Kolade Johnson: Rights activist backs mass protest against police

CIVIL rights group, Centre for Human Rights and Social Justice (CHRSJ), on Thursday declared its total support for the planned mass protest from well-meaning Nigerians against the extra-judicial killings by men of Nigeria Police Force in Lagos State, particularly the recent killing of late Kolade Johnson at the Onipetesi area of the state on Sunday.

This was just as the group called on President Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) government to stop paying lip service to the ongoing illegal and unlawful killings of innocent citizens in various parts of the country, just as it equally called for total disbandment of Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) by declaring it as an illegal unit in the Nigeria Police Force.

Chairman of the group, Comrade Adeniyi Alimi Sulaiman, gave this position in a statement made available to newsmen in Lagos, even as expressed CHRSJ’s disagreement with the police for parading only two of its attached to the Anti-Cultism Squad out of seven(7) Policemen that allegedly committed the offence.

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According to him, seven officers were involved in the dastardly act and not two as claimed by the police authorities, insisting that the rest five must be fished out for punishment.

Sulaiman, while suggesting a form of punishment of the culprit found guilty by the court of competent jurisdiction, called for enforcement of death by hanging/firing squad or life imprisonment as stipulated in the Force Order No. 237.

He said the Order had affirmed that it was illegal and unlawful for any security agent to involve himself or herself in the extra-judicial killing of fellow citizen he or she was employed to protect, calling on well-meaning citizens of the country to rise up and free Nigerians from the untimely death from hands of SARS and men of the Nigeria Police.

CHRSJ boss urged them to do this by joining the mass protest against the extra-judicial killings of the Nigeria Police whenever they were called out to do so, describing extra-judicial killing by men of Nigeria Police as illegal, unconstitutional, unlawful, evil, ungodly, anathema,anti-people and a crime against God and humanity.