COVID-19: Government Tolerating Extra-Judicial Killings By Security Personnel – HURIWA Alleges

BY VICTOR BUORO, ABUJA – Worried over the killings of about three dozen Nigerians over alleged violation of the COVID-19 lockdown order by security agencies, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has said that the development is as a result of government’s tolerance for lawlessness and impunity as fundamental cause for the brutal killings.

HURIWA specifically declared that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has consistently done nothing by way of law enforcement to severely punish rogue members of the armed security forces responsible for some of the worst cases of extra-legal executions of over 1,000 innocent Nigerians in the last five years.

A statement by the National Coordinator of HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf noted that there is an organised cover ups by the security forces not to publicly subject the trigger happy cops and operatives of the armed security personnel to undergo transparent trials before the competent courts of law.

HURIWA further said; “Many innocent civilians have lost their lives due to extrajudicial executions by members of the armed security forces only because these persons went out to the streets of major cities to protest against bad policies of government.

“A federal government that sends out security forces to kill protesters and voters at polling centers will not be ready to demand accountability from the hierarchies of the armed security forces for the rising wave of extralegal executions”. 

The Rights group said the snail-speed with which the wheel of justice moves in Nigeria is also a fundamental issue, adding that many cases of professional misconduct by armed security forces that relate to extrajudicial executions of persons that are managed to be charged before some courts of law linger in those judicial institutions for years, thereby foisting a sense of impunity amongst these armed members of the security forces that they can do whatever they want and may walk away from justice. 

HURIWA also said that another salient cause of the continued extra-legal executions of Nigerians is the deliberate weakening and politicization of such critical institutions like the National Human Rights Commission and the Office of the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice which render these strategic offices useless in stamping out the crimes against humanity that extrajudicial executions of persons by the members of the security forces constitutes. 

HURIWA further said; “Nigeria’s Federal Attorney General and minister of Justice is more concerned with playing politics of pursuing political vendetta against the immediate past Federal government of President Goodluck Jonathan and has failed to ensure that his enormous constitutional powers are deployed in the service of national interests by way of prosecution of indicted security forces operatives for the extensive cases of extralegal executions of over 1,000 Nigerians.

“The National Human Rights Commission has become a shadow of its old self because the management runs the place like a normal civil service outfit to the utter shock and disappointment of millions of Nigerians who are expecting the Commission to use its enhanced operational and funding powers to prosecute such murderers in security forces’ uniforms.

“The National Human Rights Commission ought to be led by a constituted board of governors, who ought to lead the process of investigations and prosecution of such heinous cases and so what we now have is a crying baby sort of National Human Rights Commission that can bark but lacks the teeth to bite.”