A Horrific Tragedy -By Kene Obiezu

On May 16, 2025, with her heart half in her mouth, Miss Emmanuella Ahenjir entered a vehicle from Gyado Villa area of Makurdi, the Benue State Capital, to Wukari in Taraba State. The 23-year-old student of the Federal University Wukari was headed back to school. But she never made it. At the Wurukum roundabout in Makurdi, she was shot dead by another one of many of Nigeria’s trigger-happy policemen, who opened fired on the vehicle when the driver refused to stop.

She may not have had the sort of piercing premonition that would have made her postpone her journey, but for many years now, there has remained something ominous about travelling on Nigerian roads. The dilapidated, potholes-ridden stretches of the road don’t even begin to evoke the kind of fear that bandits who seem to lurk in every bush waiting for passengers do.
With security personnel on the roads, especially the police sl considered nothing more than pesky producers of inconvenience, the real danger has always lain elsewhere given that for so long Nigerians lulled by a false sense of reformation believed that police patrols on their roads had shed their disastrous reputation for being trigger-happy.

Ms. Ahenjir’s death has predictably elicited a national outcry, with shock running through the country and reminding Nigerians of the fragility of life in the country and the clear and present danger ironically posed by those paid by the taxpayers to protect them.

For Ms. Ahenjir’s family who had no doubt gone through the routines of saying goodbye and wishing their daughter safe journey back to school earlier that day, it will take forever, if ever, for the shock and grief to wear off at the nonchalant manner a precious, promising life was so conclusively snuffed out.

For many Nigerians, the police are the worst nightmare, as frightening as the many bandits who pace Nigeria’s many jagged and ragged forests waiting for the opportune moment to pounce on unsuspecting passengers with deadly precision. The only difference is that while bandits prowl the bush, the police line up on the road, clad in uniform sewn with taxpayer’s money, and wielding guns bought with taxpayers money and are no less menacing.
Over the years, the police has acquired a fearsome reputation in Nigeria, with years of strained relations with Nigerians and allegations of corruption thrashing the PR-punt that” police is your friend.”
The fear and revulsion with which the police are approached and treated in Nigeria has become a generational thing, passed on from parents to their children.

Killings of Nigerians by security personnel on the road used to be rampant. Nigerians have lost their lives to police on the road over sums of money as negligible as fifty naira. While years of advocacy and reformation have led to a steep drop in such incidents, Ms. Ahenjir’s death is a stark reminder that the police are not out of the woods yet.

Are these avoidable incidents collateral damage in law enforcement, or do they betray deeper structural problems? Should those who wield guns bought by Nigerians for the sake of Nigerians not exercise more circumspection in their use, especially when there is no armed confrontation?

The questions are many, but as meaningless as it is to bolt the barn door after the horse has bolted. These killings, which remind Nigerians of how quickly life can be snuffed out in their country by those who are supposed to protect it, must be stopped. No country has grown or can grow when its citizens die indiscriminately at the hands of law enforcement.

For the police, it is yet more questions than answers in what is already a difficult relationship with Nigerians. Nigerians are ordinarily suspicious and skeptical of the police. The police has been working very hard to rebuild trust.

Yet, with each deadly incident like the one involving the hapless Ms. Ahenjir, decades of progress made to rebuild public trust in a key institution, crumble, going up in smoke at the hands of a few trigger-happy personnel.

There is no perfect institution anywhere, but with serious commitment, genuine progress can be made to improve the perception of the police according to Nigerians and preclude a repeat of the deadly incidents that leave families heartbroken and grief-stricken. May Ms. Emmanuela Ahenjir’s gentle soul rest in perfect peace.

Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com