The Chairman of Police Service Commission (PSC), DIG Hashimu Argungu, has expressed his disgust at the increasing incidence of extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests, search and detention and sexual abuses in Nigeria, lamenting that these are some of issues denting Nigeria’s human rights record across the globe.
Accordingly, Arugungu, who also frowned at the ways suspects are paraded in chains, and neglect of victims of crime, has called for a balancing of the Justice system where attention should also be given to victims of crime and not only the suspects.
The PSC chairman made this known when he visited the Executive Secretary of National Human Rights Commission, Dr. Tony Ojukwu, in his office in Abuja, in continuation of his respect for human rights of Nigerian citizens and recognition/protection of the rights of victims of crime advocacy.
Accompanied by a strong delegation from the PSC, Argungu said it is a mockery of the criminal justice system that some of the obsolete laws in Nigerian statutes that need fresh impetus, are still in force as they were over the past century.
While calling for a collaborative partnership with the Human Rights Commission, Arugungu announced that the PSC would henceforth involve the Commission in its recruitment processes.
Welcoming the PSC Chairman to his office, the Executive Secretary said the Human Rights Commission is building a digitalised platform for the processing of human rights cases and noted that the platform will be linked to the Commission so that the two government agencies will in partnership take the war against abuses to the next level.
Dr. Ojukwu said the nation cannot continue to watch the abuse of the rights of citizens without doing something about it, appealing to the PSC Chairman to partner with his Commission to give the nation something to cheer about.
He expressed the hope that with DIG Argungu, who was a member of the Panel on the Anti-SARs riot, now Chairman of the PSC, most of the unresolved cases would be brought to conclusion.
