipline and wildness that are anathema to the universal image of both the police and the armed forces as enforcers of discipline.
It says the constant resort to bloody and insensate means to settle disputes among members of the force speaks so low of the Nigerian armed forces and police as unrefined, primitive institutions that must be made to conform to civil orderly conduct in the discharge of their duties.
According to ACN, “We recall that similar violent and bloody clash occurred between the members of the armed forces and the police at the Barracks Police Station, Surulere Lagos some few years ago and a commission of enquiry was set up to look into this clash where several lives and hundreds of millions of Naira worth of properties destroyed. We wonder what the findings of the commission were and whether they have been implemented and if they have been implemented, why such similar incidence is occurring in Badagry just some few years after the Surulere incidence. We are worried that two foremost law enforcement agencies find the resort to brutal and violent bloodletting so attractive if not that they are deeply ensconced in doing things the violent and illegal way.
“We are worried about the image such brutal showdown gives the entire country and the danger such bodes for the lives and properties of Nigerians. We are worried about the unnecessary danger Nigerians are exposed with these alarming spates of violent and bloody clashes. We charge that both the leadership of the Nigerian Army and the Nigerian Police Force rededicate themselves to enforcing discipline and law among members of both forces. They should make discipline the very corpus of the training of their personnel to ensure they do not give in to the bestial instincts to take up arms to settle minor issues.
“On another note, Lagos ACN feels that our long tenureship in military regimes and their obnoxious imprints is responsible to this incurable desire for members of the country’s armed forces to take up arms against themselves and defenseless Nigerians on very minor cases. We call for proper retraining of members of Nigerian armed forces and the police to the tenets of democracy, which does not allow for such shameful acts as the latest Badagry bloody carnage. We call for the immediate setting up of a probe panel to probe the Badagry incident.”