By Rekpene Bassey
Mene Ogidi, a Nigerian in his prime, was killed in a way that leaves little room for ambiguity and no room for excuses on April 26, in Effurun, Delta State. He was restrained, his hands bound, pleading for his life. A police officer fired. The video spread quickly, not as a rumour, but as a record; real evidence.
In a country where such cases have too often dissolved into anonymity, Olatunji Disu’s response signalled a break with the habit. The act was condemned as “criminal, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable.”
The officer identified in the shooting, ASP Nuhu Usman of the Nigeria Police Force, was recommended for immediate dismissal and prosecution, alongside four others cited for violating Force Order 237, the rulebook governing when police may use firearms.
For Nigeria, this is what progress looks like at first glance: names named, actions taken, a leadership posture that rejects euphemism. But the country has been here before. At the threshold of accountability, with the door open but rarely crossed. Because in Nigeria’s policing history, dismissal is often where justice begins and ends.
The legal standard in this case is not complicated. Force Order 237 permits lethal force primarily to protect life. A restrained suspect does not meet that threshold. What happened in Effurun is not a borderline judgment call. It is, on its face, a violation.
The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) said as much, describing the killing as arbitrary and unacceptable. But Nigeria’s problem has rarely been the absence of legal clarity. It has been the absence of legal consequences.
The pattern is familiar. An incident triggers outrage. Authorities promise action. Officers are suspended or dismissed. Investigations are announced. Then, slowly, the system exhales. Cases stall in court. Files gather dust. Public attention drifts. The cycle resets.
This is the accountability gap; not between crime and condemnation, but between condemnation and conviction.
Closing that gap requires more than police action. It requires institutional choreography. The police must investigate. The Police Service Commission must validate disciplinary decisions. Prosecutors must bring charges that reflect the gravity of the act.
Courts must hear the case without the inertia that has long defined high-profile prosecutions. If any link fails, accountability collapses.
There are reasons to take the current moment seriously. By identifying the officer, relocating the team to Force Headquarters in Abuja, and publicly committing to prosecution, the police leadership has done something that was once rare: made accountability visible.
In a system long criticised for opacity, visibility matters. It signals intent. It sets expectations. But intent is not an outcome. And expectations, once raised, can deepen public distrust if they are not met.
The deeper issue is cultural as much as legal. Nigeria does not lack rules governing police conduct. It lacks consistent enforcement of those rules.
Force Order 237 has existed for years, outlining when officers may and may not use deadly force. But the violations have persisted, not because the doctrine is unclear, but because consequences have been uncertain.
Policing, like any institution, responds to incentives. If officers believe misconduct will lead to little more than an administrative sanction, behaviour will not change. If they believe it will lead to criminal liability, swift, certain, and public, behaviour begins to adjust.
This is not about the severity of punishment. It is about the certainty of consequence.
The human cost of that uncertainty is not theoretical. Mene Ogidi was a musician. His life, like so many others, now becomes a statistic in a long-running crisis. But statistics obscure what matters most. His family does not grieve a number. They grieve a person.
His poor mother (assuming she is still alive) has now buried two sons killed by police in separate incidents. Her question: how to survive such loss, sits beyond the reach of policy language. It is the moral indictment that shadows every discussion of reform.
Nigeria has confronted this crisis before, most visibly during the #EndSARS protests, when young people demanded an end to a culture of impunity.
Panels were set up. Recommendations were made. Some changes followed. Many did not endure.
The risk now is not that nothing will happen, but that something will happen. And then stop short.
The language of “zero tolerance,” invoked by the police leadership, will be tested not by dismissal but by prosecution. Zero tolerance means arraignment on serious charges, not procedural delay. It means a case that moves through the courts with urgency, not one that dissolves into adjournments. It means a verdict that reflects evidence, not influence. Anything less reduces the phrase to rhetoric.
This case, then, is more than an isolated incident. It is a stress test for Nigeria’s institutions. It will reveal whether the system can carry a case from outrage to resolution, from evidence to judgment.
It will also send a signal internally: to officers, and externally: to the public.
Inside the force, it will answer a simple question: What happens when an officer crosses the line? Outside it, another: Can the system deliver justice when it is most clearly demanded?
For now, the door is open. The police have acted. The country is watching. What comes next will determine whether this moment becomes a precedent. Or another reminder of how close Nigeria has come, and how often it has stopped short.
*Rekpene Bassey is the President of the African Council on Narcotics and a Security Specialist
