Femi Falana, senior advocate of
Nigeria (SAN), says the special anti-robbery squad (SARS) is made up of members
of the armed forces who are trained to kill.
Falana said the SARS operatives
accused of extra-judicial killings and brutality are trained soldiers.
In an interview on TVC, the
rights advocate spoke on the demand by Nigerians for SARS to be scrapped.
“SARS was actually created by the
defunct military junta. It is made up of members of the mobile police unit and
the armed forces,” Falana said during the interview monitored by TheCable
Wednesday morning.
“In other words, armed troops
have been legally engaged since 1991 in the maintenance of law and order in our
country. From my investigations, the killings are essentially carried out by
those who have been trained to kill.”
According to Falana, soldiers
must be taken out of SARS and the training of police officers must be revamped,
else things will not change.
“You must remove soldiers from
SARS. Let me be honest with you, this system is not going to abolish SARS. They
can’t abolish SARS. It’s not possible. There is no way you are going to abolish
SARS under the present arrangement whereby you are going to have a field day
for armed robbery suspects, kidnap suspects, slave drivers and human
traffickers,” he said.
“At the police college, during
training, police recruits are humiliated and dehumanised. By the time they come
out, they want to have it back on the society that has degraded them.”
Falana said SARS alone should not
be criticised, saying their actions are replicated by the police across the
country.
He described the parading of
criminal suspects as illegal and wondered by “big men” accused of crimes are
never paraded.
He said: “But you cannot single
out the SARS from the general extortion by policemen and women, police stations
in the country. For instance, it’s not just the armed SARS that is involved in
these criminal actions. When armed robbery suspects are arrested, they are
forced through unprecedented torture to make incriminating statements.
“The next stage is to parade them
before the media. You don’t parade a big man but you parade the poor. In those
press conferences, media men and women are allowed to subject them to
cross-examination which shouldn’t be because we have court judgements, not less
than five, which say that parade of suspects is illegal.”
Falana further said the reason
why the violations of human rights persist in the country is largely due to the
indifference of Nigerians.
“Nigerians generally are used to
moving on, Our rights are violated are we just move on,” he said.
“We must form organisations and
human rights units in our churches, mosques and communities to protect the rights
of Nigerians. These units will take up the human rights violation of their
members. Nigerians must start to take advantage of their rights under the law.”
Falana also charged the media to
boycott the parade of suspects.
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