Abuja #EndSARS panel compensates victims of police brutality with the total sum of N146 million at the completion of its work.
By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
The Abuja #EndSARS panel, constituted by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), has compensated victims of police brutality with the sum of N146 million.
The compensation was announced for both deceased victims’ families and survivors of rights abuses on Thursday, December 23.
The Abuja #EndSARS panel probed allegations of human rights violations perpetrated by the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other units of the Nigerian police.
Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Tony Ojukwu, at the ceremony where the awards were announced on Thursday, December 23, said it was a symbolic gesture in assuaging the feelings of victims of the infringements.
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According to a report by Premium Times, the emotionally charged event saw deceased victims’ families and survivors of rights abuses receiving dummy cheques as a mark of the awards. The actual cheques are to be issued to them later.
The report recalls that the NHRC, which sets up the federal government’s panel of enquiry on police brutality in Abuja, said in March this year that 44 of the petitions submitted were about enforcement of judgments awarding damages against the police for rights violations.
The Abuja #EndSARS panel joins Lagos State among the few states that have awarded compensation to victims of police brutality. Lagos awarded N410million in compensation to the victims of police brutality. Even though the majority of the states set up the #EndSARS panel to probe police brutality, not many of them proceeded with the seating, according to campaigner for police reform and executive director, Rule of Law and Accountability and Advocacy Centre (RULAAC), Okechukwu Nwanguma.
He said: “I have information that many states didn’t do any serious work. The truth is that apart from Lagos state, and perhaps one or two other states, I don’t think they did anything. In fact, I’m told that one particular state that inaugurated, the day the members of the panel asked for money to do the job, they were told there was no money to fund the panel.”
The compensations in the judgments, according to the NHRC, were awarded in cases bordering on extrajudicial killing, unlawful arrest and detention, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and torture, alleged enforced disappearance, confiscation of property, among others.