8th April, 2014
The National Human Rights Commission, NHRC, hit the bull’s eye when it declared Monday that eight squatters killed in Abuja last year were not Boko Haram members and went ahead to compel the Federal Government to pay the victims N10m each while those who were injured were awarded N5m compensation each.
Operatives of the Department of State Security, DSS, carried out the dastardly extra-judicial killing that shocked Nigerians and sparked global outrage, just as previous extra judicial killings by other security agencies.
We praise the NHRC for its courage to see through the barefaced lies told by the DSS to cover up the heinous crime; and to pronounce the verdict that has attracted widespread applause. In the course of its probe, NHRC said the DSS could not provide any evidence to show that the squatters killed during a raid on a building close to Apo Legislative Quarters were members of the Boko Haram sect.
Since extra-judicial killings by security personnel have become so rampant that they happen almost daily across the country, NHRC now has a herculean task investigating all these atrocities that have made our country very dangerous for law abiding citizens. There is something fundamentally wrong when security operatives turn their guns against innocent tax payers.
Only recently, Amnesty International released a scathing report which indicted Nigerian soldiers for killing over 500 people in their custody in Maiduguri. The police routinely kill innocent Nigerians and later label them as armed robbers. The most recent case of extra-judicial killing occurred last week in Nassarawa State where soldiers killed at least 50 unarmed Fulani people who were at a funeral. The incident led to the state Governor, Tanko Al-Makura, calling for a review of military operation in the state.
For the past nine years, the families of Ifeanyi Ozo, Chinedu Meniru, Isaac Ekene, Paulinus Ogbonna, Anthony Nwokike and Tina Arebun, also known as Apo 6, have not got justice after these young Nigerians were brutally murdered by policemen. The victims were returning from a night-out in 2005 when the police arrested them in Abuja, shot and killed all of them.
Nigerians have suffered in silence for too long over cases of extra-judicial killings. When the police or soldiers pull the trigger and an innocent Nigerian dies from the fatal shot, their bosses transfer the trigger-happy cop or soldier to another zone, while the matter is swept under the carpet and the victim’s parents or relatives are abandoned to bear the pangs of anguish as long as they live. This has to stop.
The National Human Rights Commission must go beyond the latest verdict on the extra-judicial killing of the eight Abuja squatters by investigating hundreds of other cases that have occurred across the country over the years and bring the perpetrators to justice. This extra-judicial killing monster must be tamed in this country. We can no longer condone these barbaric acts by our law enforcement personnel.