Nigeria has over 300,000 policemen, many of whom go about their normal duty of keeping peace and securing lives and property with arms in hand. But are citizens safe around these men in black and blue? According to experts, Nigerians should be scared and justifiably so.
Yesterday (October 10, 2014), being the World Mental Health Day, makes it imperative to focus attention on the psychological health of one of the most important law enforcement units in the country – the police force.
‘Police are your friends’, a slogan which has become commonplace in Nigeria, gives an almost comical contrast to the tales many Nigerians have to tell about experience in the hands of policemen.
The Nigeria Police does not conduct any psychological or psychiatric test on men it recruits into the force,Saturday SOURCE learnt.
To many experts, many of the policemen walking the streets of Nigeria are disturbed enough to be in mental institutions.
Dr. Adeoye Oyewole, the Head of Department of Psychiatry, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, is one of such experts. He once sent a proposal to police authorities, advising on the need to establish mental health units in every command in the country.
But like many of similar proposals, it lays buried under piles of documents at the police headquarters.
Oyewole told our correspondent that Nigeria might be sitting on a keg of gun powder for abandoning the mental health of men of the police force.
He said, “A healthy mental health is important for policing, military operations and all those jobs that require handling of ammunition and combat duty with possibility of being shot dead.
“Some of these policemen have seen people killed beside them on the field. They have seen their colleagues die and guns have been shot at them; sometimes with no bullet-proof vests. Even their patrol vehicles are in terrible conditions while logistics are non-existent and people expect them to do the impossible for the society.
“Experience takes its toll on their psychology because they are human beings. Months after they have gone through some traumatic experiences, they may come down with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The police, just like the Army, require a formidable mental health unit that will see to the management of their personnel before and after combat.
“You don’t just throw people into peace-keeping operations without checking their mental health. When a policeman shoots dead his principal, then we will probably wake up to realise that the mental health of policemen in Nigeria needs attention. Nigeria police is likely to have a large number of men with psychiatric disorders.”
[/media-credit] Police corporal threatening to shoot a woman in Lagos
According to Oyewole, there is a need for mental health experts in every command and every division in the country, explaining that the experts don’t have to be permanent employees of the police force.
Reminded that the police force has clinical psychologists in some of its few hospitals across the country, Oyewole said that there was need for psychiatrists who would help authorities to determine when some mentally-unbalanced men of the force have “snapped.”
According to mental health experts, an individual, who may be perceived healthy by untrained eyes may indeed be mentally unbalanced and may suddenly “snap” when triggered by a particular occurrence.
In a country where records of complaints against policemen are almost non-existence, it may be not be possible to get an accurate statistics on the negative actions of men of the force or when policemen ‘snap’.
In March, a corporal, Sunkanmi Ogunbiyi, of the Department of Criminal Investigation, Ogun State Police Command, one early morning, killed his wife, five others and committed suicide.
The following month, a video went viral showing a policeman, identified as Tafa Mohammed, brutalising a woman and dragging her in mud while threatening to shoot those who attempted to intervene.
A neurologist from the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Lagos, Dr. Olufemi Idowu, also explained that if policemen don’t have access to mental health treatment regularly considering the kind of work they do, they might as well become mental patients along the line.
He said, “Since the police force has some hospitals, we can assume that there are psychiatrists there. If the police don’t have such experts, that will really be serious.
“After going on operations where they might have experienced traumatic events, do they undergo psychiatric treatments? If they don’t, then there is deficiency somewhere.”
People have always assumed that standing in a hot sun for prolonged periods like many policemen do could have an impact on mental health but Idowu explained that such effect was more physiological than mental.
“Standing in the sun for too long makes you sweat and you lose electrolytes in the process. The problem comes when those electrolytes are not replaced by drinking liquid. Any part of the body can be affected,” the neurologist said.
Founder of the Mental Health Foundation, Mr. Emmanuel Owoyemi, who has organised events in which the mental health of Nigeria’s military and paramilitary organisations was a topic of discussion, said Nigeria has yet to understand the fact that many policemen and military men suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“We have a wrong notion of what mental disorder is. Nigerians generally look out for obvious signs of when a policeman pulls off his clothes and walks naked on the street to conclude that he could be mentally unbalanced. There are so many mild disorders they are battling with.
“There is no argument on the fact that many of Nigeria’s policemen should be in mental institutions. In the United States where there is a strong mental health system, many military men suffer from PTSD, let alone Nigeria where there is no psychosocial or psychological support.”
Owoyemi said the fact that many policemen and soldiers are sent to hostile situations without any form of psychological support thereafter makes it obvious that many military men are not in the right mental state to interact with the public.
His assertion brings to the fore the case of the 12 soldiers in the Nigerian Army who were court-martialled and sentenced to death for shooting at their commanding officer. Could this be attributed to PTSD and the absence of any form of psychological support? Owoyemi said that was highly likely.
The Nigeria Police has been accused of shooting and killing some members of the public in the past after the slightest provocation.
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He said, “In any of the armed forces and paramilitary organisations in Nigeria, no mental health assessment takes place at the point of recruitment.
“Because of the exigencies of the job, there are occupational hazards. Policemen are prone to having emotional and mental breakdown. If you have been attacked by robbers before, you would know the kind of trauma involved. They (policemen) witness attacks, killings; they engage in shootouts with robbers and they are asked to go out to combat robbers in another location soon after.
“Imagine provoking someone like that in traffic and he has a pistol in his pocket. He would shoot you. Most times, their actions are a result of the trauma they experience. Another question is why do you think policemen drink so much on duty? It is just to suppress some of those things that they have seen.”
The scenario painted by Ahibogwu is quite familiar to Nigerians. One of such incidents played out in 2013.
The bus was loaded that day; a typical hot day in Lagos when sweat-soaked clothes cling to bodies like second skin. With a gun in hand, a young man, who would later be identified as a riot policeman in mufti, sat in the passenger’s seat beside the driver in the 14-passenger bus, which had loaded from Ojuelegba to Mile 12.
The policeman, Oluwakiyesi Gboyega, was armed.
“I no get change o. Enter with your change. Ketu, Mile 12! Ketu, Mile 12!” the bus’ conductor reportedly called out that afternoon. But trouble started when Gboyega allegedly got to his busstop in Ketu and wanted to disembark but the conductor, Kazeem Adeoye, could not produce the N50 he owed him.
Angry words were exchanged and few seconds later, the policeman drew his gun and shot the bus conductor right in the forehead at close range.
Few months ago also, a policeman was said to have allegedly gunned down a superior officer during a quarrel over a girlfriend in Yobe State.
In another equally bizarre incident in Ondo State in 2013, an assistant superintendent of police was said to have gunned down a junior officer, a police inspector, during an argument.
According to Ahibogwu, these kinds of incidents have their roots in the traumatic experiences policemen go through in the field.
He said, “There is nothing in this world that is strange to policemen. They see ritual murders, kidnappings, murders, incest, rape and the strangest of cases.
“These are occupational hazards but it is important to look after their mental wellbeing. The reason is that most of them would have enrolled at the police academy fit and healthy. But they can later be traumatised by experiences because they are humans.”
The sociologist said mental health assessment would determine solutions as to those who would require rehabilitation, medication/ treatment but added that in spite of this, re-orientation was the real solution.
“Policemen don’t work in isolation. Whatever you see are products of the society. First, we must ask, when policemen are recruited and go for the statutory 18 months training, what is the content of their training?”
He said, “Orientation is the structure that makes a man. The orientation from the beginning is faulty. The policemen at the colleges are not trained to respect the rights of individuals. They know the law quite well but the manner in which they operate it is always in their favour so that they can subject other individuals to oppression.
“There used to be an old Igbo saying then that when you fail the secondary school certificate examination, you join the police force. Being a policeman is seen as a job for dropouts. People take up police job because they can’t really get any other job somewhere else.”
Our correspondent spoke with a senior police officer, who connected the issue of mental health with the welfare of policemen and the logistics at their disposal.
The officer, who spoke under condition of anonymity because he is not the police spokesperson, said, “I am no expert in psychiatric issues, but I can tell you that the atmosphere in which you work affects you either positively or negatively. Most of the problems the public has with the police are connected with the work environment and equipment at our disposal.
“Take for example, I once read that there is a country where a policeman rides in a Ferrari as patrol vehicle, some have other modern gadgets and mobile equipment that aid their functions.
“Here, our men stand in the sun for hours and with nothing but old weapons at their disposal and rickety patrol vehicles. I want you to understand that I am not condoning any bad behaviour on the part of any policeman.
“But how do you expect a policeman, who is under intense stress to behave when you annoy him on the road? He slaps you, or does worse. Some bad ones even use the only power they have at that moment – their weapons.”
The officer said it would amount to mere pipe dream to expect the police force to undertake periodic mental evaluation of policemen in the country when it had not even been able to equip its men adequately.
It is not clear whether there are any policies aimed at improving mental health of policemen across the country.
The spokesperson for the force, Mr. Emmanuel Ojukwu, said there are doctors and psychologists within the force, adding that they give psychological support when needed especially after members of the force come back from high-stress assignments.
But he believes a lot still needs to be done to improve the mental health situation within the force.
Ojukwu said, “We are working to improve the capacity of the force on this issue. There is the issue of PTSD and policemen are susceptible to this as well.
“It is a wrong generalisation to say the negative actions of some policemen when they relate with members of the public have to do with their mental health. There is a lot at play here; the reaction of the people they relate with, the behaviours of the individuals themselves and the attitude of members of the public to people who work on the road.”
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