The Nigeria Police’s refusal to obey several court orders barring it from engaging in the illegal parade of pre-trial suspects before the media grossly undermines the country’s justice system. The parade of suspects by the police is barbaric and unprofessional. It is a throwback to the military era. The police must wean themselves off it.
The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, recently directed the police to stop it. Nigerians look up to the country’s No. 1 law officer to correct this gross anomaly, rejuvenate the judicial system, and offer hope to the people to enjoy their rights and dignity.
Under the law, the police can arrest, detain as appropriate, investigate, charge suspects to court and prosecute them. Where they err in this duty, the court must rein them in. But in a crude display of intransigence, the police have turned this simple governance chain on its head.
Consequently, the parade of suspects remains persistent. The police have assumed the notoriety of publicly parading the suspects before charging them in court, thus blatantly assuming the role of the court of law to convict suspects.
Despite at least “five judgements of the ECOWAS and Federal High Courts” in Calabar, Lagos, Enugu, and the FCT in this regard, the police are still recalcitrant.
The parade of suspects is not part of British law, the source of the Nigerian judicial system. How did it find its way into our books?
A court in Bangladesh banned this in 2012 when the police paraded a judge, Javed Imam, for drug peddling, and has remained so. Why does the Nigeria Police find it difficult to change its ways?
The AGF must commence the prosecution of law enforcement agents who flout the ban on the parade of suspects.
Experts say a pre-trial parade is only allowed to affirm the identity of a suspect and “is done in the police station in the presence of the suspect’s lawyer, who is required to merely observe while the investigative officer(s) and the victim go about the process”.
The Supreme Court, in a July 2016 lead judgement by Suleiman Galadima, in the case involving Freeborn Okiemute Vs. The State listed circumstances where an identification parade is allowed as follows: “… (a) The victim did not know the accused before and his first acquaintance with him was during the commission of the offence; (b) The victim or witness was confronted by the offender for a very short time; or (c) The victim, due to time and circumstances, might not have had the opportunity of observing the features of the accused.”
The police’s notorious disobedience of court orders derives from their inordinate penchant for publicity. A former Inspector-General of Police said the parade of suspects “is simply the Force letting the public know the efforts and achievements of the police in curbing and reducing crime to the barest minimum”.
This is self-serving as it only serves the purpose of the police.
Having been deemed illegal by the law, the confessions made at pre-trial parades are not tenable in a court of law.
It is unthinkable that the police give a parade of suspects a discriminatory toga as only poor and vulnerable suspects are paraded.
High-profile individuals who made away with millions of taxpayers’ money are exempted from this treatment.
The police need to realise that this contravenes global standards.
Paraded suspects who are ultimately found innocent by the court of law carry an indelible stain forever in an age that social media does not forget. This is unfair.
Suspects should challenge this blatant breach of their rights in court. The civil society, the media and well-meaning attorneys should support the hapless suspects to rid Nigeria of this abnormality to strengthen our judicial system and guarantee human rights.
The Punch
