Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has lambasted President Bola Tinubu’s administration for the rise in human rights abuses in the country.
Atiku stated this in a release signed by his Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, lamenting that citizens were being arrested in a Gestapo manner without the knowledge of their relatives.
He said Tinubu has turned against the people by allowing the Department of State Services, DSS, the Police and even the military to abuse the rights of citizens without any consequences.
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential candidate in the last general election said the most affected since Tinubu took office have been journalists whose only crime is reporting the news and exposing government indiscretion.
He argued that the Cyber Crime Prevention Act 2015 has a tool for abducting Nigerian citizens.
“The dangerous trend of enforced disappearances has become a national embarrassment for a country which claims to be practising democracy. On May 1, 2024, Daniel Ojukwu of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism went missing and was presumed abducted by kidnappers until he was later discovered to be in police custody on the orders of IGP Kayode Egbetokun.
“Ojukwu’s crime was that he exposed the corruption of a government official who currently serves in Tinubu’s administration. On July 23, the DSS arrested one Aliyu Sanusi in Sama Road of Sokoto, the state capital for printing and distributing materials ahead of the #EndBadGovernanceProtest. Even the arrest and release of the former BBC Pidgin Editor and current West Africa Regional Editor of the Conversation, Adejuwon Soyinka, clearly shows a pattern, whose objective is to intimidate journalists for speaking the truth to this government.
“Now, the police have arrested Bristol Tamunobiefiri, who owns the PIDOM Nigeria blog on X, formerly Twitter. After detaining him for over two weeks, he was granted an administrative bail, which would be impossible to meet. This is despite the fact that the Appeal Court, in the case of EFCC V. Emem Uboh (2022) LPEIR – 57968 (CA) held that administrative bail is illegal. Bristol should, therefore, be arraigned in court immediately or released.”
Atiku urged Tinubu to take cases of human rights abuses seriously or Nigeria would remain at risk of being slammed with sanctions by foreign nations.