HURIWA Condemns Violent Robbery On Sun's MD

The Federal government has been asked to beef up security across the Country and build a policing institution whose fundamental operational guidelines should be preemptive and intelligence- driven policing even as it condemned the violent robbery attack on the person of the Managing Director of Sun group of newspapers Mr Eric Osagie.

The Federal Government should also ask the office of the National Security Adviser to synergise the operational partnerships amongst the various segments of the security community in such a way that intelligence sharing becomes seamless and high technological and sophisticated crime fighting infrastructures erected to assist the armed security community to work uniformly to tackle such major crime as armed kidnappings.

Making this observation in a statement signed jointly by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA said Nigerians are now endangered species from armed criminal elements that are on rampage, maiming, killing and wantonly looting financial assets of unsuspecting members of the public because governmental institutions set up to combat crime and criminality have spectacularly failed. However the Rights group has also tasked the Nigerian government to do more to protect media practitioners because of the delicate nature of their professional callings.

Besides HURIWA has called for thorough investigations into the attacks targeted at top ranking media managers and their family members by armed hoodlums to determine if there exists a sinister plot somewhere to silence independent media voices through cocktails of subterfuge and threats to their lives. Citing the recent kidnap of the Wife of the Deputy Managing Director of the Sun newspaper Mrs Toyin NWOSU and now the violent robbery attack against the Managing Director of Sun group of newspapers Mr Eric Osagie, HURIWA said there could be more to it than meets the eyes. The group said Nigeria Police haven't been able unravel several organised criminal attacks against journalists in tge last decade including the assassination of the Senior Editorial Manager of The Guardian newspaper six years ago Mr Bayo Ohu. Besides HURIWA also lamented the inability or unwillingness of the Nigeria Police Force to uncover the killers of a newspaper editor based in Onitsha Anambra State murdered in broad day light by armed hoodlums last year.

HURIWA reiterated her call for conclusive and holistic police reforms through constitutional reforms to make room for the creation of State and Local Policing Institutions. The Rights group said that the current Nigeria Police Force can not withstand the the challenges thrown up by the emerging scenarios of armed Ethnic militias operating in some communities and also the sophisticated nature of armed freelance marauders posing as Fulani herdsmen because most of the security operatives are not properly informed about the terrains whereby they ought to operate.

"Only a properly constituted, professionally trained and equipped and combat- ready Local and State Police made up of manpower from the catchment areas can adequately and effectively police the various Nigerian crime flash points. Nigeria right now must set up the kind of policing structures that there are in UK and USA which is local, state and national policing institution s who partner effectively to curb crime ". HURIWA said it was time to make haste before Nigeria implodes into unmitigated anarchy and lawlessness.