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Criminal Torture And The Nigeria Police Cell System In The Criminal Investigation Process In Nigeria
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Regrettably at independence in 1960, it became obvious that those who
took over from the colonial authority began to manipulate the system for
their own selfish interest.[8] Worst still, subsequent military regimes
that took over from 1966 failed to improve the police and instead used
it to enforce authoritarian rule which further entrenched a culture of
public disdain and hatred for the police.[9] These negative tendencies
continued unabated and finally culminated into acts of indiscipline,
corruption and violation of the rights of citizens to mention but these
few. Another germane problem is the loopholes in the Nigeria Police Act
which has enhanced the obvious disconnect between the police, the law
and the citizens. Innocent Chukwuma laments that “since 1943 when the
police Act was enacted by the colonial government, it has not been
reviewed to reflect present day realitiesâ€[10] . According to him:
The
first is to capture and incorporate into law, recent positive policy
developments in the Nigeria Police Force. Such developments include
community policing, police performance monitoring and minimum
educational requirement for entry and performance in the force. The
second issue is to amend or expunge provisions in the Act that have
either become outdated or obnoxious in the light of the present
democratic dispensation. The third is the necessity to amend sections of
the Act that makes it impossible to insulate the police from partisan
political control[11]
Suffice it to say that Democracy is a term that
has been jointly and severally subjected to all kinds of meaning and
interpretation. According to Buhlman et al, „there are abundant
literature relating to democratic theory with countless definitions of
what democracy should be and what democracy is‟[12] . Laza corroborated
this view by saying that „there is no consensus on how to measure
democracy, and that definitions of democracy are contested and there is
an ongoing lively debate on the subject.[13] To start with, „democracy‟
was define as „a system of rule by the poor and disadvantaged; a form of
government in which the people rule themselves directly and
continuously without the need for professional politicians or public
officials; a society based on equal opportunity and individual merit
rather than hierarchy and privilege; a system of welfare and
redistribution aimed at narrowing social inequalities; a system of
decisionmaking based on the principle of majority rule; a system of rule
that secures the rights and interest of minorities by placing checks
upon the power of the majority; a means of filling public office through
a competitive struggle for the popular vote.[14] To some writers,
„democracy is a system of government by which political sovereignty is
retained by the people and exercise directly by the citizens. In
Sadaro‟s own view „the essential idea of democracy is that people have
the right to determine who governs them. In most cases, they elect the
principal government officials and hold them accountable for their
actions. A democracy also imposes legal limits on the government‟s
authority by guarantying certain rights and freedoms to their
citizens‟[15] .
The minimalist sees democracy as a „political system
of political rights that specifies how leadership should be designated
at the highest national level in a policy. It is in this same line that
Schumpeter[16] defines democracy as „that institutional arrangement for
arriving at political decision in which individuals acquire the power to
decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people‟s vote. Other
authors like Diamond Larry uses the maximalist definition of democracy
as all encompassing „not only a civilian, constitutional, multiparty
regime, with regular, free and fair elections and universal suffrage,
but organizational and informational pluralism; extensive civil
liberties; effective power for elected office and functional autonomy
for legislative, executive and judicial organs of government.[17]
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