Rights Body Advocates Police Reform for Effectiveness

A civil society organisation, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has warned that unless the Nigerian Police Force was comprehensively and surgically reformed as well as re-oriented fundamentally to embrace the traditional constitutional mandate of enforcement of law and the nation stood the risk of falling into anarchy.

To avoid the ugly trend, the group called on President Muhammadu Buhari to declare state of emergency in the police with a view to reforming and making it effective so as to address the yearnings of the people instead of exploiting them.

HURIWA condemned the alleged high level of police professional indiscipline and the ways and manners that the officers of the police from the office of the Inspector General of police had delved into civil land related disputes and land speculations in Enugu State which had become the new normal for some top police officers who regularly invade communities experiencing legal challenges with land ownership to exploit some parties.

The Rights group said it had received a presentation from some Enugu State communities alleging plots to frame up innocent persons with alleged land dispute related fatalities and further expressed sadness that some police officers had misused their powers to get involved in extortion and other criminality which had become a hydra-headed monster that needed to be confronted with a Presidential Declaration of a state of policing emergency.

The National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf challenged President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately declare a national state of policing emergency and to work with the National Assembly and the organised civil society community in the Country to fashion out the needed legislative amendments to the enabling law setting up the Police Service Commission (PSC) to enable the agency to live up to the mandates .