Extrajudicial Killings: HURIWA Urges Independence Of Police, PSC In All States

Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Asso­ciation of Nigeria, (HURIWA), on Tuesday, has called on the Federal Government to allow the independence of the Police Service Commission (PSC) and the Nigeria Police Force so that they could effectively carry out their constitutional mandates.

HURIWA’s National Coor­dinator, Comrade Emmanu­el Onwubiko, in a statement also sought that the offices of the PSC be set up in all the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory for the purposes of investigat­ing the legality or otherwise of use of weapons by police­men against citizens.

The group’s statement fol­lowed the extrajudicial killing of a Lagos-based lawyer, Bo­lanle Raheem by ASP Drambi Vandhi on Christmas Day and similar killing of another La­gosian, Gafaru Buraimoh by policemen attached to the no­torious Ajiwe Police Station on December 7, 2022 and hundreds of other cases that never made it to the popular news media.

HURIWA’s Onwubiko said, “The Federal Government needs to strengthen the Police Service Commission, build up the effective and efficient man­power to power the commission’s mandates which if adequately implemented and enforced by the right kind of science-based, evidence-driven investigations of policing misbehaviour and crimes such as extrajudicial killings of civilians, then the cases of police brutality will be checked and perpetrators pun­ished severely in line with the extant laws on murder.

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“In the wake of the extra-le­gal killing of the Lagos preg­nant lawyer on Christmas day, virtually everyone has spoken out in condemnation but structurally, both the Nige­ria Police Force and the Police Service Commission are com­promised and not independent in terms of implementation of their mandates and the police is so indiscipline to a point that 70% of the operatives are un­aware of the existence of the Nigerian Police Act of 2020 which contains a plethora of provisions that specify human rights of citizens in their en­counter with the police.

“The government needs to take a bolder step to set up offices of Police Service Com­mission in all the states and set up functional ballistic labora­tory for the purposes of inves­tigating the legality or other­wise of police use of weapons against citizens including even outlaws and criminals as is done in the UK which has even an entirely independent body of investigators that analyzes the use to which police opera­tives have put their weapons in the course of their functions of law enforcement.