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Our Ref: TA/30/04/19/VOL.1 DATE: 26/04/2019
Your Excellency,
President Muhammadu Buhari, GCON
President and Commander in Chief
Of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Aso Rock Presidential Villa,
FCT, Abuja.
We write as solicitors to CHIEF PATRICK OSAGIE EHOLOR whom we shall henceforth refer to as our Client on whose firm instruction we write.
Our client is a Nigerian with unfailing faith in the Nigeria project. He is a committed stakeholder in all it takes to make Nigeria a better place among the nations of the world. In his own little but very important ways, he has and is still contributing in speaking out clearly and loudly against all forms of wrong-doings against individuals and group of persons without discrimination.
He is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of a Non Governmental Organization fondly called, One Love Foundation. This body was incorporated years ago to help the weak and the vulnerable all over the world, particularly in Nigeria.
Our client, through his One Love Foundation, instituted many actions in court, particularly under the Freedom of Information Act, with a view to making government accountable to Nigerians.
Your Excellency, it is no longer news that over the years some members of the Nigerian Police have developed very strong appetite in both accidental discharge and outright extra judicial killings.”
I need not remind Your Excellency or any of your servants in various government departments that the primary function of every responsible government is the protection of lives and property. The 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria intended in spirit and letters that lives are sacrosanct, and therefore that Mr. President owes Nigeria a duty to ensure that no life of a Nigerian is sacrificed on the altar of Police accidental discharge or any other form of extra-judicial killing.
In recent time, we have experienced too many unexplained and unbecoming killings of defenseless and innocent Nigerians by some blood thirsty Policemen while the Acting Inspector-General of Police dishes out orders that are not implementable. To worsen this debacle, the Police Service Commission has apparently abandoned its responsibility to discipline erring police officers and personnel across the country.
The killing of Kolade Johnson on Sunday March 31, 2019 by Police Officers of the Anti-Cultism Unit in Lagos is one among too many. Credible records in local and international observers custody show that in the last three years alone (2016 2019), more than 1,000 citizens of Nigeria have been extra-judicially murdered across the country by the Nigeria police; an absolutely unacceptable, repulsive and despicable tragedy of needless citizen consumption comparable to genocide next only behind Boko Haram pogroms. On Wednesday March 20, 2019, it was Ogah Jombo, an assistant superintendent of the Nigeria Civil Defence Corps, murdered in Abuja in broad day by traffic police wardens right in front of his wife and two young children; on Saturday April 14, 2019 it was 20 years old Jessica Ada, also murdered by SARS in front of her friends. Who is next?
Sadly, there are no credible deliberate efforts whatsoever by the government to curb these acts of monstrous callousness which tend to portray us as less than human beings in the eyes of civilize nations of the world. Our client, and indeed other concerned stakeholders in the Nigeria project, are worried and have decided to, at all cost but within the ambit of the law, sound it loud and clear to Mr. President and to the ears of the nations of the earth that enough is enough! The lives of Nigerian citizens and anyone residing in Nigeria must be adequately protected in line with international standards and best practices.
It makes no sense that the citizens whose taxes and the nations commonwealth are used in purchasing arms for the Police have become their very victims. Ironically, criminal activities are on the increase; from the North to the South and from East to the West, yet not many of the real criminals in the land are hit by Police bullets. We therefore, on behalf of our client, state that the Inspector-General of Police, the Police Service Commission and all such bodies and agencies connected with civilize policing in Nigeria rise up to work.
In the interim, we further on behalf of our client urge you most humbly, Mr. President, to decisively call the Inspector-General of Police, and indeed the various heads of Police formations in the country to order. Secondly, Mr. President, a mechanism should be put in place forthwith to overhaul the Police Service in Nigeria. In this regard, the Police Act Amendment Bill recently passed by the National Assembly should be assented to without delay to begin a correction of the outmoded and outdated inherited colonial Police Laws.
It is our further instruction that unless and until visible positive signs are seen by an average Nigerian in the attitude of our Police in the next coming weeks or few months from now, our client, together with those who place sacred value on human life, shall forthwith organize series of “One Million Match Protests.” These peaceful and orderly protests will be geared towards calling to the attention of Nigerians, foreigners in Nigeria and nations of the world that we are trapped by our own Police, and that we would do everything legitimate to secure our freedom from the ongoing monstrosity of their slaughter of peaceful law-abiding citizens. While our client is sure when the protest will start, he cannot guarantee when it will stop.
We therefore call on Mr. President to be a father that cares and would do the needful.
Thanks
Yours faithfully,
___________________
T.A. AKAHOMEN ESQ
Legal Practitioners &
Notary Public
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