UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND POLICE OFFICERS | 10% to campusconnect

After secondary school, most students get the opportunity of being away from their parents for the first time in their lives and expect to have a nice time. There are police stations in every part of the country, and we as citizens expect to be protected by them but that is not the case.

Police officers in various stations across the country have taken it upon themselves to make students feel perpetually unsafe around them. As a student moving around in a city where your school is located, you have no choice but to sneak around like an illegal immigrant in your home country. This is so not good. I have been hearing stories of police officers harassing students around universities in Nigeria but it wasn't clear to me until I became a victim of the police.

On a Sunday afternoon, I waved my parents goodbye and set out for school. I was in a tricycle with my luggage and discussing with the driver to make him feel active. Before getting close to the park where I was supposed to board a bus, the tricycle I was onboard was stopped by armed police officers. I was immediately asked to get down. Upon getting down, I received a very hot slap that immediately threw me off balance. I was bedraggled, the threat they posed was so apparent and I could only stare at the officer in dismay and pray to God.

I was asked for my phone by the police officers. At first I wanted to resist, but they told me that they could shoot me and do away with my body without query from anyone. I really had no choice. I unlocked my phone and gave it to them. As they were going through my phone, I told them I was a student and they didn't seem to care. I came home from school because I was sick and had to go back that Sunday because I had a test the next day.

The police officers looked through my chats and couldn't find anything yet they labeled me a scammer, a cyber criminal. I wasn't the only student they had abducted, yes, abducted. That is what criminals do. I presented my ID card to them and after they saw my school they reconsidered. I got a message from my course rep about they test so it helped convince them.

The main reason I was freed was because one of the female police officers at the station had a daughter who was also a student at my school. I guess they are humans after all. We can't keep living like criminals in our country. Being a young Nigerian student is a crime and punishable by death if care is not taken. I haven't heard of any other country in the world where students are hunted like animals.