By Martin Opara
The Peoples Democratic Party PDP, has added it’s voice to the nationwide applause that has continued to trail the recent dissolution of the Special Anti Robbery Squad, an arm of the Nigeria Police Force, that is saddled with the responsibility of handling, addressing and nipping armed robbery and related crimes in the bud, which, contrary to it’s terms of reference, and essence of it’s establishment, veered into illegal, unethical, reprehensible and demeaning actions and conduct, that are unworthy of their professional calling and violate the fundamental rights of Nigerians.
The party, in a release dated 12th October, 2012, signed by the National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, hailed the dissolution of the anti robbery outfit and urged the All Progressive Congress APC led federal government to restructure the entire architecture of the police, to engender professionalism, adherence to rule of law and respect for fundamental rights of Nigerians.
The PDP, advised the federal government to go beyond the dissolution and reassignment of SARS operatives and embark on profiling, arrest, and prosecution of members of the disbanded outfit and other police officers involved in the several reported cases of extra- judicial killings, unlawful arrests and detention, extortion, harassment and dehumanization of innocent Nigerians, especially in the past five years.
“Those who killed, maimed, dehumanized and foisted a reign of terror on innocent Nigerians must be brought to book and made to answer for their devilish actions”.
“Anything short of this amounts to granting official cover to felonious elements and encouraging further perpetuation of such atrocities”.
The release also frowned at what it referred to as moves by the APC, to trivialize, politicize and divert attention of the people from the issues at stake, “by using social media hirelings who dish out diversionary falsehood, to cover up APC’s complicity”.
It also stated that, the APC is apparently jittery, and does not know how to explain the fact that SARS that was created in 1992, long before PDP came into power became a devastating monster within five years of APC administration, as reports of arbitrary and extra- judicial killings, illegal arrests, detention, torture and reported disappearances have become the order of the day, as articulated in reports by the United States Department of state, Amnesty International (AI), and Transparency International (TI).
“Our great party commiserates with families of victims of these unprofessional elements who unleashed pain, and anguish on our citizens. We, in the same vein, condole with families of police men who lost their lives in the heat of the unfortunate situation saying that, enough is enough”.
