December 12, (THEWILL) – A professor of law and Dean of the Post-graduate School at Benue State University, Makurdi, Verlumun Tarhule, has advocated the training and retraining of officers of the Nigeria Police on the best methods to obtain information from suspects in their custody.
Prof Tarhule said it had become necessary to train police officers, particularly those interrogating suspects by torturing them to make confessional statements.
Commenting on the spate of human rights abuses in the country, Tarhule suggested a stronger institutional framework, lack of which he noted had always portrayed Nigeria in bad light to the international community.
However, a former Minority leader in the Benue State House of Assembly, Mr. Christopher Abari, said that in most cases, torture was a necessary method to obtain information from hardened criminals.
Recalling his experience in Lagos in 1993, the former lawmaker said he secured a loan facility of N200,000 from the then Lobi Bank and travelled to Lagos to buy materials for supply in Makurdi when he met a fellow tribesman with whom he had a conversation in vernacular. Unknown to him, the man was a Lagos-based hardened criminal, who robbed and escaped before a team of police operatives arrived at the scene of the crime.
Abari said that to his surprise he was arrested by the police after some witnesses identified him as the person who spoke in vernacular with the fleeing suspect. He was taken to Adekunle and later, Panti Police Stations.
The former Benue lawmaker explained that during their interrogation at the police station it was discovered that the suspect had never met him before.
“The police can’t be totally blamed in the method they used in obtaining information from suspects. The criminal implicated me, but l was eventually exonerated because he later confessed under duress that he had no link with me before.”
According to him, even though he was exonerated, the police seized his money and it took the intervention of some eminent Tiv people in Lagos, including the then Director-General of NTA, the late Patrick Ityohegh and a Commissioner of Police at Force Headquarters, Lagos, Farida Waziri, that he was finally charged to a Magistrate Court.
Abari said he was granted bail but kept travelling to Lagos from 1993 to 1995, during which time the Chief Magistrate Court, Yaba struck out the case for lack of proof of involvement in the crime.
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