Posted by By BIODUN DUROJAIYE on
The Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) Wednesday in Lagos released a damning report on extra-judicial killings by law enforcement agencies, alleging that the police have an unwritten policy to kill robbery suspects and that this had the tacit approval of the Inspector General.
The Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) Wednesday in Lagos released a damning report on extra-judicial killings by law enforcement agencies, alleging that the police have an unwritten policy to kill robbery suspects and that this had the tacit approval of the Inspector General.
The human rights group also alleged that an average of five innocent souls are killed everyday in what is known in police parlance as "sending on an errand," adding that 20,000 people have died in extra-judicial killings since 1999.
The report was released against the backdrop of the on-going judicial commission of inquiry into the killing of innocent souls by the police at Apo Village in Abuja.
Addressing a press conference, where the report, entitled "I Can Kill You and Nothing Will Happen," was presented, the organisation's Executive Director, Chima Ubani stated that "the CLO has evidence that the killing of so-called robbery suspects in custody has the tacit approval of the Inspector General of Police, despite his utterances to the contrary."
To buttress this allegation, Ubani stated that the CLO wrote the IG and the Attorney-General of the Federation on May 5, 2005, drawing their attention to the imminent execution of six robbery suspects in Enugu State Criminal Investigation Department (CID), and called on them to intervene to ensure the suspects were tried in accordance with due process.
"Our letter was ignored and less than one week later the suspects were executed and their bodies dumped at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Mortuary in Enugu," Ubani added.
According to the CLO, the unwritten policy to execute suspected robbers had enabled the police at all levels to get away with killing innocent persons by simply tagging them armed robbery suspects.
Many of the victims are tagged robbery suspects by the police, who often claim that they were shot either in "shoot-outs" to foil robbery attempts or as they attempted to escape during police investigation, the CLO stated.
"There is, however, growing evidence that many of the victims are innocent persons, including commercial bus drivers, passengers, private motorists and other road users who have fallen victims of trigger-happy policemen for refusing to part with bribe money or for a variety of other reasons having nothing to do with the claim of armed robbery," it added.
The CLO dismissed government's judicial panel on the Apo killings as being aimed at dousing public disquiet and impress the international community, especially in the light of the visit of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial Killings, Professor Philips Alston, as well as Nigeria's quest for debt relief and a seat at the United Nations Security Council.
The CLO said such a panel should be made up of interested and credible groups, like the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), human rights organisations, the Police Service Commission (PSC), the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and representatives of the victims.
The organisation therefore, called on the Federal Government to reconstitute the panel with members drawn from groups listed above and others, ensure the indicted Divisional Police Officer (DPO) who escaped from custody is arrested and prosecuted, while the findings of the panel should be made public within two weeks of submission of its report.
It further called for a high-powered judicial panel to investigate all cases of extra-judicial killings by the police and other law enforcement agencies from May 1999 till date.
The organisation also released a 12-point programme for the prevention of extra-judicial killings, including official condemnation by government, ensuring that law enforcement officials maintain a strict chain of command, holding individuals responsible for their role in any of such killings and prosecuting those responsible.
Meanwhile, the CLO has secured the release of 124 awaiting trial inmates in prisons in Lagos State, under its legal aid scheme. The inmates had been in prison custody for more than 10 years without trial, according to a statement by Princewill Akpakpan, Head of CLO's Penal Reform Project.
•From left, Damian Ugwu, Project Officer, Law Enforcement, Chima Ubani, Executive Director, CLO and Mary Okosun, Coordinator, Administration of Justice, CLO at the press briefing on recent killings in Nigeria