THOSE taking Nigerians for granted should rate their anger and reaction to recent incidents. Nigerians are becoming impatient with lawlessness. When they cannot take it any longer, they take the laws into their own hands.

We do not support self help, in the same way we condemn police brutality. What should people do when a policeman guns down another citizen, a pregnant woman, whose offence was that she exchanged words with him?

Some accounts were that the taxi in which she was a front seat passenger turned in front of a bank the policeman was guarding. The policeman would not let that happen, though none of the passengers was a threat to the bank. The armed policeman asked them to reverse, threatening to shoot.

The passengers pleaded  with him. It was in the morning, the rush hour, the last day of the month. They were probably among people heading to banks to update their accounts on the final day. The policeman refused. He gunned down the woman, injured three other passengers – and fled into the sanctuary of the bank.

On January 31 when this happened in Mpape, a suburb of Abuja,  a slope that separates it from the serenity of Maitama District, a mob formed on seeing the lifeless body of 30-year-old Mrs. Doris Okere, she was seven months pregnant.

Bedlam ensued. The crowd could not reach the policeman so it set the building on  fire, razed nine vehicles in the bank premises, vandalised its Automated Teller Machine and looted any valuable in sight.

The mayhem continued until superior officers from the military, police, fire service and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps dispersed the crowd. If not, the bank’s staff could have burnt to death in the building.

Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Hafiz Ringim has directed a criminal suit be filed against the erring policeman but more needs to be done about temperament of policemen and their weapon handling skills. Too many lives are lost to the temperament of the likes of the policeman at the bank.  Some of them, once posted to banks, make new rules for engaging the public.

Their victims are mostly the poor, the defenceless, those they think they can intimidate. Would the policeman have shot if the passengers were in a pricey private car? Would he not have scampered off to find them a parking space, hoping to be rewarded for his efforts? Were the bank in affluent parts of Abuja like Maitama District, would he have fired the fatal shot?

How can a policeman get so angry to forget he serves the public, including ordinary people? Even if he forgets, does he just remember to shoot a defenceless woman for speaking with him? Was he drunk, as some policemen are, when on duty, no matter the hour?
The anger in Mpape was a warning – police brutality, which is lawlessness, is intolerable. We hope the police learnt lessons from the on-going rampage police brutality sparked off in Tunisia.