HURIWA Requests National Assembly To Summon The IGP Over An Alleged SARS Outbreak In The Southeast

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has requested that the National Assembly summon the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba, in connection with the purported reappearance in the Southeast of the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS.

Residents of Imo State claimed that armed police officers dressed in SARS uniforms were wandering the streets of Owerri, detaining, harassing, and humiliating innocent people while on the lookout for mysterious gunmen.

Reacting, HURIWA, in a statement issued by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, said it wonders why the National Assembly did not bother to investigate the findings.

The statement reads, “We are asking the National Assembly to summon the Inspector-General of Police to explain to Nigerians why he decided to unban SARS which was banned with the authorisation of President Muhammadu Buhari following widespread allegations of professional misconduct against the operatives including the extensive use of extralegal execution against detainees in the custody of the Nigerian police force.

It is therefore incongruous and unacceptable that the security forces sent to the South East and South-South have continuously breached the fundamental human rights of the Igbo/Niger Delta youths and are arbitrarily arresting, detaining and using extrajudicial executions as tactics of law enforcement.

“Now the innocent youths wrongly arrested and detained in the harshest of conditions in the notoriously uninhabitable cells of the defunct Special Anti Robbery Squad in Abuja are subjected to the ordeals of extortion and psychological and physical torture all in an efforts to get their relatives to part with huge amounts as bribes for bail. This is totally primitive and despicable”.