[OPINION] Why can’t police and Shiites work together?

By Abimbola Adelakun

On Sunday, the police and the Shiite religious group had another violent encounter in Wuse district, the Federal Capital Territory. As is all too common to these their frequent confrontations, people died. The police confirmed the death of two of their officers, and three others were also reportedly hospitalised due to critical injuries they sustained. Three police patrol vehicles were also said to have been set ablaze. The police issued a press release stating the attack on them was “unprovoked,” while the Shiites, on their own part, maintained that they were going about their own business of peaceful procession when the police appeared and began shooting indiscriminately.

Definitely, one party—or both—is not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I find it hard to accept that the Shiites attacked the police without any provocation whatsoever, and I doubt the police would be so crazy that they would instigate the attack that left their men dead for no reason. Something had to have happened, and whatever it was, certainly preceded their Sunday encounter. Since neither side will admit any fault, the truth remains locked up somewhere in the middle of both accounts, frustratingly unreachable. It would be a waste of time and effort trying to decide right and wrong between the two sides.

The story of both is always about the police suspecting the Shiites of being up to mischief and the Shiites pushing back. In April, the police claimed they received an “intelligence” warning that the “armed wing” of the Shiites movement was planning to attack police operatives at locations such as hotels, beer parlours, black spots, residences, and checkpoints, among other locations. The Shiites, of course, denied the intelligence of that “intelligence” report. Just a week before the intelligence was received, the Shiites had also alleged the police killed five of them and injured 25 others during their pro-Palestinian demonstration in Kaduna.

Also, in July, the police announced a ban on a planned procession by the Shiites to mark the 2024 Islamic Ashura day ceremony saying they would use the occasion to foment trouble. April last year too, another clash between them reportedly left 20 injured. A month before then, the Shiites had also accused the state government of killing five of their members. I could keep going on and on about the tension between the Shiites and the police, but you already understand.

But it is not only the police that have problems with the Shiites. In 2014, another deadly showdown with the military claimed the lives of 34 members of the group, including three of the sons of Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, the leader of the movement. Goodluck Jonathan was the president at the time, and he reportedly called to apologise to El-Zakzaky. In a country where people do not treat their laws as mere suggestions, murders are not resolved through futile apologies but through the justice system. But, this is Nigeria.

Compared to his successor, Muhammadu Buhari, Jonathan’s “sorry” at least demonstrated his humaneness. “Buhari” and “humane,” used in the same sentence, is oxymoronic. In 2015, months after his inauguration, the Shiites were attacked in their communities by soldiers after a confrontation where some of them blocked the then Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, from using a highway that runs through their Zaria headquarters. It was not enough that the soldiers dispersed them with gunshots at the scene, but they also returned to commit a massacre that left 347 people— please note these are official figures—dead.

El-Zakzaky was arrested following the invasion and incarcerated for a long time. The Army deployed heavily armed soldiers, bulldozers, and excavators to demolish the headquarters in an operation that lasted two days. Despite the result of the judicial panel that gave us the tally of 347 deaths, there was neither justice nor closure. One can only imagine the trauma that those who went through that incident still experience, and how it clouds their relationship with the police.

When Buhari was asked on national television about the incident, he did not think the killings warranted as much as compassion let alone justice. A subhuman mongrel, he not only dismissed the massacre, but also later made Buratai an ambassador. Meanwhile, following the massacre, Buratai embarked on various image-refurbishing projects to project himself as what he was not, to cleanse himself of the blood of the Shiites splattered across his face.

In dealing with the Shiites, Buhari allowed his religious prejudices to get in the way of his responsibility to them as the leader of a diverse and complex country. It is the same prejudice, still held by top-ranking officers in the various bureaucratic units of national administration, that percolates into the agencies that constantly clash with the Shiites.

In the wake of the Sunday incident, the Shiites are accusing the police of going to the hospitals to arrest and detain their members. That is a serious accusation, one that the police will likely never respond to, either out of professional haughtiness or simply because the structures of accountability that can compel a response are virtually non-existent. Either way, the Sunday incident and its aftermath are already setting out the basis of another round of violent encounters when next they meet. That is the unfortunate way people and institutions get caught in an unending loop of destructive behaviours to which they become so habituated that they cannot imagine any other possibility of being. There is a need for a rethink in their relationship and approach to each other.

It might sound radical—and even naïve—to suggest they come to a truce, but there are no better alternatives. Also, I do not think the endless cycles of killings and destruction exhaust the possibilities of the relationship between the police and the Shiites. Issues between them are seemingly intractable, but the deaths and destructions are unacceptable. From Kaduna to the FCT, there is hardly ever a time that they are not at loggerheads; their histories are complicated. Nonetheless, it is not so hopeless that this is all there can ever be. There must be a way Shiites can have their numerous processions in peace, and police lives and scarce resources are not needlessly expended. All it takes is moral imagination and the summoning of the right political will.

If there is anything to learn by now, it is that no amount of violence can stop the Shiites from doing their thing. Despite everything they have gone through, they are still not giving up on existing. They are extremely resolute people; nothing the Nigeria police or the military do will stop these people. Their resolve seems unbreakable, and the antagonism strengthens it. In that case, there must be another way beyond the constant clashes: a truce. Rather than the constant clashes that claim lives and property, they should be allowed to believe what they believe, express it as they want to express it, and do so without infringing on the rights of others to live and exist freely. There should be a way for both parties to get to that point—perhaps by seeking mediation. Like I said, given their complex history, it will take a lot of imagination and will to achieve a less tense situation, but it is not impossible.

Finally, this is not to say that the Shiites are guileless, or that they are always the innocent party in every encounter. Nothing is ever that uncomplicated, especially for a group who have had numerous brushes with enforcement agents—many of them which left the trademark “sorrow tears and blood” in its wake. There will be mutual suspicions, and their issues will not magically blow over, but at least there will be fewer deaths and destructions.