Policing: How The Chidinma – Ataga Murder Case May Have Been Bungled By Olaide Omideyi
Nigerians have always been treated to the spectacle of police parading people they call ‘suspects’ for various offences and the purpose of these pointless parades has never been clear to anyone with a kindergarten knowledge of the law and human rights.
The police Commissioners or the public relations officers (PROs) of the police will sactimoniusly stand around and display or parade criminals for various offences they allegedly ‘committed’ only to contradict themselves immediately by informing the watching audience and journalists that ‘investigations are still ongoing’. If investigations are still ongoing, how did the police arrive at the erroneous conclusion that the people paraded were guilty of the offences they were accused of committing?
It’s not shocking to me and I don’t know why others should be shocked that Chidinma is singing a new ‘song’ with a new tune now.
This is one of the reasons why I am fervently against the parading of suspects by the police without concluding investigations and having a solid case that could be used to prosecute suspects in court.
From a human rights point of view, parading suspects is a violation of their rights to fair trial because the police are not empowered by law to try cases and parading suspects is akin to conducting media trials which turn public opinion against suspects thus prejudicial to receiving fair trial in court.
Everyone now hate Chidinma because of her assumed ‘guilt’ of allegedly killing her benefactor, sugar daddy and possibly the sugar daddy of other ladies. The cause of the hatred for her as a person could be traced to her parade by the police and her admission that she killed the deceased. Was the deceased an angel? No. Would he have been happy if another randy fifty year old man camped his 21 year old daughter somewhere as a sex slave or concubine? No.
If AN ACCUSED PERSON IS PRESUMED INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW, parading them in front of cameras as a means of proving their guilt to the public without recourse to the courts is not only illegal but whatever they say in such circumstances could and should be assumed to be said under pressure which means it is not admissible as evidence in a court of law. Chidinma has probably gotten herself a smart lawyer who asked her to repudiate all her former statements and this will provide some problems for the prosecutor in court. If the police decides to prosecute her, the lawyer will make them look like law breakers and human right violators.
The truth must be said that our police officers have become lazy and complacent. They have forsaken the meticulous hard work of the olden days police investigations for the ‘shortcut to the answer’ approach.
Nothing can replace hard graft in an investigation and the Nigerian police need to learn this if they are not to continue in the same trajectory.
Our police officers need to learn from the FBI, UAE police force and the Metropolitan police how methodical investigations are carried out in such ways that a suspect, after being confronted with facts, figures, time and locations, will be pleading for mercy. Hard work and professionalism are the reasons why these esteemed police forces don’t have to resort to rethorics, half-baked assumptions and conclusions or torturing of suspects to extract confessions. Hard work and professionalism are the reasons why they don’t have to parade suspects or seek the klieg lights or create sensational scenes that usually end up in ‘all noise and fury, signifying nothing’ according to William Shakespeare. Laziness and lack of professionalism is why senior police officers will give opinion on cases that have not been investigated and make it look like received wisdom while whatever they say flies against conventional wisdom.
We may blame the police for being inept but the bigger blame must go to the government that has turned the police into a laughing stock and an institution hated by the public. Most police units still lack enough personnel, police laboratories lack simple equipment and there are no centralized databases for investigators to tap into. Training of police officers in modern forensics, crime scene investigation, securing evidence and exhibits are very poor.
It is in Nigeria that an accused person will be made to pose for pictures with a weapon allegedly used to commit a crime with police officers beaming pleasurably like proud parents witnessing their children receiving award for good behaviour, police officers pick up objects of interest at crime scenes without using gloves and drive suspected vehicles to the station instead of having a police flat loader take it to the laboratory for investigation.
We may attribute these lapses to poor training and lack of funding and place the blame at the doorstep of those in power who prefer to have the police remain the way it is instead of ensuring they display professionalism in their activities. A professional police force is a threat to our politicians since their atrocities will start seeing the light of day as they are taken to court to face the law.
Most of our police officers also prefer hiding behind the babanriga of politicians as glorified domestic help called ‘escorts’ but used more for opening car doors, gates and carrying handbags, phones, and laptop bags for the wives of politicians. Same for those attached to so-called ‘expatriates’ who are labourers in their countries but elevated to demi gods in Nigeria.
Same for celebrities, yeyebrities, musicians, athletes, Yahoo boys, ‘ego mbute’, and ‘edu Malaysia’ guys with no known legal sources of income.
The loss of professionalism has gone so bad that it is possible for a police officer to spend ten years moving from one escort assignment to the other without performing other core police duties. These ‘escort experts’ are also promoted on time, sometime ahead of their colleagues who are not following political office holders around.
Chidinma was paraded as a suspect without any strong evidence apart from being the one who booked the apartment and side chick to the deceased. The noise made about a ‘breakthrough’ by the police is looking more like a brick wall now and she may walk free since everything the police have so far are circumstantial evidence.
The deceased was an acknowledged amateur boxer who took physical fitness very serious but allegedly had bruises around his ankles and wrists, suggesting he must have struggled with his assailants. Why the police didn’t first try to establish if the stab wounds were inflicted before or after he was tied before the show of parading a young girl as the main suspect in front of the cameras was a real show of ineptitude.
Chidinma claimed they were both high on hard drugs before she allegedly committed the murder but the police didn’t wait for the autopsy and toxicology results to establish that the deceased actually imbibed the hard drugs himself and that it was not forcefully fed to him after being subdued or dead.
How did Chidinma overpower a physically fit man and tie him up? The police didn’t bother to unravel that too. Whatever the police do now will be an afterthought.
Chidinma may be a suspect. She may even have killed the deceased person but she probably didn’t do it alone but could still walk free if she can prove that the police pressured her to admit to the crime. If you deceive or pressurise an accused person to admit to a crime without confessing willingly to it, whatever the accused person may have said concerning such case cannot be tendered in court as evidence.
The police are back to Square ZERO right now.
As I wrote earlier, sending our police officers for serious training so they can perform will be a better option than having a ‘supercop’ from Abuja marching in like a knight in shining armour to help unravel a mystery that should not be a ‘mystery’ even to a police Sergeant.
Olaide Omideyi is a conflict management, post-conflict reintegration and economic development expert with over two decades experience with international organisations including the United Nations. He writes from Abeokuta, Ogun state and can be reached on +2347032356295, omideyi3259@gmail.com.
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