I had embarked on a 12-hour road trip from Lagos to Calabar and there was a police extortion point every kilometer.
By the time I arrived Calabar, the Cross River State capital on the night of Tuesday, September 4, 2018, I could literally hear police officers demanding for money in my sleep. Such was the trauma I had just gone through.
I had embarked on a 12-hour road trip from Lagos to Calabar and there was a police extortion point every kilometer.
"Open your boot. Wetin you carry? Wetin dey?", the first police officer we encountered around the Lagos-Ibadan by-pass demanded gruffly, gun drawn, with the smell of cheap liquor oozing through his nostrils. He delayed us for 10 minutes in the guise of inspecting particulars, before taking the driver to a lonely clearing to discuss N100.
My driver was a stubborn middle aged man with a thick Akwa Ibom accent who knew exactly how to evade beggarly police officers at ubiquitous checkpoints. He would spend the rest of a 12-hour trip dodging gun totting police officers and refusing to pull over when asked to. With guns pointed at us, my driver would make to pull over before depressing the gas pedal and zooming out of sight.
He pulled that stunt so many times even though we told him how silly and dangerous that was.
"Oka, if jou nor get mind, jou no ko fit do transport business for dis kantri o. How I ko make money come give all dis people? Dem dey mad", the driver would say in between stunts.
Once, I could swear that the officer -- who was so angry because the driver was pulling away instead of handing him a crumpled N100 note -- was seconds away from pulling the trigger on us.
I was sat in front, muttering my last prayers on occasion.
Between Delta and Onitsha, I counted 20 extortion points made up of gun wielding soldiers, police officers and federal road safety corps. Near Asaba, a motley crowd of FRSC, police and military personnel made brisk business slapping motorists with all kinds of phony charges.
When we hit the home stretch of Imo to Calabar, it was just as bad. There were times when the officers were so brazen and shameless in their extortion tactics, I had to say a prayer of forgiveness for their depraved souls.
Just before the River Niger Bridge, there were soldiers extorting from motorists and causing a gridlock that kept us rooted to spots for several hours.
I am aware that Inspector General after Inspector General has made a song and dance out of banning police checkpoints. However, on the basis of what I saw this week, I have to say the checkpoints never left. If anything, they only multiplied.
"Na kot ko epp us for this kantri", my driver said with a sigh of relief, when we eventually made it to Calabar unscathed.