The Human Rights, Liberty Access and Peace Defenders’Foundation (HURIDE) has called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to as a matter of urgency disband all the secret and intelligence departments and agencies in all the security architectures in the country.
The group in a statement made available to the media after their crucial executive meeting held in Enugu,the State capital said the call to scrap the departments and agencies was necessitated by the abysmal and monumental failures associated with their operational activities.
In the statement endorsed by the Executive Director of HURIDE, Dede Uzor A Uzor, they said the emergence of terrorist activities of Boko Haram was as result of lack of intelligence gathering and abysmal intelligence failures.
The rights groups said the ongoing insecurity in most other parts of the country especially the South East was also as result of intelligence failure on the side of our security operatives.
The intelligence outfits, the rights body said, that should be totally overhauled or scrapped are the Department of State Security (DSS), National Intelligence Agency ((NIA), Police’s Federal Investigation Bureau (FIB), and State Criminal Investigation Department (SCIB) Rapid Response Squad (RRS) Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) among others.
The group called for the immediate reactivation of Olusanya report, saying that the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) should also be disbanded as they have failed in their statutory function and now “engage in extensive corruption and extortion of motorists”.
The FRSC, they said, was set up to reduce drastically accidents, traffic gridlock among others on Nigerian roads but now they focus more on impounding private vehicles and extorting money from road users
The rights body lamented that they also focused more attention on private vehicles from which they make more money than commercial vehicles who “violate traffic regulations with utmost impunity and recklessness”.
HURIDE lamented that most commercial vehicles on Nigerian roads have no life – saving equipment and other essential health management kits in case of emergency but they were always left to operate at the detriment of their passengers because settle FRSC officials on the road.
The rights group advocated for compulsory three months mandatory retraining for security operatives in Nigeria every year to allow them be in tune with protection of lives of the citizens.
“There must be a statutory and mandatory three months training in each year for every security operative to enable them be in tune with protecting citizens’ lives”.
21st January 2025
