As reported by Punch
In 2002, after 35 years of service, she retired as a deputy superintendent from the Nigeria Police Force, while her squad mates did as superintendents, assistant commissioners and deputy commissioners. Wine glasses were raised up on the day they retired, all laughing and dancing to have served in the Force and retired alive, and not killed while on the job. Some others were not that lucky. Nonetheless, she wasn’t happy and maybe she still isn’t.
Thirteen years are gone now since her retirement, but anytime she remembers the treatments meted out to her by her male bosses, the agony returns. But for the passion she had for the job, she would have long quit, but she stood up against them, fought them with everything at her disposal – for the most years she spent in the Force.
They were bent on frustrating her – and they succeeded, at least to some extent.
First, her promotion through the ranks was always delayed; second, her name was dropped at least twice from the inspectorate and assistant superintendent of police calls – promotional training courses for members of the Force; and finally, she was always asked to perform duties that were below her capability and strength.
Whether her female colleagues succumbed to the threats of their senior male colleagues for them to have retired at higher levels in the Force than her, she couldn’t tell. “What I know is that I kept myself pure, I never compromised,” she looked in the eyes of our correspondent and managed to flash a brief smile.
Clara – not her real name – joined the Nigeria Police Force when she was around 25. The Enugu State indigene, who pleaded not to be named for fear of being a target of attack, was young, pretty, slim, with a chocolate skin colour and a great dress sense.
Unknown to her, these qualities endeared her to many of her male bosses. “I was getting too much attention from almost every senior male officer, and before I knew what was happening, I was being asked out by most of them. It took a while for me to know I was going to pay dearly for turning down their proposals,” she said.
She joined as a recruit, a spinster at that time, and immediately, she became a victim of sexual harassment. To make matters worse, she didn’t marry a policeman, which she said could have helped in stopping the harassment, but she chose to marry someone else, her true lover.
She said, “It was my passion while growing up to be a police officer. I just loved anyone in uniform. Thankfully, I had the requirements to join, so I applied and it was successful. I joined as a recruit at that time. But it wasn’t funny. I started becoming an object of attraction from my male bosses, which I really didn’t like. But it wasn’t mere attraction; they wanted to sleep with me. They asked me out many times, tried to lure me through gifts and promises of speedy promotion. I am glad to say it anywhere that I turned them down.
“To make it worse, I didn’t marry a member of the Force. Another man owned my heart. Probably if I had married a member of the Force – at least one of those I got proposals from – it would have been easier. The harassment wouldn’t have been as tough as I experienced.
“It wasn’t long before I realised I was going to pay for not giving in to them. Many times I was posted to places like the police cooperative, where my skills and knowledge were rendered useless. I had the physique and the intellect to be at better posts, even in the field. But they did not allow me to be at such posts. At least twice they removed my name from the lists of officers to go and study abroad. And to my surprise, they made it obvious to me that they were punishing me for refusing to have sex with them.”
These treatments ultimately led to her depression, but she found a way around it to still get on, without letting it affect her work.
“When it was becoming too obvious that I was suffering from depression, my husband asked me what was happening and I told him, but he kept on encouraging me. Of course, he couldn’t have done anything to stop them if he wanted me to stay in the Force,” she added. “He reminded me of the passion I had for the job and that kept me on. So at a point in time, after spending about 10 years in the Force, I got used to the threats and developed a stronger mind. My squad mates all left me behind because I was the only one that I knew whose promotion was delayed. Today, I’m a victor; I fought and I won. I didn’t let them determine what happened to me.”
Maybe she retired as a fulfilled police officer, but not as a happy one – an assumption based on her expression when she spoke with Saturday PUNCH in her Lagos residence on a cold evening past weekend.
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