•Demands non-kinetic steps to stem violent attacks on Police operatives:

A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has condemned the indiscriminate violent attacks targeting mostly Police operatives by insurgents from all parts of Nigeria.

The group has, therefore, asked the Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, to roll out strategies for practical revitalization of the moribund Police Community Relations Committee, to abridge the gulf between Police and the policed.

HURIWA said the quantum of hatred for the average Police operative in Nigeria by the civil populace was mind-boggling, requiring that quick win steps were adopted to bring this sentiments of hate to a quick end.

Besides, HURIWA which says no reason was strong enough to justify the massive targeting of armed Policemen on their line of duty, however, stressed that the Police hierarchy at both the National and sub-national levels were grossly lacking in the enforcement of strong deterrent administrative sanctions against indicted Police officers who still carry out extra-judicial killings of suspects in Police custody across the Country.

The rights group said it was in the self-enlightened interests of the Police as an institution that extra-judicial killings were stamped out immediately and indicted rogue Police operatives prosecuted for mass murders and sanctioned judicially in very transparent court sessions.

"The belief that citizens can just be executed like chickens inside Police cells and there is no accountability opens the policing institution up for bottled up angst which have now exploded into full blown 'civil war against Police operatives' which must be brought to a quick end immediately,” read the statement endorsed by HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko.

HURIWA blames the inactive, inefficient, ineffective Police’s Human Rights desks for the widening chasm between Police operatives and civilians.

The group said it was impossible for the policing institution to achieve any level of success in crime prevention and control without a robust and constructive dialogues between Police and the good people of Nigeria because human intelligence was key to resolving near-intractable crimes.

“HURIWA has called for the setting up of a full-fledged human rights department in the Nigeria Police Force headed by a well trained human rights compliant Deputy Inspector General of Police and the department well funded to even set up her own forensic laboratories to undertake investigations in cases of extra-judicial killings by the police," the statement added.

“We have watched with sadness as the coordinated killings of men and women in police uniform has spiked all across the country as if some gunmen have declared a war against the Police. The truth is that Police lives matter, just as much as Nigerian lives matter," it insisted.

"What should be done is to roll out concrete programmes of dialogues and active partnership between the civil society and the Police because there is widespread distrust of the Police of Nigeria by a large percentage of Nigerians. These Police operatives being slaughtered are our sons, daughters, brothers and sisters. There is the urgency of the now for effective non-kinetic mechanisms by the Police IGP and his commissioners all over Nigeria."

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