By Kayode Ketefe
On Friday September 20, 2013, a dawn raid by soldiers and men and
officers of the Department for State Security (DSS) on an uncompleted building
situated behind Apo Legislative Quarters, Abuja left in its trail tragic
casualties with nine dead young men and a number of people injured.
The security operatives had reportedly acted on the intelligence
that the building was being used as a hideout by some members of the dreaded
Boko Haram terrorists who were also alleged to have stockpiled some arms in the
building.
Giving the strategic importance of
Abuja as the nation capital and the seat of power, any kind of security threat
to the city is, understandably, construed as a potential catastrophe to the
nation. The fact that Abuja had witnessed at least three incidents of terrorism
in the past must have reasonably accentuated the fear of the law enforcement
agents but whether this could also justify their impulsive onslaught on the occupiers
of the premises is another question.
The said prior acts of terrorism on the
seat of power included the attack on the Police Headquarters on 16 June 2011,
when a suicide bomber drove a car bomb onto the premises of the Louis Edet
House and detonated it with disastrous result. There was also the bombing
of the United Nations House on Friday, 26 August 2011 in the said capital in
which at least 21 persons were killed and 60 wounded. Of course, the same
violent group also bombed the ThisDay office in Abuja on April 26, 2012.
With this chronicle of woes serving as
a threatening reminder of what the dreaded group is capable of doing even at a
place so close to the seat of power, the law enforcers would appear faultless
to have stage what appeared to be a neatly executed pre-emptive strike.
That was the thinking of millions of
Nigerians who had initially hailed the assault as another breakthrough in the
war against insurgency in the country. There was however a twist in the story.
Reports started filtering in that those killed were no terrorists after all but
innocent, albeit poverty-stricken vagabonds, who were unable to afford the high
rent for accommodation in Abuja and had turned the uncompleted building into
temporary abode.
The latest killings inspired a feeling
of déjà vu concerning a similar incident in the same Apo area on June 8, 200
2005 when six innocent traders were murdered extra-judicially by the police who
labeled them “armed robbers”.
The truth however eventually came out
when the Federal Government set up the Justice Olasumbo Goodluck Judicial
Commission of Inquiry to probe the killings. In its report, the commission
indicted the police and recommended that the families of the six deceased
persons be paid N3 million each as compensation.
It was even found out by the
commission that the two locally made pistols which the police claimed they
found in the deceased’ car were actually planted by the police themselves after
the killings in a desperate bid to justify the concocted theory that the innocent
traders were robbers!
There are many questions that arise on
the latest incident. If the deceased were innocent homeless people, would
the mere fact that the law enforcement agents were tipped off that they were
terrorists have justified the impulsive and thoughtless carnage? Couldn’t these
agents have mounted surveillance around the building to first of all ascertain
the veracity of their theory?
What is the threshold of caution that
the security operatives need to exercise in combating suspected insurgents? Is
there no other operational methodology of a professional hue to round up the
suspects instead of just opening fire? Is it true that most of the deceased
were shot in the back in a manner suggestive of deliberate execution after
arrest? There is indeed a lot to uncover on this incident.
It is commendable that the Senate,
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), numerous human organisations and
eminent Nigerians have already called on the government to probe the incident.
We join our voice to these agitations and call on the Federal government to set
up a judicial commission of inquiry in the mould of Justice Goodluck in the Apo
six saga, which should do a painstaking, thorough and transparent investigation
to get to the root of this matter. It would be an embarrassing scandal and
national shame if eventually the slain people were not terrorists as the
security operatives’ claimed.
It would mean that the nation which is
still groping for solution to its security challenges posed by terrorists is
unwittingly wasting the lives of innocent people to compound her woes.
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