Indecent Dressing Arrests - Count Us Out -Lagos Govt

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Indecent Dressing Arrests - Count Us Out -Lagos Govt

Daily Champion
Olatubosun Sowemimo
16 August 2007

Lagos State government yesterday dissociated itself from the arrest and detention of ladies over indecent dressing even as lawyers insisted that those arrested should be charged to court immediately to avoid in-fringing on their fundamental human rights.

A statement by the state government said it has no business with those who expose their bodies. The statement which quoted Governor Babatunde Fashola (SAN) of clarifying this at a special security council meeting in Alausa Ikeja yesterday, also said the Commissioners of Police in the state, Mr Muhammed Abubakar claimed that he had never given any directive to any of his men to arrest any lady for indecent dressing. Abubakar urged any one harassed to report such to his office.

Daily Champion recalls that the police had recently arrested hundreds of ladies at different locations in Lagos, either for "wandering" or dressing indecently, but the victims were yet to be charged to court even after days of arresting them.

Human rights lawyer-activist Festus Keyamo yesterday told Daily Champion that though, indecent exposure is an offence against public morality according to the criminal code, arresting offenders is legal.

Likewise was the view of Bamidele Aturu, another human rights activist and Lagos-based lawyer who said indecent dressing is an offence in law, even as he clarified that there was no longer any offence like "wandering" in Nigeria of today. Aturu also said police could arrest anybody, especially ladies who indecently expose their bodies in the public but they should not use that as an opportunity to molest and assault ladies in the name of detaining them.

Also, Ikeja branch chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Niyi Idowu noted that though there is a clear difference between criminality and immorality, indecent exposure of bodies especially by ladies is a criminal offence, but arrests in this regard must be conducted lawfully. But, the lawyers maintained that in order to strike a balance, the police must not detain suspects for more than 24 hours before charging them in court.

"Since that indecent dressing is an offence in law, then it would be right to say that arresting offenders is legal. But that could also engender another sort of illegality, which is keeping suspects in detention beyond 24 hours. Anyone arrested must be charged in court," Keyamo insisted. "In as much as the government, through the police, wants to rid the society of indecent exposures especially with ladies, the fundamental rights of such people must also be accordingly respected. The position of the law is clear on that," said Idowu.

"Whereas it is a crime to expose your body indecently, it is also a crime to detain an offender for more than the prescribed period of detention. The police should also prosecute suspects quickly in order to strike a balance. "The detainees must not be seen by the police as money making objects or tools to satisfy their sexual urges," Aturu stressed, responding to allegations by suspects that they were being sexually molested. He, however, charged all religious institutions to preach morals into their youths as regards descent appearances. Some victims had on Tuesday alleged that police officers had arbitrarily raped and extorted money from them on the pretext of assisting them to get bail.

Copyright © 2007 Daily Champion

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Lawlessness Is Law

Vanguard
EDITORIAL
4 Sept. 2007

For over a month both the Lagos State Government and the police authorities in the State have been denying issuing any orders for the arrest of women who are indecently dressed.

Remarkably, these denials have not stopped the practice that was prone to abuse from the beginning. In a city with a swirling dressing culture that borrows from numerous influences, it is where dressing sense was involved, a clear case of one man's meat being another man's fish.

The police was serious from the beginning. Building on a premise of commercial sex workers harbouring criminals, they raided quarters where they uprooted these suspects, who they paraded before the media as if they were convicts.

Initial successes, which the new Commissioner of Police Mohammed Abubakar said marked the new phase in the war against criminals, were all his men required to begin assaulting citizens in a manner that was very alien to these parts.

Protests from women groups, and others who were fair-minded on these police raids, have failed to change the mind of the police. It has founded a new business that it will not dismantle quickly.

Reports filtered into the media that the police use this latest trick to extort money from people. They remind suspects that the 65 women who were charged to court for the same offence, "indecent dressing likely to cause a breach of the peace" were jailed for three months or asked to pay a fine of N20,000.

The 65 charged to court is proof that someone ordered arrest of women who dressed indecently. The lawlessness in this matter is that it is left to the judgement of policemen, most of whom have their own squabbles with the larger society, to decide what amounts to indecent dressing. They have expectedly made a mess of it.

Lagos State has enough problems without adding the dressing culture to them. The crime rate cannot dip by taking indecently dressed women off the streets. If they are on the streets, there is no logic in expecting that they are harbouring criminals, at the same time.

Again, the tardiness in the denials from the authorities, and the continuation of the raids, and the continued detention of those arrested, until they paid the money police wants for bail, add to the promotion of the lawlessness.

It is no longer enough to say that the raids do not enjoy the blessings of the State Government and authorities. When next Mr. Abubakar displays arrested suspects, they should include the policemen who are carrying on these raids as if they are the most compelling course they attended at the police college.

Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola should stop these raids immediately. They are a blot on his administration. They create tension and add little to the efforts to rid the State of criminals who still rob homes and banks at will. Let it not be that the police, having lost the war against criminals, have decided to pick on easier targets.

Copyright © 2007 Vanguard