Nigeria: Group Worried Over Rise in Crime Wave

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), yesterday raised alarm over the increasing rise in crime wave around the country, saying it could undermine the current drive by the Federal Government to achieve the Vision 20-20 and the Millennium Development Goals by the year 2015 if not checked. It called for an emergency in national anti-crime measures to be put in place to curb the development.

Speaking Yesterday in a media briefing, the group, through its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, lamented that the Federal Government is on the verge of failing to uphold the sacred constitutional duty to protect the lives and property of the citizens even as it advocated the implementation of far reaching pragmatic measures to achieve total Police Reforms in Nigeria as the first non-negotiable step to battle the upsurge in the rate of organised crimes all over the country.

HURIWA averred that the failure of the federal and the respective state governments, including the Federal Capital Administration to efficiently and effectively tackle the alarming wave of violent crimes in the country is a total breach of Section 33 [1], section 14 (1) [b] and section 16 (1) (a) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and called on President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua , state governors and the Federal Capital Territory Administration to stop forthwith the current lip service they pay to the issue of the security and welfare of the citizens.

Specifically, Section 33 [1] provides that "every person has a Right to life, and no one SHALL be deprived of his or her life save in the lawful execution of the sentence of a competent court of law in respect of a criminal offence of which he/she has been found guilty in Nigeria. Section 14 (1) [B] provides that "The security and Welfare of the people SHALL be the primary purpose of Government". Section 16 [1] [a] in a similar vein provides that "The state SHALL harness the resources of the nation and promote national prosperity and an efficient, dynamic and self reliant economy".

The group asserted that the respective governments across the country have failed abysmally to uphold these sacred provisions of our Constitution just as it categorically averred that the astronomic increase in the rate of violent crime in the country has led to the killings of thousands of innocent Nigerians even as the security operatives especially the Nigeria Police and other security agents are either ill-equipped, ill-motivated and to a large extent, collaborate with these criminal elements to procure the small arms used in carrying out these dare devil operations around the country on daily basis.

It called on the Police and other security hierarchy in Nigeria to come clean by flushing out all the bad elements who had, over the years found their ways into the various security agencies in Nigeria, using the violent crime incident in the City Centre of Abuja recently in which a business executive was allegedly robbed of over N18 million.

http://allafrica.com/

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