We’re being treated like slaves at checkpoints — S’East road users

Nigerian soldiers at checkpoint

We’re being treated like slaves at checkpoints — S’East road users

Many people using major roads in the South-East region say they are still being subjected to harrowing experiences at various security checkpoints.

Motorists in a report by Vanguard accused the security agents especially soldiers of open extortion and passengers were being embarrassed intimidated and humiliated.

They said passengers, irrespective of their age, health status or weather condition, were made to disembark from their vehicles to cross the checkpoints on foot, to rejoin their vehicles which are only allowed to meet them across the checkpoint after the driver must have been forced to cough out some money. Their journey is delayed without apology. No commuters and motorists would dare make or answer telephone calls near or around the checkpoints, no matter the emergency of the call.

This is reportedly done with impunity; a situation said to be subduing an entire region.

This subduing mentality at the checkpoints is said to be getting out of hand.

Despite cries and complaints by Ndigbo leaders, including members of the National Assembly caucus, against these degrading practices, the military and police high command are yet to call their men to order.

It’s daylight robbery —Rights group

Speaking to this, Comrade Emeka Umeagbalasi, a trained criminologist and board chairman, Inter-society for civil liberty and rule of law, a foremost rights advocate, described the level of extortion on the roads in the region as daylight robbery.

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“It is a horrible situation but let me start by saying that what we have in the South-East now is a combination of state actors and non-state actors, armed robbers; that is armed robbers in the sense of highway robbery through massive extortion.

“If you look at the military law, for Instance, the provision of Armed Forces Act 2004, has provisions for offence against extortion and the law clearly explains extortion as a way of obtaining money or any other material through the use of force. And it is being rapaciously and indiscriminately perpetuated on South-East roads. Yet nobody has been punished according to the law. What is happening on South- East roads is a very horrible experience.

“This is a situation where the people of the zone and people plying the roads in the region have been subjected to torture – physical and physiological. You see a situation where people face intimidation, harassment and sometimes random arrest and abduction, especially at night hours. Those who embark on night travels are subjected to more horrible experience in torture, intimidation and harassment. It is a terrible situation in the South-East since 2015, and worst of all is that it is being perpetrated by the military.

“There is this culture of impunity. There are two things that are responsible for the inability to tackle this siege mentality and intimidation in the South-East. One has to do with the increasing or alarming rate of impunity where the military officers seem to have lost control of the junior ones, because one thing about corruption is that if you want to fight corruption in an organisation, the anti- corruption pusher has to start with the leaders who are operating the system. So, if you are an employer and you lead the way of corruption; what do you want your employees to do? They will follow your footsteps. So, that is the situation we have.

“The second factor is the ‘returns’ culture. Every military\police officer is (allegedly) a beneficiary of the large scale extortions. This is not the issue of whether their senior officers are aware. They are fully aware and they benefit from the extortion and that is why it is thriving.

“For instance, the Nigeria Naval Base in Ogbaru has a checkpoint at Uga junction in Onitsha, Anambra State; and a lot of money is extorted there on a daily basis. There is direct and indirect extortion. Everyone around there, including the petty trader, is being extorted. The officers posted there, in a short time, change their cars and begin to live large. Any one of them that stays between 6 months and one year would have several commercial tricycles, shuttle buses and even L300 buses plying for them.

“The same thing goes on at the Asaba Army checkpoint at the Onitsha-Asaba end of the road. If you go to Abia, Anambra, Enugu, Imo and Ebonyi states, the entire South-East region, checkpoints are dotted at short intervals, and it is the same business at each of them”, Umeagbalasi lamented.

Continuing, he said: “I think we are facing three sets of wars in the South-East, first the presumed genocide by security operatives; secondly the Jihadist Fulani herdsmen and bandits, and thirdly, the rise of both government and non- government-linked criminal entities, counterfeit agitators and others who specialise in sundry street violent activities like kidnap for ransom, armed robbery, trafficking in persons, illicit drug and illegal arms.

“And it is difficult to tackle because today in Nigeria, over 800 civil society organisations that ought to speak against these ills have government links. They are the people spoiling the work of civil society organisations. They are being funded by the government and therefore can’t challenge any evil action by the government.”

Umeagbalasi, therefore, called on the few independent civil society organisations and media to wake up to their duties and ensure that these ills are stopped.