The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to probe the reported killing of protesters during the just concluded #EndBadGovernance nationwide protests.
The National Coordinator of the association, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, on Monday, in a statement, said the president should set up an independent commission of investigators headed by a serving justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and five others from a broad spectrum of credible Nigerian private and public institutions to investigate the deaths and causes by security operatives.
"With the report in reputable media that unambiguously indicated that the just ended nationwide protests against economic hardship resulted in violent clashes in Northern Nigeria, killing 22 protesters, even as Southern regions remained largely peaceful, HURIWA has asked that the security operatives who shot at protesters must be identified, prosecuted for mass murders and punished in line with the rule of law."
"The rights group warned that sweeping the killings under the carpet will not augur well," emphasising that "the impunity may orchestrate another #ENDSARS demonstration if these recent killings were not adequately investigated and the killers punished."
Onwubiko urged state governors that were the flashpoints of the suspected killings of protesters by security agents like Kano, Niger, Yobe and Kaduna, to also set up judicial panels to probe the deaths of protesters and liaise with the central judicial panel in making recommendations.
He 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, while the exercise was characterised by looting and confrontation with security operatives.
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He said whereas the situation in Northern Nigeria during the just-ended nationwide protests had forced the governments of Kano, Borno and Yobe States to declare curfew as part of measures to contain the monstrous situation but that the killings of protesters including those who looted public and private assets in the flashpoint states must never be swept under the carpet.
Onwubiko said there was no justification for the large-scale extrajudicial killing of protesters by the security forces, citing example with the United Kingdom where riots also took place and arsonists set off fires on private and public buildings.
"Nevertheless the UK police didn't deploy live bullets against the arsonists and protesters unlike what obtained in Nigeria simultaneously whereby Nigerian security forces opened fire on protesters with live bullets.
"HURIWA therefore believes that independent judicial probe panels to be set up both by the federal government and the states that witnessed the killings of protesters should be activated immediately to undertake a comprehensive investigation of the remote, immediate and verifiable causes and circumstances that led to the killings of protesters," he said.
