The Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA) of Nigeria has urged President Bola Tinubu to set up a judicial panel to probe the reported killing of 22 persons during the protest against hunger and economic hardship across the country.
HURIWA further suggested that the panel should be headed by a respected serving justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and 5 others drawn from a broad spectrum of credible Nigerian private and public institutions.
HURIWA articulated the proposal through a letter signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko.
It specifically asked that the security operatives who shot at protesters must face the law, warning that sweeping the killings under the carpets will not augur well. It emphasized that the impunity may orchestrate another #EndSARS demonstration if these recent killings are not adequately investigated and the killers punished.
Besides addressing President Tinubu, the group also called on governors of the states that were the flashpoints of the suspected killings of protesters by security agents such as Kano, Niger, Yobe and Kaduna to similarly set up judicial panels to probe the deaths of protesters and liaise with the central judicial panel in making recommendations.
The rights group lamented that the otherwise peaceful protests sadly turned violent in most parts of the North, claiming 16 lives in a Borno suicide bomber attack, and six in Niger State. The exercise was characterised by looting and confrontation with security operatives just as the
HURIWA recalled that whereas the situation in the northern Nigeria during the nationwide protests had forced the governments of Kano, Borno and Yobe states to declare curfew as part of measures to contain the monstrous situation, the killings of protesters including those who looted public and private assets in the flashpoint states of the North must never be swept under the carpets.
The rights group said there is no justification for the large scale extrajudicial killings of protesters by the security forces, citing example with United Kingdom where riots also broke out and arsonists set fires on private and public buildings, nevertheless the UK police did not deploy live bullets against the arsonists and protesters unlike what obtained in Nigeria simultaneously whereby Nigeria security forces opened fire on protesters with live bullets.
The rights group particularly condemned the brazen act of extralegal execution of a 16-year-old protester in Zaria Kaduna State by the Army, emphasizing that an independent probe of the execution of this teenage protester must be conducted because the Nigeria Army cannot be trusted to conduct the investigation given that Nigeria Army and the Father of the boy killed by the soldier have contradictory versions of what happened.
HURIWA said the judicial commission should ascertain the factual cause and how the teenage boy was killed because the father of late Ismail Mohammed who was killed in Samaru Zaria during the protests, alleged that his son was killed by soldiers who shot directly at his home.
HURIWA recalled that the father of the boy killed in Zaria, Malam Mohammed, in an interview said the soldiers who were scaring people away, followed his son to their house and shot him.
* Media Report
