The Northern Elders Forum (NEF), have called on Nigerians to avoid acts of lawlessness in their struggles to force a change in the country.
They also said when citizens rise against government, it shows something is clearly wrong and in need of fixing. They called on President Muhammadu Buhari to overhaul the country's policing and security agencies by firstly, removing the service chiefs who seem ineffective in the fight against insecurity in the country.
The NEF, in a statement by its Director, Publicity and Advocacy, Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed, said the spirit deployed against Special Anti- Robbery Squad should be visited on policing and securing the North.
It said hundreds of thousands of people in Northern communities had been at the mercy of bandits, kidnappers and rustlers without any form of police protection.
“It is clear that many things are seriously wrong with our policing and security institutions, if the same institutions will be accused of extra-judicial acts by some citizens, and virtual non-existence by other citizens.
“It is not acceptable that thousands of our fellow citizens in the North will be virtually abandoned to armed criminals and a vicious insurgency, and the Nigeria police will get a slap on the wrist for acts that go against the core of its mandate in other areas of its responsibility,” it stated.
The forum said President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to order the scrapping of SARS and the reorganisation and investigations into its excesses, should be placed in the context of the huge demands that had been made for the President to address serious shortfalls in the country’s policing and security institutions.
“There have been many abuses that ought to have been checked by this and earlier administrations, but were ignored or treated with levity owing to very low levels of respect for accountability.
“It is a sad commentary on the manner this administration approaches sensitive matters such as security of citizens that it had to be forced into taking this decision after serious damage to the integrity and credibility of our policing and security institutions.”
The forum appealed to Nigerians to show the highest levels of restraint and maturity in the defence of their rights adding that “under no circumstances should we encourage acts that increase our exposure to crime, lawlessness and insecurity.”