Date Published: 09/21/09

HURIWA demands investigation of Bayo Ohu's assassination

HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA, HURIWA, a development focused and democracy inclined non-Governmental organization has condemned the gruesome and bestial assassination of the Assistant Editor of The Guardian Mr. Bayo Ohu, by some unidentified assailants in his Egbeda- Lagos home on Sunday morning and demanded comprehensive, transparent, thorough, dispassionate and definitive investigation by the law enforcement agents to unravel those behind the dastardly killing and bring them to justice in no distant time. The Group also criticized the Lagos State police commissioner for jumping into hasty conclusion that Bayo Ohu was killed by armed robbers. The rights group called on the federal Government to declare a state of national emergency on insecurity.

Specifically, Bayo Ohu of The Guardian politics desk was reportedly attacked by a group of men armed with sophisticated weapons right inside his living room in the Lagos suburb and shot at severally in the most reprehensible and dastardly fashion and left to die but he eventually gave up when a near- by clinic refused to attend to him because the doctors insisted on the production of police report since Bayo Ohu was a gun -shot victim. The Rights Group has therefore demanded the arrest of those particular medical personnel to be charged to court for dereliction of duty.

HURIWA in a statement endorsed by its National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko also took a swipe at the failure of the nation’s police to provide security to the lives and property of Nigerians and called for the immediate reforms of the police and other law enforcement agencies with the aim of providing the operatives with the current skills and techniques for the prevention and detection of organized crime. The Rights group blamed the failure of the nation’s police to arrest and bring to a successful trial any of the killers of several prominent Nigerians killed since 1999 for the rise in organized crime of assassination.

Lamenting that long after Godwin Agbroko and Ogundeji of Thisday Newspapers were gruesomely murdered, the actual suspects in the dastardly murders have not been arrested and brought to face the full weight of the law, HURIWA, tasked the Federal Government to wake up from slumber and fulfil its basic constitutional duty enshrined in section 14[2] [b] which provide clearly that the welfare and security of the citizens shall be the primary responsibility of government. The rights group regretted that the nation’s police force is not equipped with the modern forensic investigative facilities and the human capacity and skills to unravel the spate of high profile killings and the thousands of murder cases all across Nigeria some of which go unreported because those victims are not prominent.

Reminding the Federal Government that a Government that spectacularly fails to enforce the fundamental rights provisions of chapter four of the 1999 constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria which the President and all the public office holders swore on oath to protect will surely lose legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens and even members of the international community, the Rights group challenged the federal Government to ensure that the killers of Mr. Bayo Ohu are not allowed to keep roaming the streets of Nigeria as free persons because the consequences of the failure by Government to act decisively will add to the declining international image of Nigeria.

According to HURIWA; ‘’ Nigeria as a country governed by law, the citizens must be provided the basic constitutional cover of protection of their lives and property by the Government. Any Government that fails to provide the security and welfare of her people is not worth having. The ball is now in the court of the current administration to take the issue of the widespread situation of insecurity that pervades the Nigerian society as a national emergency and implement far-reaching result-oriented measures that will be aimed at practically and sufficiently equipping the law enforcement operatives with the needed facilities and skills to prevent and detect crime in all its ramification especially the unresolved cases of politically motivated killings. A stitch in time saves nine’’.

HURIWA warned that if nothing concrete is done before the 2011 elections, then the bad eggs in politics will resort to self help measures to eliminate their opponents with the confidence that the nation’s law enforcement agents are incapable of preventing or detecting their nefarious activities. HURIWA said that if those who kill are not arrested and punished, then Nigeria will become a nation that tolerates impunity and impunity if unchecked will invariably result to anarchy and anarchy leads to the immediate collapse of the nation-state.

‘’We call on President Umaru Musa Yar’adua to immediately declare a state of national emergency on insecurity and crimes so as to put a stop to the killing spree that the nation has continued to witness since 1999 without the possible trace of the perpetrators. Crime and criminality are dangerous cankerworms that must be confronted frontally or else if Nigerians lose faith in the ability of the law enforcement agents to protect them then everyone may be compelled to bear arms for self protection because the first law of nature is self preservation’’, HURIWA averred.