Checkpoints’ surreptitious return

The high command of the Nigeria Police says there are no check points on Nigerian roads anymore but everyone who has travelled on highways between major Nigerian towns will testify that roadblocks are alive and well on nearly all of them. A report published in yesterday’s Daily Trust quoted motorists and commercial taxi drivers in […]

The high command of the Nigeria Police says there are no check points on Nigerian roads anymore but everyone who has travelled on highways between major Nigerian towns will testify that roadblocks are alive and well on nearly all of them. A report published in yesterday’s Daily Trust quoted motorists and commercial taxi drivers in several states all across the country as saying police check points exist on all highways and also on many intra-city roads as well. 
Sure, the situation is nowhere near what it was up until mid-last year when the newly inaugurated President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the military to dismantle most of its check points. Those check points, mounted in response to Boko Haram terrorism, virtually crippled life in most Northern states and made travelling to become a nightmarish experience. Since their disappearance, motorists enjoyed a brief period of respite but things are threatening to return to square one with an upsurge in the number of police check points on highways.
For example, motorists complained of numerous check points on the Abuja-Ajegu-Lokoja, Lokoja-Okene, Okene-Kabba and Lokoja-Ajaokuta-Anyigba-Ankpa roads. Motorists said there are more than ten check points between Owerri and Port Harcourt, some of them manned by soldiers and Airforce personnel while others are manned by policemen. Taxi drivers in Imo State also complained of numerous check points on the Owerri-Onitsha road while motorists in Edo State decried the numerous check points on the Benin-Asaba highway as well as numerous others within the Edo State capital.
In the North too, motorists complained that numerous check points dot the Sokoto-Birnin Kebbi federal highway, while motorists said that the numerous check points that recently sprang up on the Abuja-Jos road have slowed the journey between those two cities from three to five hours. In many other parts, there are similar complaints, such as on the Port Harcourt-Aba highway which is dotted by check points.
Check points are so unpopular with citizens, and their efficacy in fighting crime is so doubtful that nearly every incoming Police Inspector General in the last ten years announced their ban, only to turn around and tolerate them after settling in. Now the police command is speaking tongue-in-cheek and is splitting hairs over the meaning of a road block. For example, police chiefs in Plateau State told Daily Trust that check points are still banned in the state but that “motorized road blocks” are allowed. They described a motorized road block as one where the police use their patrol vans to block one lane of the road and stop vehicles for security search.  Force Headquarters’ spokesman Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Don Awunah also said the ban on road blocks remains in force throughout the country “but there is a distinction between road block and stop and search.” He said stop and search “is an integral part of visibility policing” and that it has aided the fight against crime.
No doubt, the upsurge in crime in this country in recent times is somewhat ameliorated by the presence of policemen on the highways. Armed robbers and kidnappers especially could be deterred somewhat by the presence of cops on the road, especially the well armed Federal Highways Patrol and the state government-sponsored special security operations outfits. The biggest problem however is that policemen turn these stop and searches into extortion centres. So much money is extorted from commercial drivers at this check points that it has led to a rise in transport fares. Private motorists suffer the same fate. Then also, criminals actually use the ubiquitous nature of these stop and searches to impersonate them and perpetrate their nefarious deeds. Almost all victims of kidnappers testify that they stopped because they saw men dressed in police uniforms or military fatigues. We should not throw away the baby with the bathwater but police commanders must find a way to end extortion on the highways in the name of stop and search.