The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has slammed the Inspector General of Police over what it termed “open and brazen disobedience and disloyalty to President Muhammadu Buhari” who gave clear directive and instruction openly and publicly to the state governments in Nigeria to constitute, judicial panels of inquiry into police brutality which was the basis of the End SARS protests.
The group in a statement on Thursday, described the decision of the police high command under the headship of Mohammed Adamu to institute a suit at the Federal High Court seeking to abort the proceedings at the different judicial panels of inquiry in different states of the Federation, as disgraceful, and a direct affront to the authority of the President of Nigeria and an unmitigated desecration of the Constitution.
HURIWA stated that it is irresponsible, insanely irrational, and senseless for the IGP to deep his hands into the public to file a case against the same public – his employers, adding that the Nigerian people are the employers of the police.
According to the association, “It is an indescribable disgrace that the IGP wants the court of law to stop the victims of police brutality from ventilating their grievances before the properly constituted judicial panel of inquiry.”
“So, what is the IGP afraid of or are his hands stained with the blood of the innocent citizens killed over the many years by Special Anti-Robbery squad of the Nigeria Police Force?
“Why is the IGP scared of the truth that are coming out from the panels of inquiry and why does he not want the victims of police brutality to obtain justice?
“The suit instituted at the Federal High Court by the IGP is provocative, unconstitutional, illegal, primitive, despicable and must be withdrawn forthwith or the IGP must be asked to refund the money used to institute the matter and be fired.
“The IGP will have to state if the instruction to go to court was given to him by President Muhammadu Buhari in which case Nigerians will have to see that the President is not honest about changing the status quo of policing which is deeply enmeshed in the use of torture and extralegal executions.
“This frivolous suit shows that the police hierarchy indeed supports the use of torture and extrajudicial killings by operatives of the Nigerian police,” the statement said.
