Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has lambasted the Nigerian Police for desecrating a Church in an attempt to arrest Uche Nwosu, an son-in-law to former Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, during church service on Sunday.
Nwosu who was initially reported to have been kidnapped by unknown gunmen, was later confirmed to have actually being hauled out during live service inside the Anglican Church premises by security agents.
Reacting to the development, HURIWA condemned the Imo State Police Command's action saying the security agents acted like terrorists.
The human rights advocacy group demanded that the Police Service Commission, PSC, investigate the police conducts, which it described as unprofessional.
According to HURIWA, the reckless and ruthlessly lawless mannerisms displayed by the Police in the vicinity of the Church will make it impossible for citizens to separate terrorists from law enforcers because under a democracy the operatives of the law enforcement agencies are bound by rules of civility and law based approach to law enforcement.
The Rights group said the method adopted by the police violated the Nigerian Police Act of 2020 in which several provisions mandates the police to treat citizens with dignity and to respect their constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights as enshrined in chapter 4 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999 as amended.
HURIWA said by this show of criminal brute force the police in Imo State have given life to the widespread allegations in many quarters that operatives of the security services in Imo State and other parts of South East of Nigeria may be responsible for the spate of targeted assassinations and kidnappings that have happened in the very recent time.
The Rights group is asking the PSC to wake up from longstanding institutional slumber and near-death and investigate this assault to civility and the crude tactics of the Imo State Police Command.
HURIWA said this in a statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National director of media Miss Zainab Yusuf, adding that the fact that the police shot sporadically inside the vicinity of the Church is an unpardonable desecration of the sanctity of the Church
The rights group said the police headed by a Muslim Inspector-General has demonstrated total disregard to the Body of Christ which is an abomination and criminal act because Uche Nwosu is not someone the Imo State Police Command can not quietly invite to their station.
“We condemn this criminal tendency by the Imo State police command and this has given credence to the report documented by Amnesty International in which the global human rights body accused the Imo State Police Command of the use of extrajudicial executions of innocent citizens as their law enforcement tactics,” HURIWA said.
“This sort of unprovoked violence and primitive show of force by the Imo State police command is unconstitutional, illegal, despicable, treacherous and reprehensible and the commissioner of police must be sanctioned by the Police Service Commission just as the National Council of State should sanction the IGP who authorised this sort of terrorism in a Church filled to the brim with peaceful worshippers.
“This was why everyone in Nigeria believed that the shooters were kidnappers long before the police issued a tepid press Statement claiming to have arrested Uche Nwosu.”
But HURIWA said the Imo State Police Command should blame themselves for creating the situation whereby members of the public panicked and scampered for safety thinking that the armed hooded men were kidnappers who also shot sporadically just in the same way and methodology used by terrorists and kidnappers.