A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr Femi Falana, has described as illegal the shoot-on-sight order slammed on those clutching AK 47 in the nation’s forests.
Falana also called it barbaric for a civilian government to encourage extra-judicial killings.
The Lagos lawyer spoke while featuring as a guest on City FM programme, “City Talks With Reuben Abati’’. The zoom meeting’s topic is, “Ibori loot, fuel price and other matters’’, monitored by Persecondnews.
“It is barbaric for a civilian government to encourage extra-judicial killings or illegal killing of its citizens.
“The announcement credited to the President is illegal. The law says those caught with arms without license should be arrested and prosecuted and not killed,’’ Falana said.
He, however, insisted that those caught with AK 47 in the forests should be dealt with as criminals.
According to the human rights activist, President should rather make a proclamation to get the bandits in the forests arrested and brought to justice.
Falana said the Buhari administration had lost control of security of the country and warned that the nation might grind to a halt.
“The people should force the Nigerian government to address security.
“Section 14, subsection 5 of the 1999 Constitution talks about the security and welfare of the people that it shall be the primary purpose of the government.
On the No-Fly-Zone order in Zamfara, the human rights lawyer said it was laughable for the president to have given the order since the state has no airport.
“Where has there not been such order in Kaduna, Kastina and other states where kidnappings and banditry are taking place.
“The government should go back to the drawing board and fine-tune its strategies on insecurity. We should go back to constitutionalism,’’ Persecondnews quotes Falana as saying.
He urged governors to take charge of security in their states as the Chief Security Officers and use the security vote they collect for the purpose.
Falana posited:“Governors are the chief security officers of their states, they chair Security Council meeting; some governors take as much as N1 billion or N600 million monthly as security vote.
“For state security outfits, states should approach the federal government for approval to arm their personnel to fight banditry and other crimes.
“For instance, Amotekun outfit without guns to fight armed herders and bandits is suicidal.
“If the federal government refuses, the governors should let me know. I will go to court on their behalf; they are in charge in their states.
“No Police Commissioner will refuse lawful orders from governors where it has to do with security, but not order to arrest opponents.’’
On the loot of former Delta Gov. Ibori, Falana said the funds seized by UK did not belong to the Federal Government but Delta and therefore should be tied to specific projects for the state.
“The money left the coffers of the Delta State Government and it has to be returned to it.
“In case of Dariye who was caught in UK with state funds, the money was paid to Plateau. There is no justification for treating Ibori loot differently.
“Using the money to construct roads, Second Niger bridge and others is insensitive,’’ the lawyer said.
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