Security for Sale: The Nigerian Police and the Price of Privilege

By Ugo Benitez

In a nation where ki.dnappers broadcast video threats and ba.ndits collect ransoms with impunity, the Nigerian police force continues to serve only one class, the rich, the connected, and the cruel. The average Nigerian today does not fear criminals more than the police. In fact, in many communities, there is no difference.

Justice is selective and protection is for sale. In March 2025, Sahara Reporters exposed how a Nigerian woman died in custody after being illegally arrested for reporting a multi-million naira land fraud. That same week, a promising young artist was tortured to death in a Delta State police cell. Their crime? Being ordinary citizens who spoke up. This is not justice. This is state-enabled exe.cution of dissenting voices. The silence of the leadership is not the only problem, it is their complicity.

Temitope Ajayi, media aide to President Tinubu, publicly posted on Facebook that the corp member who made a video calling Tinubu a terrible President because of hardship should be ex.ecuted. “Capital punishment,” he wrote. Not discipline. Not reprimand. Death. This was not an anonymous internet troll. This was the president’s media aide. When such calls for state-sponsored murder come from the top, the police listen.

 

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We do not protect truth-tellers in Nigeria. We bury them or we break them. The whistleblower who exposed billions stolen by a local council in Lagos was detained for twelve days after meeting bail conditions. In Nigeria, truth is treated as treason and liars wear uniforms with federal seals.

I’ve lived this horror. I was arrested, tortured, blindfolded, and told to confess to crimes I did not commit. They have called me a ter.rorist. I refused to sign their fake confession. They called it a “deal.” I called it a lie. We all know what happens when one is detained with intent to frame them up.

While government use the police to chase peaceful writers, activists, and critics, the country burns. Benue has become a killing field, Kaduna is a ki.dnap corridor, Zamfara bleeds, Anambra on panic frenzy. In every state, there is a case of innocent persons who have died in detention as a result of torture. Chidubem Ezenwa died in police custody in Anambra, July 2024. Olashile Oduga died in Ajah, Lagos in February 2025. Olatunji Jimoh died in Ilorin in December 2024. Tolu Bobade died in Ifon, Ondo. Fatiha Abdulhakeem died in Minna, Niger. The list is long, the names are young, and the stories are identical, all died in detention, the cause of death unresolved no one held accountable.

Even fame offers no shield. This April 2025, Quadri Alabi, the very young and bold boy who became an internet sensation for having stood before Peter Obi’s convoy, was remanded in Kirikiri Prison reportedly framed by touts after refusing to share campaign donations. He was rescued eventually, but it could have ended with another broken body and a grieving family. That’s what silence buys you in Nigeria: a chance to die quietly.

The case of David Nwamini, the 21 year old boy whom the powerful Nigerian former Deputy Senate President and his wife trafficked to the UK to harvest his kidney for their daughter is a clear contrast of what happens in Nigeria. Ike and Beatrice Ekweremadu were convicted in a UK court in March 2023. But what’s more damning is what David told the court, he feared that if he returned to Nigeria, he could be arrested or even kil.led. If he had landed in a Nigerian police station, he might never have left it alive. David could have died in custody just like so many others who offended the powerful.

The Nigerian police is not a law enforcement agency. It is a network of extortionists, enforcers, and gatekeepers for the elite. They protect the gates of billionaires, not the blood of the common man. They post death threats online in the name of patriotism. They shield the corrupt, frame the innocent, and silence the honest.

In Nigeria today, to be poor is to be prey. To be honest is to be endangered. To criticize is to be hunted. To report injustice is to be erased. Yet, even in fear, we write. We speak. We remember. We resist.

But the question remains: how long can anyone survive in a country where truth is treason, where silence is demanded, and where the uniform that should protect you may be the one that kills you?