PAN Niger- Delta Forum PANDEF, has called on the Nigerian police to demanding a halt to acts of intimidation, harassment and physical assault by hired hoodlums and police officers of well-meaning young Nigerians peacefully expressing their frustrations over how the affairs of the country are being conducted.
PANDEF, umbrella body of monarchs, leaders and stakeholders of the coastal states of Niger-Delta, in a statement by the national chairman, Air Commodore Idongesit Nkanga (retd.) said the brutalization of Nigerian Youths across various cities across the country, particularly Abuja and Benin City, Edo State, was condemnable.
It also deemed the nationwide “Operation Crocodile Smile” exercise announced by the Army as most provocative and another unnecessary misadventure. It is our well-considered stance that soldiers have no business trying to do “police” job and thus do not have to get involved in the peaceful and intellectual #EndSARS protests.
The statement read in part: “We further demand the commencement of unbiased investigations into these incidents to swiftly bring to book all those behind the criminal and undemocratic acts across the country.
According to the group Nigeria belongs to all Nigerians, including the youths who are protesting to take back their rights as citizens of their fatherland.
They also warned that they will not sit and continue to see children being wantonly brutalized or killed saying ‘’enough is enough.’’
“If SARS, which virtually became a terror gang in some parts of the country is strangely being highly esteemed in another part to the extent that they are calling for its retention, then there is a fundamental problem in the present structural architecture of Nigeria.
“We had expected that President Muhammadu Buhari should have addressed these young people openly with a fatherly countenance to assuage their justified anger, instead of the deployment of the military and police against them and the tactless enabling of hired armed thugs to unleash terror on the peaceful protesters,” the regional body added.
