Extrajudicial killings: Tinubu, end the Army, DSS impunity

TWENTY-FOUR years into civilian rule, extrajudicial killings are rising and undermining human rights and democracy in Nigeria. Last Thursday, police in the Federal Capital Territory put down a violent protest following a report that agents of the Department of State Services had killed a fashion designer and injured several other persons. Although it later emerged that the victim survived the shooting, it neither doused popular anger nor erased the reality of summary executions by state agents. President Bola Tinubu should instil zero-tolerance for impunity and stamp out the odious trend.

Nigerians are having a raw deal in the hands of state and non-state killers. Incidents of extrajudicial killings occur around the country with depressing frequency, sometimes perpetrated by military personnel, DSS operatives and rogue police officers.

Innocent civilians have similarly been felled by trigger-happy operatives of the Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, and vigilantes.

The FCT incident typifies the prevailing impunity. Witnesses said that a customer had brought the DSS agents to the dressmaker’s shop for allegedly failing to deliver some clothes on an agreed date. An ensuing hot argument between both sides ended in the DSS agents firing gunshots to disperse the supporters of the fashion designer during which he was hit by a bullet. The DSS later admitted that its personnel came under a “mob attack,” but has not satisfactorily explained their business in a private matter.

Source: punch