Nigerian Policemen

Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

Nigerian policemen have killed more Nigerians than Coronavirus, alias Covid-19.

Ever since the Corona pandemic broke out, and the concomitant lockdown, Nigerian policemen have been on a killing spree.

It’s as though the police killers have sworn to an oath not to be outdone in killing by the dreaded killer virus.

My fellow Umuchu townsman, Henry Mokwe, was lucky to escape with his dear life after a raging policeman shot at the two tyres of his car in Umunze, Anambra State.

In the selfsame Anambra State, a young man in Nkpor was instantly gunned down by the police only for the policemen to later claim that the hapless fellow bathed them with acid!

Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

The Inspector General of Police MA Adamu got really angry when he learnt that his officers had unjustifiably laid siege on Odo Ori Market, Iwo, Osun State, assaulting at will.

The way our policemen are carrying on they ought to be quarantined for good at YabaLeft, that is, the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital or Yaba Psychiatric Hospital.

The scrambled brains of the policemen need to be clinically unscrambled while in isolation at YabaLeft.

In this day and age of the Corona lockdown that has necessitated the establishment of isolation centres across the states, YabaLeft ought to be reserved for Nigerian policemen.

These policemen need to have their heads thoroughly sanitized.

The police hotheads are no longer needed at the ubiquitous police checkpoints even after the Corona onslaught.

With their heightened killer instinct during the Corona blitzkrieg, it’s crucial that the policemen should not be returned to their barracks or the checkpoints but should be quarantined and isolated for good inside YabaLeft.

It’s noteworthy that even at the best of times, before Corona, nobody could have accused the checkpoint policeman of absenteeism all the days of his life!

Compared to electricity workers, for instance, the checkpoint policeman was always there. He was never found wanting in his job of collecting Fifty Naira at checkpoints!

Now that they have added killing for fun in the course of Corona there is danger in the land if the murderers are ever turned loose on the highways.

YabaLeft should come to the rescue of all Nigerians as the permanent isolation centre of all the policemen.

It was authoritatively revealed to me by an Agege-based parapsychologist that coronavirus has gone into the heads and stomachs of the policemen; whence their collaboration with Corona to kill off  all Nigerians!

The virus stored in the ever fat stomach of the average Nigerian policeman cannot be tackled with ventilators or hand-washing or sanitizers like Corona.

There is the crying need for isolation and quarantine in a mental home – YabaLeft for sure.

Even as I am yet to make the scientific connection between the lockdown of Nigerians and the impregnation of the Nigerian policemen, it is meet to admit that the policemen have graduated from the erstwhile collection of Fifty Naira notes at checkpoints to insisting on taking gargantuan sums via ATM and POS during the Corona clampdown. You either pay up or you lose your dear life!

The policemen are armed with POS and AK47 in their enforcement of social distancing and the lockdown.

The collection of larger quid during the enforcement of the Corona lockdown has led the policemen to too much accumulation of Naira notes which equally led to gargantuan consumption of beer and pepper soup, leaving them to be quite trigger-happy.

The fat beer belly of police pregnancy needs to be detoxified urgently at the YabaLeft isolation centre.

Who out there doesn’t know that the beer and pepper soup theory was initially proposed by good old Alozie Ogugbuaja, a cool police officer, in regard to the military brass-hats and their propensity to staging many coups?

With the money extorted from oppressed Nigerians during the Corona lockdown the Nigerian policemen are sounding quite tough like military coup-plotters.

You would have expected the policemen to make many arrests at the burial of the former Chief of Staff of President Buhari, Abba Kyari, where no social distancing was observed.

Well, not even a fly was arrested.

I happen to be a good student of George Orwell and I know this line from his Animal Farm: “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.”

Poor Nigerians are trapped indoors where they are endlessly harassed by their wives and children for not keeping enough money to survive the lockdown. Venturing outside fetches a more dangerous harassment or death from policemen. The danger of contracting coronavirus is not even in the picture yet.

It comes to what Frederick Forsyth calls The Devil’s Alternative: “Whichever option I choose, men are going to die.”

Blood has taken over the gray matter of our policemen, and there is the clear and present need to isolate them at the YabaLeft isolation centre for the urgent sanitization of their skulls.

This is a Corona-induced urgent national assignment.

-Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, journalist, poet and social critic, writes from Lagos