The group in a statement issued by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, described the reported violent attack, arbitrary arrest and illegal detention of a journalist with WHISTLER Newspaper, Ms Kasarachi Aniagolu, as unacceptable.
A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has called on President Bola Tinubu to sack the Inspector General of Police, Mr Kayode Egbetokun, for human rights violations under his leadership.
The group in a statement issued by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, described the reported violent attack, arbitrary arrest and illegal detention of a journalist with WHISTLER Newspaper, Ms Kasarachi Aniagolu, as unacceptable.
Aniagolu was filming a raid on Bureau de Change (BDC) operators in Wuse Zone 4 when she was arrested, despite identifying herself as a journalist.
SaharaReporters learnt that she was manhandled, threatened, and had her equipment confiscated.
SaharaReporters reported on Wednesday, that the management of THE WHISTLER Newspaper had demanded the immediate release of its reporter.
HURIWA described the aggression against the female journalist as absolutely intolerable, despicable, reprehensible, primitive and disappointing, and called for her immediate and unconditional release.
It reminded the police authority that torture is unconstitutional and demanded enforcement of administrative sanctions on the police personnel who inflicted the physical, psychological and emotional torture on the female journalist.
The rights advocacy group also expressed dismay 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 Charter on Human and Peoples Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights domesticated by Nigeria as our Municipal laws, have heightened”.
The organisation regretted that the police now behave as if they are above the law of Nigeria.
The group noted that the “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”.
It appealed to President Tinubu to “put an end to these incessant abuses of the constitutional rights of the citizens by the police”.
While demanding the immediate release of the journalist, the group also called on the National Assembly and the President to immediately reconstitute the governing board of the Police Service Commission.
The group expressed optimism that when the council is constituted by the President with people of the highest standards, merits, competencies, and respectability, they 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.