Posted by The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, or HURIWA, has denounced the brutal attacks carried out by militants from all over Nigeria that are directed at police officers.
In a statement, HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, urged the Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, to develop plans for revitalizing the ineffective police community relations committee in order to close the gap between the police and those they are supposed to be protecting.
The rights group claimed that the level of hostility held by the general public in Nigeria for the typical police officer is mind-boggling and demanded that quick-win measures be used to quickly put a stop to these emotions of hatred.
However, HURIWA emphasized that the police hierarchy at both the national and subnational levels are grossly deficient in the enforcement of strong deterrent administrative sanctions against indicted police officers who still carry out extrajudicial killings of suspects in the custody of the police across the Country. HURIWA claimed that no reason is compelling enough to justify the widespread targeting of armed policemen while they are performing their duties.
The rights organization asserted that it is in the self-interest of the police as an institution that extrajudicial executions be put an end to right away, and that rogue police officers be charged with mass murder, prosecuted, and sentenced judicially in open court proceedings.
“The idea that people can merely be killed like chickens inside police cells with no consequences exposes the policing institution to pent-up resentment that has now erupted into a full-fledged “civil war against police operations” that needs to be put an end as soon as possible,”
said Onwubiko.
The declaration reads,
The coordinated assassinations of men and women wearing police uniforms have increased across the nation, as though certain gunmen have declared war against the police. We have observed this with sadness. In actuality, police lives are just as important as those of Nigerians.
The police in Nigeria are widely despised by a significant portion of Nigerians, hence what needs be done is to implement concrete programs of conversation and active engagement between the civil society and the police.
Our sons, children, siblings, and sisters are among the police officers being killed. The Police Inspector General of Police and his commissioners across Nigeria must act immediately to implement efficient non-kinetic techniques.
“Nigeria Police should employ technology as soon as possible to combat crime, particularly in the country’s numerous expansive, expensive landed regions that are essentially ungoverned and unpoliced.
“The Police must never go on a retaliation mission to communities where their officers have been attacked because, in most cases, those who attack the Police are frequently not from those communities since violence entrepreneurs known as unidentified gunmen are quickly mobile and are not known to operate from particular locations,” says a police official.
HURIWA urged the police to improve the way they gather intelligence in order to catch terrorists and militants before they cause Nigeria irreparable harm.