Wants southern governors to fight the increasing
wave of armed kidnappings and violent crimes.
A group, Human Rights Writers Association of
Nigeria, HURIWA, has chided President Goodluck Jonathan for refusing to tackle
what it described as the perennial non-performance of the Nigerian Police
Force, NPF, since he assumed power.
The group said the Jonathan administration
has failed to implement the best of all previously documented recommendations
on how to comprehensively reform the ‘moribund and non-professional force,’
carried out by several Presidential committees on Police Reforms.
It also criticized the National Assembly for
failing to use the opportunity of the yet to be completed constitutional
amendment to introduce the creation of state police as one way of shoring up
and empowering the police to effectively tackle the violent crimes across
Nigeria, especially the incidences of armed kidnappings.
In a statement jointly signed by its National
Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Director, Zainab Yusuf,
on Monday, HURIWA warned that history and posterity would be harsh on the
administration “if it failed to positively transform the fundamentals of the
NPF to ensure that all the bad eggs were weeded out and for efficient and
effective highly educated and crime free young upwardly Nigerian youth to be
recruited to form its core members and hierarchy.”
The group recalled that in the last two and
half years of the Jonathan administration, it had failed to positively reform
the NPF and had continued with the lip service being paid to the issue of
ensuring that only merit, professionalism and competence were the yardsticks
for deciding who headed Force.
HURIWA accused the administration of “playing
politics with the texture, colour and nature of the hierarchy of the Nigerian
Police Force which has further led to serious credibility deficit and total lack of crime fighting capacity of the
current Nigerian Police Force.”
Bothered about the increasing cases of armed
kidnapping in Nigeria, especially in the southern parts, HURIWA asked Mr.
Jonathan to make concerted efforts and arrest the trend in the coming year.
By making crime fighting across the country a
major focus of his administration, HURIWA said Mr. Jonathan would be saving
Nigerians from the spate of violent killings and also the South East from
de-industrialization.
The group said, “On behalf of the members of
the human rights community and all men of goodwill, we appeal once more for the
umpteenth time to the President of Nigeria to reform the moribund Nigerian
Police Force, NPF, and weed out all bad eggs that have captured the hierarchy
and membership of the armed police force to make sure that crime is confronted
frontally. Nigeria needs a professional police that abhors extra-legal killings
of suspects and indulges in bribery and corruption.
“We are worried that violent kidnappings are
becoming serious threats to the corporate and territorial integrity of Nigeria.
The Nigerian Government must fortify the security of the international borders
to ensure that sophisticated arms importers are curtailed and stopped in their
tracks before they infiltrate Nigeria with small arms and weapons of mass
destruction.
“The current Nigerian Police as its currently
constituted cannot guarantee a crime free Nigeria because most operatives of
the Nigerian Police Force are criminals whose criminal past are neglected and
they are allowed to remain in the Nigerian Police Force to perpetuate crimes
and criminality.”
The group also advised the governors of the
southern states to desist from playing excessive politics, but instead
concentrate on good governance modules by actively and jointly working together
to implement effective and fool-proof panaceas to the increasing wave of armed
kidnappings and violent crimes in their respective states.
“The Southern Governors must unite together
under one forum and work out implementable measures to wipe out the cases of
violent kidnappings so as to allow willing industrialists to invest in the
predominantly marginalized and underdeveloped South Eastern Nigeria.
Kidnappings must be treated the same way as the insurgents and terrorists in
the North East waging war against the Nigerian state,” HURIWA said.
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