The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Femi Gbajabiamila has vowed that he won’t sign off on the 2021 Budget if there are no provisions to compensate victims of police brutality.
He also said the budget must have provisions to meet the financial demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
The move which is aimed at assuaging the demands of the #ENDSARS protesters, who have demanded compensations for victims of police brutality, comes on Day 14 of the protests that has swept across Nigeria.
The protests have have been hijacked by violent hoodlums in recent days, forcing the Lagos and Edo state governments to impose 24-hour curfews in their states.
Speaking the opening of plenary on Tuesday, Rep. Gbajabiamila expressed concerns that the protests have grown and have become more violent.
He vowed that the House would lead the process of reforming the Nigerian Police Force and make it more accountable to the people.
He said: “About two weeks ago, I spoke to this honourable House about the need for urgent, substantive, and wholesale reforms of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and an overhaul of our nation’s internal security and policing framework.
“This honourable House debated the failures of policing that have caused our nation’s youth to take to the streets in their numbers, demanding that Government live up to our primary obligation to ensure the security and welfare of our people.
“The nationwide protests that gave impetus to our deliberations that day have not abated. They’ve gotten more serious, with many reported instances of violence between state actors/protesters, between protesters/armed thugs who seek to hijack the protests for nefarious purposes.
“The Federal Government of Nigeria has acted to dissolve the Special Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS), whose gross abuses of power are the proximate cause of this present unrest.
“The Government has moved to set up, through the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), a national judicial panel of inquiry, in addition to similar panels set up by the federating state governments”.
He maintained that the House of Representatives has “committed to a programme of reforms. We resolved to collaborate with the Nigeria Bar Association (@NigBarAssoc) and the National Human Rights Commission (@NhrcNigeria) in this effort and to ensure that draft legislation is ready for consideration within 30 days.
“None of these actions have sufficed to convince the ever-growing numbers of protesters to withdraw from continued agitation. From Lagos to Awkuzu, from Port-Harcourt to Kano, Abuja and Enugu, the protests have continued relentlessly, with good cause”.
He continued: “Whatever else may be driving this moment, our people expect more than commitments. They expect action, and we must deliver.
“This House will live up to the commitments we have already made, whilst we continue to seek avenues to do better and achieve more.
“Even as we act to establish systems for police accountability to ensure that the abuses of the past never happen again, we must seek the full measure of justice for what came before.
“We owe this to Tiyamu Kazeem and Tina Ezekwe, Tony Zitta and Anita Akapson, to Chijioke Iloanya and Jimoh Isiaq, Kolade Johnson, Modebayo Awosika and far too many others.
“We owe it to the families they left behind, to those who even now do not know if their missing son, their long lost sister, their father, is buried somewhere in a shallow, unmarked grave, put there by those whose duty it was to protect them.
“We owe this much to the young people who have such high hopes & lofty aspirations for this nation that they are willing to risk their lives, brave the sun & rain, through night & day, to demand that all of us live up to the better angels of our nature”.
He added that “on Wednesday last week, the leadership of the House met with the President of the Nigerian Bar Association. This meeting was in furtherance of our resolution to partner with NBA to develop legislation that implements a new framework for holding police officers accountable.
“Following from that meeting, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) constituted a Committee, led by the eminent Professor Deji Adekunle, SAN to work with the House of Representatives to develop a Bill for the House within the timeline we have pledged.
“Two weeks from now, the House will receive and immediately begin to consider legislation that seeks to establish a system of independent, responsive accountability that:
a. Holds erring members of the Police Force to account for their conduct in the performance of their duties;
b. Imposes civil and criminal liability for violations of the law and the Police regulations;
c. Ensures that officers who engage in unauthorised, unlawful use of force are expelled from office and subject to the full penalty of the law; and
d. Prohibits with severe penalties the practice of using illegal incarceration as a cudgel to extort law-abiding citizens of their hard-earned resources.
“We will establish a system of citizen-led accountability for the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) because in the democracy we have set out to build, the police are not above the citizenry, they are servants of the people. The police are not above the law; they are its guardians.
“As we endeavour to hold our nation’s police to higher standards of personal and professional conduct, we must also make sure that we provide for the welfare of the men and women to whom we assign such significant responsibilities in our collective interest…From minimum police recruitment requirements, through to training, everything must change, if we are to have a police force that meets our nation’s needs and upholds the law of the land with integrity and professionalism”.
