Nigerians woke up on Thursday this week to another shocking video of a policeman behaving like a law unto himself. The country has seen plenty of other videos before, police officers extorting motorists, slapping civilians, setting up illegal roadblocks and so on. But what Nigerians saw yesterday was different. It was a level of brazenness that tells you everything about how broken the system has become.
The video shows an assistant superintendent of police, who was later identified as Newton Isokpehi, a native of Ora in Edo State and who is currently serving in the Anambra State Command, staring into a camera and threatening to kill anyone who films him while he is on duty. His exact words: “Any day I am on duty with my rifle, let anybody video me. I will make sure I kill that person.” He went on to say that any superior officer who allows citizens to film police officers will be responsible for burying the dead. He said all of this without a trace of fear, like a man who knows nothing will happen to him.
The Anambra State Police Command has since arrested him. They say internal disciplinary proceedings have begun. They even drug-tested him. That last part is almost funny.
What kind of police officer threatens to kill a citizen just for pointing a phone at him? An honest officer doing his job, would not care about being filmed. In fact, many officers welcome the camera because it shows the public that they have nothing to hide. He was not afraid of being caught doing something wrong on camera. He was afraid of being caught at all. A dirty cop does not want his face on record. So he tried to scare people away with death threats. And in his foolishness, he allowed himself to be recorded while making those criminal threats. He walked right into the trap he set for himself. He should be thrown out of the force immediately and charged with threatening to kill.
Newton Isokpehi is not a strange creature that fell from the sky. He is a product of a recruitment system that has been rotten for decades. The Police Service Commission has admitted that “slot trading” and corruption have turned police recruitment into a marketplace where the highest bidder wins. Again, politicians have turned the force into a dumping ground for their relatives, including the ones they know have serious behavioural problems. Then they hand these people rifles and send them out to protect citizens. The result is what the country sees every day on the roads and streets.
Take a trip from Lokoja down to Benin, passing through Okene, Okpella, Auchi, Agbede, and Irua. Then connect to any road that links Edo and Delta to the South-East. What you will meet along those routes are policemen positioned like traps, stopping every vehicle that passes, stretching out their hands for money from people who can barely feed themselves.
A journey that should last only a few hours stretches into an endless ordeal of repeated stops and desperate pleas. Spend a night moving around Abuja and you will see them tucked under bridges, waiting for harmless citizens to walk by so they can empty their pockets.
This newspaper challenges the Inspector-General of Police to set up a task force and see for himself the rot happening right under his nose in Abuja, not to mention the states and local government areas.
Specifically, the IGP should send an investigative team to visit every checkpoint in Abuja at night, not during the day when officers behave properly, but late at night when the real business begins.
Newton Isokpehi is not the worst of them. The worst are the ones who do not just threaten but actually pull the trigger. A few weeks before Newton’s video surfaced, another assistant superintendent of police, Nuhu Usman, shot and killed a 28-year-old man named Mene Ogidi in Effurun, Delta State. The victim was allegedly linked to a gun transported to him by an unidentified friend.
The man’s hands were tied behind his back. He was unarmed. He was kneeling on the ground begging. He told Usman he would lead him to the owner of the gun that had been found on him. Usman shot him in the leg first, then reloaded, then shot him in the head while other officers chanted “Ogbe gbe”, the killer has killed. Usman has been dismissed and will face prosecution. That is something.
But the question Nigerians must ask is whether any of this would have happened if there was no video. If that killing had not been recorded and shared across the world, would Usman still be on the road today? Would Newton have made that threat on camera if he did not believe, based on years of watching his colleagues get away with worse, that nothing would happen to him?
The police force has good people in it. There are honest officers who do their jobs properly and go home at night with clean hands. They deserve respect. But they are drowning. They work alongside men like Newton and Usman every day. They watch them collect bribes, threaten citizens, and sometimes kill. And they keep quiet because speaking up means transfer to a worse posting, or something more sinister. That is not a police force. That is a hostage situation.
In the same video where he threatened to spill blood, Newton Isokpehi also spoke about something else, the condition of the police. He talked about poor welfare, lack of care, and the frustration of a man who has spent twenty-six years carrying a rifle and watching the system ignore him. That does not excuse what he said. Nothing excuses threatening to kill civilians. But it does point to a truth the government does not want to hear: the police force is full of frustrated, broken, underpaid men, and the government helped put them there. The same government that expects them to protect the nation has left many of them sleeping in dilapidated barracks, earning salaries that cannot feed a family, and watching their colleagues die in the line of duty without benefits for their families. The Senate recently moved to allocate one per cent of the Federation Account to police funding to address equipment, training, and welfare.
The Federal Government also approved a twenty per cent salary increase for police personnel. These are steps in the right direction. But until a policeman in the field feels the impact of these changes, until his children are fed, his rent is paid, and he knows that if he falls, his family will not be abandoned, men like Newton will keep emerging. Frustration does not justify threats of murder. But the government and the police leadership must accept their share of the blame for creating an environment where a man with a gun feels abandoned enough to say this country will burn. Condemn the man. Fix the system. Do both at the same time. Anything less is negligence.
This is not a problem that will be solved by dismissing a few officers when their crimes go viral. The recruitment system must be overhauled completely. Psychological evaluation must be non-negotiable. Body cameras must become standard equipment. And when an officer kills a civilian, he must face a murder charge in a proper court of law, not an orderly room trial that ends in a quiet dismissal and a pension.
Until those changes happen, Newton Isokpehi and the rest of them will keep doing what they have always done. They will keep threatening. They will keep extorting. And sometimes, they will keep killing. The only difference is whether someone is filming.
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