Prominent civil rights advocacy group, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has asked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to sack or call to order his Inspector General of Police, Mr. Kayode Egbetokun, over the reported violent attack, arbitrary arrest and illegal detention of a journalist with a popular online news outlet Kasarachi Aniagolu by operatives and officers of the Nigerian Police Force, FCT Command.

HURIWA in a statement on Wednesday by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, described the unwarranted aggression against this innocent female journalist Ms. Aniagolu as absolutely intolerable, despicable, reprehensible, primitive and disappointing and has called for her immediate unconditional release and the enforcement of administrative sanctions on the operatives who inflicted the physical, psychological and emotional torture on her. HURIWA reminded the police that torture is absolutely unconstitutional.

HURIWA has also expressed consternation that since the president appointed and confirmed his friend and kinsman Mr. Kayode Egbetokun as the Inspector-General of Police, the levels of indiscipline, unprofessional conducts, bribery and corruption and gross human rights violations of the fundamental human rights of citizens guaranteed under chapter 4 of the 1999 constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, African Human And Peoples Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights domesticated by Nigeria as our Municipal laws, have heightened and regretted that the police operatives now behave as if they are above the laws of Nigeria.

The rights group said today’s arrest, humiliation and physical torture of the journalist with THE WHISTLER newspaper, is only but one amongst the dozens of incidents that the ruthlessly lawless, unprofessional and largely undisciplined police operatives and their officers who permit impunity have carried out just as the rights group has called on president Tinubu’s government to put an end to these incessant abuses of the constitutional rights of the citizens by the police.

HURIWA demanded the immediate and unconditional release of Ms. Anaigolu and an unreserved apology from the leadership of the Nigeria Police Force.

“We call on the National Assembly and the president to immediately reconstitute the governing board of the police service commission so the council when constituted by the President with men and women of the highest standards, merits, competencies, and respectability, will be in a good position to enforce discipline and professionalism in the increasingly deteriorating operational and disciplinary standards of the Nigerian policing institution. Once more, we condemn this egregious violation of the legal and constitutional rights of this female journalist Ms. Aniagolu,” HURIWA said.

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