A media-related and pro- Democracy organisation- HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has condemned the police attack on the Deputy Editor of DAILY POST Newspaper in Kogi State.
The Rights group has also demanded the arrest, investigation and prosecution of the police operatives involved in this dastardly crime of attempted murder to serve as deterrence and to create some levels of responsible professionalism amongst the Nigerian Police.
In a statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss. Zainab Yusuf against the backdrop of the reported brutality and gross physical molestation of Mr Wale Odunsi by the Police operatives attached to the Kogi State governor, HURIWA said the attack on a journalist who was on his line of duty was in violation of the fundamental rights provisions enshrined in chapter 4 of the 1999 Constitution including freedoms from degrading treatment and violation of his human dignity.
HURIWA said the indicted Police officers who masterminded the violent assault on the Senior Journalist must be prosecuted and sanctioned in accordance with the relevant criminal provisions of the statutes which absolutely prohibits torture and physical molestation.
HURIWA recalled that Mr Wale Odunsi, deputy editor of DAILY POST reportedly missed death by the whiskers on Wednesday as a mobile police personnel attached to the Government House in Kogi threatened to shoot him.
Odunsi had traveled to the state to honour an invitation to the rescheduled Kogi State Social Media Summit.
The programme was slated for Wednesday 11th and Thursday 12th October, 2017.
Those invited were also scheduled to meet Governor Yahaya Bello at the Banquet Hall, Government House, Lokoja, Kogi State.
Narrating the incident to newsmen, Odunsi said it was divine intervention that saved him from being killed.
The Rights group charged the Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Kpotun Idris to direct the Kogi State police commissioner to investigate this allegations of the gross violations of the Rights of a Nigerian citizen by the operatives attached to the Kogi State governor with a view to bringing appropriate action to bear on the offenders including their prosecution for causing bodily harm.
HURIWA reminded the Nigeria police force that section 22 of the Constitution of Nigeria has created the role of the national conscience for the Nigerian media and wondered why police operatives could threaten to kill an unarmed journalist without any form of provocation.
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