By Eyo Nsima
THE Action Group on Free Civic Space, AGFCS, has called on the Federal Government to review all cases of unlawful detention, extortion, torture, and human rights abuses committed by any personnel of the police force, including the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS.
AGFCS also urged the government to, “embark on the strict and conscious implementation of the Police Act 2020, to ensure security agencies operate with civility, responsibility, professionalism, and restraint. Strengthen the capacities of oversight bodies like the Complaints Response Unit (CRU), Ministry of Police Affairs (MOPA), Police Service Commission, and the National Human Rights Commission to enforce discipline in the Nigeria Police Force.
“Expressly prohibit officers from harassing and brutalizing citizens who make and publicize video recordings of unlawful police conducts. Conduct an inquiry to respond to the public allegations expressed in this report and elsewhere of University Teaching Hospital (UNTHs) in the country, with particular reference to UNTH, Enugu State, collaborating with corrupt police officers to unlawfully buy or acquire dead bodies of victims of police brutality. Support and grant full access to civil society groups and watchdogs independently collecting evidence of violations, providing legal representation to victims, monitoring and documenting the proceedings of judicial panels of inquiry across states in Nigeria.”
The group, which also presented its research report – #ENDSARS: Police Brutality, Protests and Shrinking Civic Space in Nigeria- said: “This report is based on the findings of a joint fact-finding mission by members of the AGFCS to Nigeria’s South-eastern states, with a special focus on Awkuzu SARS—the deadliest SARS unit in the country—to look into the atrocities committed by SARS operatives in the region with the aim of identifying victims and establishing the identities of erring officers.”
It also stated: “The AGFCS mission interviewed several victims of police brutality in Anambra and Enugu who chose not to speak under conditions of anonymity. Amid reports of the escalating use of coercive means to dispel protesters and suppress organized dissent, the study extended its coverage to seven states in order to independently assess whether the civic space is open and enabled for civil society and ordinary citizens to speak out and participate in #ENDSARS protests without interference or hindrance.
“Using the widespread protests against police brutality that engulfed the nation in October 2020 as a prism to examine and gauge the state of health of the civic space in Nigeria, this report presents firsthand evidence and testimonies of many egregious human rights violations committed by police officers, especially of the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad extraction against citizens and, survivors of police brutality in South East, Nigeria in particular.
“Reports show that Awkuzu SARS is the deadliest unit of SARS. Located in Oyi Local Government Area of Anambra State in the South-eastern part of the country, Awkuzu SARS is famed for carrying out the most barbarous acts of aggression on their victims. Although Awkuzu SARS has been in the news for a long time, the government failed to take steps to investigate the well-documented atrocities. The absence of accountability provided a fertile ground for the killing of suspected criminals in the name of fighting crime to continue, while emboldening the SARS officers to become deadlier and commit more crimes with alarming lethality and intensity.
“The fact-finding mission team documented twelve (12) established patterns and motivations for extreme violence by SARS operatives in Anambra, Enugu as well as other parts of the country. These patterns include: the deployment of SARS to settle personal scores; use of pseudonyms to disguise their real identities; prolonged detentions, including denial of access to family members and lawyers; the use of torture to elicit information from victims or to request bribes to facilitate their release; killing detainees for fun and according to mood swings; deliberate starvation of detainees with intent to kill slowly and without proof; incriminating innocent persons; keeping detainees in overcrowded cells, forcing them to sleep in shifts on top of each other or to sleep while standing; keeping decomposing dead bodies in the cells together with the living detainees; extrajudicial execution of detainees that refuse to pay bribes in exchange for freedom; trading of dead bodies especially to the university teaching hospitals in Nigeria.”