Beady eye

Leading the way on the 15h00GMT edition of Focus on Africa this afternoon - a veritable hornet's nest is stirred up in Nigeria. Apparently the head of the human rights commission has come down hard (linguistically) on the country's police for themselves coming down hard (physically) on suspects and civilans. To be honest, questions have been raised for a long time over the conduct of Nigeria's police force, but were brought into sharp focus in the past three weeks during the Boko Haram episode when evidence surfaced that the leader of the sect - Mohammed Yusuf - was killed in police custody. The police had originally said he was killed in a fire fight and not in the custody at all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePpUvfTXY7w

This raises the question of 'who is policing the police', not only in Nigeria but elsewhere in Africa. Irrespective of whether or not they are guilty of being heavy-handed, the fact that Roland Ewubare has been able to make the allegations are a good indication that civil society is as robust as ever in Nigeria. Interesting in light of what's in the current issue of the BBC Focus on Africa magazine, where we ask if Nigeria is on its way to being a failed state

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8112800.stm

so perhaps the answer is ..... not really?