Police Lives Matter; All Lives Matter — Says Rights Group
… Demands Non-Kinetic Steps To Stem Tide Of Violent Attacks On Police Operatives
Prominent Civil Rights Advocacy Group, Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA) has condemned the indiscriminate violent attacks targeting mostly Police operatives by insurgents from all parts of Nigeria just as the Rights group has asked the Inspector General of Police Usman Alkali Baba to roll out strategies for practical revitalization of the moribund police community relations committee to abridge the gulf between police and the policed.
HURIWA said the quantum of hatred for the average police operative in Nigeria by the civil populace is mind-boggling demanding that quick win steps are adopted to bring this sentiments of hate to a quick end.
Besides, HURIWA which says no reason is strong enough to justify the massive targeting of armed policemen on their line of duty, however stressed that the police hierarchy at both the National and sub national levels are grossly lacking in the enforcement of strong deterrent administrative sanctions against indicted police officers who still carry out extra judicial killings of suspects in the police custody across the Country.
The Rights group said it is in the self enlightened interests of the police as an institution that extrajudicial killings are stamped out immediately and indicted rogue police operatives prosecuted for mass murders and sanctioned judicially in very transparent court sessions.
“The belief that citizens can just be executed like chickens inside police cells and there is no accountability opens the policing institution up for bottled up angst which have no exploded into full blown ‘civil war against police operatives’ which must be brought to a quick end immediately.
HURIWA blames the inactive, inefficient, ineffective Police’s Human Rights desks for the widening chasm between Police operatives and civilians even as the group said it is impossible for the policing institution to achieve any level of success in crime prevention and control without a robust and constructive dialogues between police and the good people of Nigeria because human intelligence is key to resolving near intractable crimes.
HURIWA has called for the setting up of a full fledged Human Rights Department in the Nigeria Police Force headed by a well trained Human Rights compliant Deputy Inspector General Of Police and the Department well funded to even set up her own Forensic Laboratories to undertake investigations in cases of extrajudicial killings by the Police.”
HURIWA in a media statement by Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko the National Coordinator affirmed that: “We have watched with sadness, as the coordinated killings of men and women in police uniform has spiked all across the Country as if some gunmen have declared a war against the police. The truth is that police lives matter just as much as Nigerian lives matter.”
“What should be done is to roll out concrete programmes of dialogues and active partnership between the civil society and the Police because there is widespread distrust of the police of Nigeria by a large percentage of Nigerians.
“These police operatives being slaughtered are our sons, daughters, brothers and sisters.
“There is the urgency of the now for effective non-kinetic mechanisms by the Inspector General of Police and his commissioners all over Nigeria.”
HURIWA argued too that: “Nigeria Police should quickly adopt technology for combating crimes especially in the many vast expensive landed areas in Nigeria that are virtually unpoliced and ungoverned.
“The Police must never carry out a revenge mission to communities whereby their officers are attacked because in most cases those who attack the Police are often not from those communities since violence entrepreneurs known as unknown gunmen are rapidly mobile and are not known to operate from particular locations.”
“HURIWA challenges the police to reinvigorate its intelligence generating mechanisms so terrorists, insurgents, are picked up before they inflict mortal damage on Nigeria.”
Citing Part 3, section 214(1) of the 1999 constitution which says: “There shall be a Police Force for Nigeria, which shall be known as the Nigeria Police Force, and subject to the provisions of this section no other police force shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof.
2) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution
(a) the Nigeria Police Force shall be organised and administered in accordance with such provisions as may be prescribed by an act of the National Assembly;
(b) the members of the Nigeria Police shall have such powers and duties as maybe conferred upon them by law;
(c) the National Assembly may make provisions for branches of the Nigeria Police Force forming part of the armed forces of the Federation or for the protection of harbours, waterways, railways and air fields.”
HURIWA therefore canvassed for “greater transparency and accountability in the funding and operations of the police just as there is the need for a constitutional alteration to create state police not under the command and control of the governors but under the control of an independent police accountability commission to be created away from the Police Service Commission.”
