In Nigeria, few sentences unsettle the human spirit like these words spoken calmly over the phone: “You are invited to the station. Come and see us.” There is no siren. No handcuffs. No shouting. Yet the heart begins to race. Sleep becomes light. The mind starts rehearsing offences it never committed. In our peculiar national psychology, a police invitation has acquired the emotional weight of a conviction.
But let us pause and breathe. A police invitation is not an arrest. It is not a declaration of guilt. It is not a verdict delivered in advance. It is, in the strict language of law, simply a request to appear and clarify an issue. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, law and lived experience do not always shake hands.
The fear is understandable. Our history has trained us to treat police stations as places where rights go to rest. Many Nigerians have heard stories of people who went to “explain something small” and did not return home that night. Some came back days later, broken in spirit. Others returned with charges that made no sense. A few did not return at all. So when the invitation comes, the instinct is to panic first and think later.
Yet panic is a poor legal strategy. Knowledge is better. The law recognises a clear difference between an invitation and an arrest. An arrest involves deprivation of liberty. An invitation does not. If you are invited, you are not under detention. You are free to go, free to ask questions, and free to seek legal advice. Nobody should bundle you into a cell simply because you honoured an invitation.
So the next time you hear, “Come and see us,” do not collapse inside. Stand upright. Ask questions. Know your rights. Walk with confidence.
The problem begins when Nigerians surrender their rights at the gate of the station. They go alone, without a lawyer. They volunteer statements without understanding the complaint. They answer questions that have not been properly framed. Some even start apologising for offences that do not exist, just to appear cooperative. In doing so, they help the lawless to rewrite the script.
Another problem is our culture of intimidation. Some officers deliberately blur the line between invitation and arrest to induce fear. The tone is designed to shake you. The setting is designed to confuse you. The objective is sometimes not justice, but compliance. Pay this. Settle that. Call your people. And suddenly, what began as an invitation begins to smell like detention.
The courts have not been silent on this matter. Judges have repeatedly held that the police cannot use invitations as traps. They cannot invite you and then unlawfully detain you without reasonable suspicion of a crime. They cannot turn civil disputes into criminal investigations under the disguise of invitation. The Constitution still speaks, even when voices inside the station grow loud.
So what should a Nigerian do when the call comes. First, ask questions calmly. Who is inviting you? What is the complaint? Is it civil or criminal? Second, inform someone you trust. Never disappear quietly into a police station. Third, insist on your right to legal representation. A lawyer is not an admission of guilt. It is an assertion of dignity. Fourth, remember that you have the right to remain silent until you understand the issue fully.
There is also a civic lesson here. The police exist to serve the public, not to terrorise it. Invitations should be professional, clear, and respectful. When invitations become tools of harassment, the rule of law begins to wobble. A society where citizens fear routine legal processes is a society walking backwards into uncertainty.
The tragedy is that many Nigerians have internalised fear as obedience. We assume that submission guarantees safety. It does not. Only knowledge does. Only the courage to assert lawful boundaries does. Only the insistence that power must answer to law does.
So the next time you hear, “Come and see us,” do not collapse inside. Stand upright. Ask questions. Know your rights. Walk with confidence. Because in a country striving, however imperfectly, toward justice, a police invitation should never feel like a prison sentence announced in advance.
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