Global rights watchdog Amnesty International Friday urged Nigeria’s new leader to set up an independent body to investigate what it said were routine “unlawful killings” by the country’s police.
Amnesty called on Goodluck Jonathan to make good on his pledge, in a speech after he was made acting president Tuesday, to “not tolerate the culture of impunity that is fast becoming an unwelcome part of our socio-political life.”
The London-based rights body has alleged that Nigerian police carry out hundreds of extra-judicial killings every year, with only those who could afford bribes guaranteed safe from execution or torture.
It called on “Jonathan to fulfill the commitments made in his acceptance speech by setting up an independent commission of inquiry into all suspected cases of unlawful killings by the Nigeria Police Force in recent years.”
“The Nigerian police routinely kill people in cold blood without fear of punishment. This must stop,” the group’s Africa director Erwin van der Borght said in a statement.
“The government must ensure that all killings are investigated, that the findings are made public and perpetrators of unlawful killings are brought to justice,” he said.
There was “mounting evidence incriminating them (police officers) in hideous human rights violations,” he added.
Amnesty said its latest call was prompted by the broadcast on Al Jazeera television this week of video footage allegedly showing police shooting and killing unarmed people Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State last July.
In a damning report released in December, the group alleged: “The Nigeria Police Force is responsible for hundreds of extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings and enforced disappearances every year.”
“The majority of cases go uninvestigated and unpunished,” it said.
National police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu rejected the claims.
New York-based Human Rights Watch meanwhile urged Jonathan Friday to punish those behind recent sectarian riots that killed hundreds of people in central Nigeria.
Nigeria’s parliament voted on Tuesday that Jonathan, previously vice president, should officially stand in for President Umaru Yar’Adua who has been in a Saudi hospital for nearly three months.
In his speech hours after the vote, Jonathan said the police and other security services must be given “new impetus to perform their duties, even while respecting human rights of Nigerians.”