Ade Adesomoju, Abuja
The National Human Rights Commission on Tuesday expressed concerns over reports of attacks on police stations and law enforcement agents, including police officers in different parts of the country.
A statement by the NHRC’s Assistant Director Public Affairs, Fatimah Mohammed, stated that the commission’s Executive Secretary, Tony Ojukwu, was reacting to cases of “civil attacks on police personnel and wanton destruction of property at some police stations in some states of the federation”.
It stated that such “heinous crime has no place in modern history and therefore should be eschewed to allow peace and orderliness to reign in the country”.
Ojukwu noted in the statement that the commission was receiving petitions of attacks on security personnel “for onward investigations and subsequent recommendations to the appropriate government agencies for compensations or prosecution of offenders in accordance with the law”.
He recalled that the NHRC had up an Independent Investigative Panel to probe complaints of rights violations and brutality of the disbanded Special Anti Robbery Squad but maintained that “two wrongs cannot make a right”.
He added that “aggrieved persons who have an opportunity to take their complaints and petitions to the Independent Investigative Panel set up by the Commission to hear Complaints of allegations of human rights violations by SARS should do so without further delay”.
Ojukwu noted that the establishment of panels of inquiry by the state governments across the 36 states “is a welcome development to complement the efforts of the Federal Government that already established the Independent Investigative Panel midwifed by the NHRC.”
