- Endorses #ENDSARS campaign
Says Police extra Judicial killings caused Boko Haram terrorism.
The Prominent Civil Rights Advocacy group-: HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has charged the European Union(EU); the United States of America(USA), the United Kingdom(UK); CANADA and Australia to impose immediate travel bans on the Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu and police commissioners in the 36 states of the Federation.
HURIWA has also demanded VISA BAN on the state officials of National Police Council and the Police Service Commission for their active roles or apparent inaction that instigated extralegal execution of the citizens especially the peaceful protesters canvassing an end to police brutality and the violent killings of Nigerian Youths by operatives of the Special Anti Robbery Squad of the Nigerian Police Force.
The Rights group said the international community should speak up now to denounce the failures of President Muhammadu Buhari and all the relevant agencies of the Federal Republic of Nigeria including the National Assembly to in a very pragmatic approach, reform the entire scopes of the Nigerian Policing institutions including the strengthening of all the institutional mechanisms that would prevent the continuous extralegal execution of the citizens by the police either in the detention facilities or through out the Country with specific attention to police checkpoints and Stop-and-search points of operations of the armed police operatives in Southern Nigeria.
HURIWA accused the police authority of turning police DETENTION centres as killing fields just as the Rights group said the solution would be to set up JUDICIAL REVIEW COMMISSIONS to investigate activities of the killer SARS in all police formation across the Country with a view to reforming these facilities and opening them up for regular visitations by independent investigators and credible civil society stakeholders and platforms all over the federation of Nigeria.
HURIWA in a statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf said the growing agitations and peaceful protests by a broad spectrum of the citizens are constitutional and legally permissible in a constitutional democracy just as the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) carpeted a bunch of misguided persons under the auspices of the Arewa Youths Consultative Forum, AYCF, which recently faulted the ongoing anti-Special Robbery Squad, SARS, protests across the nation. The Rights group said the criticism of the nationwide protests by the group masquerading about as representing some young northerners is misplaced and mischievous and should not be taken seriously by all right thinking members of the global community.
HURIWA stated thus: “Nothing can be further from the truth than the calculated blackmail against millions of young Nigerians as contained in the illogical and fallacious media statement by the self acclaimed Arewa Youth Consultative Forum’s National President, one Mr. Yerima Shettima who on Saturday claimed that fraudsters popularly known Yahoo Yahoo boys and armed robbers, thugs were behind the anti-SARS protest.
HURIWA condemned the deliberate misinformation by the so-called President Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, one Mr. Shettima who has remained a ‘youth’ in perpetuity just as the Rights group said the National movements against police excessive deployment of brute and crude force although is very widely and extensively PERVASSIVE in Southern Nigeria but the prominent Civil Rights Advocacy group HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) reminds Nigerians who suffer loss of memory that it was POLICE EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLING of the founder of the Boko haram Islamic Sectarian group in Borno state Muhammad Yusuf inside the Police detention facility in Maduguri eleven years ago that instigated the biggest terrorists and armed banditry attacks in the history of modern day Nigeria which has skyrocketed into the 3rd largest terror networks in the entire World that have led to the killing of over 30,000 innocent souls and the turning into refugees and internally and externally displaced persons, the nearly 2 million Children of North East of Nigeria.
“It is therefore disingenuous for any one under any guise to issue an irresponsible and irrational statement dismissing #ENDSARS CAMPAIGNS ” participants as fraudsters as if to say the daughters of President Muhammadu Buhari and his Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbanjo who both signed on to these widespread protests against the dangerous criminal activities of SARS under the Nigerian Police Force are also fraudsters in the warped and toxic but illiterate imagination of Alhaji Shettima Yerima and his lazy co-travellers in the so called Arewa Youth Consultative Forum that has just unleashed the diatribes against the great Nigerian Youths some of whom are creatively engaged in diverse economic activities that generate millions of dollars to the nation’s economy”.
HURIWA which condemns the killings of protesters and the deployment of armed Mobile police to inflict pains and brute force on the Nigerians protesting the brutality has therefore said it will send petitions to World leaders to seek travel bans for the Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu and his principal officials over their crude use of violence to attack and antagonize Nigerians protesting the daredevil activities of armed police operatives under the platform of the SPECIAL ANTI ROBBERY SQUAD.
“HURIWA has persistently asked the Nigerian State to take concrete and verifiable steps to stop the conversion of a lot of Police detention facilities in the Country as execution ground whereby the Police operatives deliberately kill detainees on frivolous excuses but the Federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari does not give a hoot. Indeed the current administration is a notorious use of strong armed tactics to quell civil protests since the last five years and even when in many cases, hundreds of innocent civilians are gunned down by these armed police operatives, the Federal Government has never bothered to set up judicial commissions to review these killings. This administration is notorious for failing to strengthen the National Human Rights commission which has become like a typical civil service agency in gross violations of the relevant amendments made to the legal instruments setting it up which obliges the President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure that a governing Council is set up for the National Human Rights commission but for four years the National Human Rights commission has being without a governing board and so the management of the Rights Commission can only bark but can’t bite.
There is the need for even the Public Complaints Commission to be empowered by legal frameworks against political interference so it can operate as an independent body but right now the Public Complaints Commission is simply an extension of the office of the President of the Senate who influences the membership of the body and therefore there is very little going on there. In the Police Service Commission the place is totally compromised and mismanaged to an extent that the Police Service Commission has no forensic investigations department and a forensic laboratory to investigate police operatives who misapplied their weapons against Nigerians including those in conflict with the law who are deemed innocent in the eye of the law until proven guilty by the competent Court of law. We will be writing these World leaders to step up sanctions targeting individuals in government who have failed to stop the Police extralegal execution of the citizens.”
