Trouble in Paradise

One factor I perhaps never considered until recent events occurred in both Lagos and Ife was the danger when boys in uniform get nasty.

On a recent trip to Lagos I was somewhat shocked at first to read a story of how the police and army had started fighting in Lagos city. Now generally, you would expect a fight between two armed forces is going to be a bad thing, you just generally don’t think its going to occur in one country, except perhaps in the case of civil war. I’m not entirely sure how it started but each group ended up retaliating successively by selectively kidnapping/beating/shooting members of the other group, or in the case of the army, burning a police station and 40 or so cars in the vicinity. Of course, this kind of violence is never going to be restricted to the "barrack boys" alone, as several bypassers have been caught in crossfire and wounded or killed by stray bullets.

Almost at the same time in my own Ife, two other groups were having it out. For some reason or another the police had badly beaten an Okada (motorcycle) driver and the fellow subsequently died. Most likely the poor guy had refused to pay a bribe when stopped by the police for a minor infringement. Of course the Okada drivers were outraged and proceeded to select an officer (I believe at random) and inflict similar punishment on him.

How this situations escape from escalating sometimes amazes me. Luckily I am yet to experience any of this sort of thing first hand.