The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has welcomed the dissolution of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS) of the police by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The party, however charged the president to also “take immediate steps to completely overhaul and restructure the entire police architecture to engender professionalism, adherence to rule of law and respect for the fundamental rights of Nigerians”.
In a statement by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan on Monday, the PDP also demanded that the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, should go beyond dissolution and reassignment of SARS officers, by commencing the profiling, arrest and prosecution of the members of the disbanded outfit and other errant police operatives involved in the reported series of extra-judicial killings, unlawful arrests and detention, extortion, harassment and dehumanization of innocent Nigerians, particularly in the last five years.
“Without mincing words, the PDP insists that no indicted officer should be reassigned and allowed to go unpunished after such heinous crimes against the Nigerian people.
“Those who killed, maimed, dehumanized and foisted a reign of terror on innocent Nigerians must be made to answer for their devilish actions.
“Anything short of this will amount to granting official cover to felonious elements and a tacit encouragement of further perpetuation of such crimes against Nigerians.
“Furthermore, our party and indeed well-meaning Nigerians across board are miffed by moves by the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to use a certain impostor as spokesperson in the social media to attempt to trivialize, politicize and detract from the essence of the public protest against the excesses of the disbanded police outfit.
“Nigerians were shocked when a particular agent of the APC, in a tweet on Sunday, made false and diversionary allusions to the creation of SARS in a bid to divert attention apparently because of APC’s complicity in the atrocities being protested against by Nigerians.
“The APC is apparently jittery because, whereas SARS was created in 1992, far before the coming to power of the PDP, it had turned monstrous within five years of the command of APC administration, under which our nation has witnessed horrific cases of arbitrary and extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests, arbitrary detention, torture and reported disappearances as also detailed in the reports by the United States Department of State, Amnesty International (AI) and Transparency International (TI),” the statement read in part.
Despite the disbandment of SARS Nigerians are still on streets and major roads protesting. They want among other things they want protesters arrested by the police released, and justice for all those killed by SARS.