The Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) has called on the Inspector General of Police in Nigeria, Usman Alkali Baba, to urgently end the reported atrocity going on at the anti-kidnapping unit of the Imo State police command.

RULAAC, in a statement, noted that the police unit in the state is doing every single thing that the disbanded F-SARS was doing that led to the #EndSARS protests in 2020.

It also noted that the current Commissioner of Police in the state, Ahmed Barde, does not respond to complaints about the excesses of the unit.

RULAAC cited the case of two young men who were arrested by the anti-kidnapping Unit at Tiger Base, Owerri, and detained them without being told what their offenses were.

It was gathered that the young men were unlawfully detained and tortured.

‘When RULAAC spoke with the young men after they were released, they informed us that many people they met in the cell are being held incommunicado without any of their relatives knowing their whereabouts’, the statement issued by the RULAAC Executive Director, Okechukwu Nwanguma, read.

‘Some had spent weeks and months with gunshot injuries festering and smelling and in bad state of health. They live in starvation. They are never charged to court’.

‘RULAAC forwarded this information to the CP, Imo [State], but he ignored the messages and phone calls’.

RULAAC called on the IGP to intervene to sanitise the police force in the state.

Photo source: AMISOM Public Information