What do you do when you see a plain-clothed man – probably looking untidy – strutting around carrying an old rusty gun and beckoning on you to park your vehicle? Gut instincts tell me to run; with or without my vehicle. I don’t know about you but if you follow my path – running that is – you might end up in more trouble than you bargained for because he just might be a policeman. He would definitely harass you for trying to run out on him and if you make the mistake of explaining that you thought he was an armed robber; you know how things will go for you.
Some of us have encountered armed robbers in our lives and I sure can say that you cannot tell the difference between plain-clothed policemen and the misfits of society. This does not mean that policemen are misfits or anything derogatory, I’m just trying to point out that these armed robbers are normal people.
I was sitting in a tricycle recently with an elderly couple waiting for the driver to start the engine when a man with a gun passed us by. His cloths were as I described earlier, bedraggled and the old lady beside me gasped in fear but was calmed when her husband told her that the man in question was a policeman. You know how elderly people are - full of experiences and memories – so they told the story of a friend of theirs that had an encounter with ‘policemen’, this time the reverse was the case. The friend thought that he was being stopped by a plain-clothed policeman at a check point very close to a police station so he had no reason to worry. He got robbed, stripped to bare minimums and left on the streets. He had to go the police station where he met officers that thought he was a mad man strutting around naked and he was offered cloths they stripped off criminals.
Sad story really but the point is this - if a policeman wants to carry his gun he should were his uniform. It is not enough to wear a wristband that has the police colours; it could be mistaken for the reggae colours especially for those who might be colour blind. There are already too many things wrong in our society and we do not need any extra stress that could lead to hypertension, heart attack or something graver.
We need to call a spade a spade, call a policeman a policeman and not an armed robber. I personally do not want to have any encounter with any of them and I pray that you do not. If you are in a position to make changes in the Nigerian police force, please tell them to keep their clothes on.
