Whenever I think of our Police force and the bad name they have made for themselves, in addition to the fact that they are still making a lot of bad names for themselves, it makes me wonder about the level of effort it will take for the entire Police force to become trustworthy to Nigerians.
Sadly, a lot of Policemen in the country have made a really bad name to the Police force and Nigerians no longer hold the Police in high regard. We've gotten to a point where Nigerians are disgusted by the mere mention of 'Police'. When things that warrant the presence of the Police happens in Nigeria, an average Nigerian would prefer to deal with it alone instead of calling the attention of the Police.
Hah! Yeah!
I'm not even kidding. And, I'm trying as much as I can to be kind with my words. I've had my fair share of experience with the Police and I still can't stand having them around till this very moment.
One of the notable experiences;
I can still recall the third quarter of 2021 when I had a really weird experience with our Police Force while travelling from the Eastern part of Nigeria to the southern part of the country. That was the exact moment when we were all struggling to recover from the hot slap we got from Covid19 pandemic and the lockdown that came with it.
At that very moment, a lot of folks were trying to put their lives in order. Jobs were lost due to Covid19 and the unemployment rate was high. Cryptocurrency was coming to the rescue in several parts of the world, but Nigeria decided to place a ban on Crypto. Yikes!
Those that were already into Cryptocurrency, especially someone like myself whose only source of income was coming from Crypto couldn't afford to obey that particular Crypto ban. It was a do or go broke affair and I've already bid farewell to brokenness. I didn't want to experience that again.
Our Policemen used that 'crypto ban' as an opportunity to exert their influence all over the place and steal from young lads. They would always stop vehicles and force every young guy to step out of the vehicle so they can start an intense search. That in itself isn't so bad, but it gets a little too much when they don't find any incriminating stuff during the body search. Their next step is usually to force people to unlock their phones so they will go through it.
I heard about that a lot and I got to experience it so many times during that particular trip I made from the Eastern to the southern part.
This is a journey that would normally take 9 hours on a good day, but because of the number of times we had to be searched by Police at their checkpoints, I couldn't get to my destination until the next day. That was a whole 16 hours for the trip.
You think I'm making this up?
Think again!
During the trip, whenever we came across a police checkpoint and they notice any app, transaction, screenshot or chat group that relates to Crypto, they used every possible means to extort money from the unlucky folk (s). It got to a point where some of them were threatening people to send BTC to them. Haha. It was a horrible experience.
It's laughable at the moment, but back then, all the checkpoints were usually at deserted areas and most of the Police we met were not in uniform. To be fair, it was more convincing to call them criminals than Policemen. And, they had this 'do what you are told or take a bullet' aura.
That whole experience made me rethink doing this Crypto thing in a country like Nigeria. It was shocking to go through that in the hands of our security operatives and that opened my eyes to see exactly how corrupt our bloody Police force has become.
Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop Or Comma
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