CSO accuses FG of promoting security operatives who adopt jungle justice system

By Phil Okose, Onitsha

A Civil Society Organization, CSO, International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Intersociety, Sunday, accused the Federal Government of promoting/rewarding its security personnel, that include, police, military, and other security agencies who adopt jungle justice  system instead of bringing them to justice for perpetrating such crime.

Intersociety cited states where such crimes are more pronounced to include, Imo, Ebonyi, Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Delta, Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Benue, Plateau, Taraba, Adamawa and (Southern) Kaduna.

Making this disclosure, the Intersociety chairman, Nze Emeka Umeagbalasi, said that in those States all manners of attrocities were being perpetrated which included, service subversive conspiracies, abductions, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings; torture, arbitrary arrest, detention, among others.

He lamented  that such crimes against the people of the mentioned States have been going on since the last quarter of 2015, without the top hierarchies of the deployed security agencies checkmating them.

Umeagbalasi stated that,  “These they have been unleashing on members of defenceless civilian population in the East, by discriminatorily profiling, stigmatizing and falsely labeling them; resulting in enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detention and custodial torture and deaths, including open or secret unlawful execution and other unlawful killings; all fueled by falsely labeling and stigmatizing the defenceless Eastern citizens as “ESN/IPOB members or Unknown Gunmen”.

“Reverse is the case in the core North where jihadist terrorists responsible for massacre of thousands of defenceless Christians and disproportionate moderate Muslims on yearly basis are being presidentially protected and amnestied,” he lamented.

According to Umeagbalasi, top hierarchies of the Nigeria Police Force and other security agencies, especially the Army and Secret Police, have abandoned due process of law and mindlessly resorted to gross breach of available legal frameworks moderating or guiding policing and law enforcement, particularly in Eastern part of Nigeria.

He attributed militarization of routine police functions and failed detective and investigative policing in the Nigeria Police Force and its Bureaus of Intelligence and Investigations, fueled by ethnic and religious policing and law enforcement as factors widely responsible for incessancy of wanton destruction of lives and properties of members of defenceless civilian population in Eastern Nigeria.

The Intersociety boss revealed that the number of civilian buildings and other lawful properties burned or destroyed beyond recognition by the Nigerian security personnel are also in several thousands.

“In three years of 2020, 2021 and 2022, the number of unarmed citizens arrested or abducted by the Army, Police Special Squads and Secret Police in the East, have been credibly and factually estimated at over 7,000, with 4,800 arrested from October, 2020 to June 2022 alone,” he disclosed further.

The Intersociety findings, he  stated showed that police and secret police authorities have substantially abandoned court trial of the arrested and detained citizens, mostly members of defenseless civilian population in the East.