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afrol News, 20 May - There is an increasing pressure against the Nigerian government to disband government-backed vigilantes operating in south-eastern Nigeria, known as the 'Bakassi Boys'. In some Nigerian states, these groups effectively have taken over functions of law enforcement agencies. The US-based rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and the Lagos-based Centre for Law Enforcement Education (CLEEN) have issued a joint report on vigilantism in Nigeria today. The 45-page report documents serious human rights abuses by the Bakassi Boys, a vigilante group set up in 1998 to combat armed robbery. The report describes how the Bakassi Boys, active in the south-eastern Nigerian states of Anambra, Abia, and Imo, have been responsible for scores of extrajudicial executions and hundreds of cases of torture and arbitrary detentions. "These abuses have been tolerated, and sometimes actively supported and encouraged, by state government authorities," HRW reports. State governments have provided the Bakassi Boys with offices, uniforms and vehicles, as well as paying their salaries. In Anambra State, a law was passed in August 2000 to recognise the group officially as the Anambra State Vigilante Services. In the few cases where members of the Bakassi Boys implicated in crimes had been arrested by the police, they had almost always been released soon afterwards following the intervention of state government officials. "Effectively, the Bakassi Boys have taken over the functions of law enforcement agencies in these states, yet they are completely unaccountable," said Carina Tertsakian, Nigeria researcher at HRW. - By supporting the Bakassi Boys, government authorities are effectively telling the population that it is acceptable to use extreme violence to achieve any ends, said Innocent Chukwuma, executive director of CLEEN. Initially set up by market traders to fight armed robbery in the large towns of Aba, in Abia State, then in Onitsha, in Anambra State, the Bakassi Boys had used brutal and arbitrary methods, completely bypassing the police and judicial authorities. Openly armed with guns and machetes, they had executed and mutilated their victims in public, and detained and tortured them in illegal detention cells, often with a view to extracting confessions, the report says. In addition to targeting real or suspected criminals, the Bakassi Boys had been deployed to intimidate and sometimes eliminate perceived political opponents of state governments, as well as critics of vigilante violence, and had been called in to settle personal scores. In several cases documented by Human Rights Watch and CLEEN, there was evidence that the Bakassi Boys took their instructions directly from the state government. In one case, in Anambra State, the Bakassi Boys forced their way into the house of a man they abducted and later killed, announcing "We are Bakassi Boys. It's a government order." In another case, also in Anambra State, a man abducted by the Bakassi Boys was told by one of them: "The government wants you to die." In another case, in Umuahia, Abia State, in July 1999, the Bakassi Boys had arrived in a restaurant, claiming they had been sent by the state government to stop criminals; they then proceeded to kill and mutilate two young men who happened to be in the restaurant, attacking them with machetes and guns, and then setting them on fire. - There was no evidence that these or many other of their victims had been involved in any criminal activity, said Tertsakian. "But even those who are guilty have a basic right to due process. Such rights are systematically disregarded whenever the Bakassi Boys are involved." Human Rights Watch and CLEEN had spoken to many victims and relatives of victims of vigilante violence in south-eastern Nigeria. The report documents several cases in detail, including the killing of Prophet Eddie Okeke, who was abducted from his home in Nawgu and tortured and killed by the Bakassi Boys in Onitsha, Anambra State, in November 2000; the killing of Chief Ezeodumegwu G. Okonkwo, abducted from his home in Nnewi and killed in Onitsha in February 2001; the abduction and torture of Ifeanyi Ibegbu, minority leader in the Anambra State House of Assembly, in Onitsha in August 2001; and the abduction and torture of Bishop Alex Ezeugo Ekewuba, founder of the Overcomers Church in Owerri, Imo State, in June 2001. - In addition to these prominent figures, we are deeply concerned about the fate of lesser-known victims of the Bakassi Boys, said Chukwuma. "The majority of those killed are young men and boys, from poor backgrounds. Their deaths have gone almost unreported." The two human rights group recommended that the Nigerian government repeal laws which endorse the activities of the Bakassi Boys or similar vigilante groups; disarm and disband them and close down all their detention centres; and investigate all cases of unlawful detention, torture, and extrajudicial killings by the Bakassi Boys. In Nigeria, there is a common perception that the national police force is unable the booming rate of violent crime as it is both underpaid and under resourced. The Nigerian government should therefore "devote urgent attention to reforming and improving the national police force and enabling it to carry out its duties effectively," HRW and CLEEN recommend.
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