By Daniel Tyokua
The African Centre for Leadership Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), has advocated for adequate measures that would protect citizens’ right during and after emergency situations across the country.
Executive Director, Centre LSD, Mr. Monday Osasah during the public presentation of the research report on its project tagged, “Strengthening Pan-African citizens’ voices for security sector accountability (SpacVOSSA), with the theme: Impact of COVID-19 security measures on citizens and communities in Nigeria, said human rights should be respected by law enforcement agencies.
He said the level of human rights abuse should be the concern of all especially the security agents.
Osasah explained that the report identified areas of human rights violation in the enforcement of COVID-19 health guidelines, and measures to be taken in addressing human abuses.
“The report is to look at human rights violation in the enforcement of COVID-19 lockdown, the people that were given responsibility to enforce the lockdown at that time, alot of security breaches were witnessed , manhandling and extortion by security agencies were witnessed during the lockdown, so the report we unveiled capture those things”
He revealed that Centre LSD report on human rights violation was the reactions collated from those that were directly affected during enforcement of the COVID-19 health protocols, by the security agents.
One of the respondents captured in the report said, “in my community, we are at the border between Bauchi and Gombe, sometimes it is the security officers that escort some vehicles to pass after time (for states with partial lockdown), because they collect money from them, raging from N1,000 to N5,000) and allow them to go. And for those who didn’t have money, they forced them to isolation centre in the NYSC camp which is situated in our community.
“There were 2 corps members who were serving in a School at Alkaleri Local Government Area in Bauchi state, on their way to refill their cooking gas cylinder for cooking and do some shopping, they were arrested for crossing state boundary, and they were forced into the isolation centre despite their identity”
On the next action after the public presentation of the report, the Executive Director said, ” Is to come with a bill that will deal with the issues, the bill drafting is on after which relevant stakeholders, the National Assembly will examine it and come up with a legislation that will guide enforcement security measures during future happenings, from available reports across the country, the report is damming” he said.
Other strategic stakeholders who spoke during the presentation called for human oriented measures while enforcing any rule in the society.
END.
