A group, Peoples Alternative Front, has expressed regret that despite President Muhammadu Buhari’s promise to respect the human rights of Nigerians, the first 100 days of his second term in office is allegedly characterised by “indiscriminate arrest and illegal detention of poor citizens by the police and other security agencies.”
According to the group, despite the abolishment of the vagrancy law in Nigeria since 1989, “thousands of women and unemployed young people are being arrested for wandering” in raids by the police around the country under the Buhari administration.
The PAF, in a statement by its National Chairman, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), lamented that while Buhari was marking the first 100 days of his second term in office last week, “scores of citizens were languishing in police and military detention facilities across the country.”
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Among such detainees, the group said, were the convener of the #RevolutionNow protest, Omoyele Sowore; Cross River State-based journalist, Agba Jalingo; Navy Captain Dada Labinjo “being held at an underground cell in the Directorate of Defence Intelligence, Abuja” and 150 citizens languishing in the Nigerian Navy’s detention facilities, including the NNS Beecroft Cell at Apapa, Lagos.
The group said, “At the annual conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, which held in Lagos last month, President Buhari restated the commitment of his administration to operate under the rule of law.
“Based on such commitment, the Federal Government should comply with all court orders and direct the police and other security agencies to grant bail to criminal suspects or arraign them in courts if there is reasonable suspicion that they have committed any criminal offence.
“As the Buhari administration moves to the ‘Next Level’ the National Human Rights Commission, which was dissolved in 2015, should be reconstituted without any further delay.” [PUNCH]
