The governor of Plateau state, Joshue Dariye, may be a chiselling little crook. But there's no need to shoot his supporters. Nigerian security authorities need to have lessons in crowd control. In various incidents, the authorities panic and bring in the military to deal with what is essentially a civil order issue. On the other hand, when they use riot police, they act with military force. Where is the balance? The Nigerian police should invest in Alsatian dogs, and horses. Africans are generally scared of animals.
Police horses are not normal horses. Police horses are intimidating Pegasian megaliths; I'm sure they could be bred in the Northern Nigeria where there's a long tradition of horsemanship. Anything that can keep British football hooligans under control deserves to be at least considered. The government should be investing in relatively harmless but effective animals, rather than giving trigger happy police access to guns.
To the average African, dogs are one of two things: vicious guard dogs that eat the newspaper vendor whenever he comes round, or docile stray wusslings to be stoned in the street. A few police Alsatians would have dispersed the crowd sharpish. And there is historical precedence. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Zairians were offended by George Foreman when he arrived in Kinshasa for the Rumble in the Jungle. Foreman landed at Kinshasa airport with an Alsatian dog by his side - the very symbol of colonial Belgian oppression. Kind Leopold and his successors controlled the Congo with barks and bites.
7 comments:
Err, during the last riots I participated in as a UNIBEN student, some dogs were brought on the scene. It didn't take awon boys a long time to figure out how to put the dogs down.
Eventually we were put down by trigger happy, horse whip wielding policemen...
As for the horses, well that is another matter...
You guys should try that with the police dogs in the UK, and see if your testicles don't get chewed off...
Ouch.
My days as a student alutarist in Naija are long since behind me.
Besides, authorities back home have found more effective ways of making students 'happy'...
Why dogs and horses when you can get the Inspector General of Police to beat up students himself?
My student activism days during the times of Shagari witnessed that, as I wrote a few weeks ago.
It was this same crowd control cack-handedness that lead to the death of Dr. Chuba Okadigbo a few years ago at a political rally, for that matter.
To the police, the crowd is not seen as citizens with genuine and valid grievances exercising the right to demonstrate in a democracy but an outraged mob of miscreants.
First we need the re-education of the police, an understanding of the values of democracy and an appreciation of popular dissent beyond the ballot box.
Then dogs, horses and wolves if they care, can be handled, controlled and deployed in proper crowd control practices.
"Africans are generally scared of animals." Heheh...
Nigeria police horse in crowd control is not effect due to the following short comings:
Lack of Modern equipment, lack of fund in police budget appropriation, incompetency of the officers, lack of skill and knowledge, improper feeding, poor management enviroment, poor medication etc
Post a Comment