Deplores court’s ruling on pregnant single police officers
 
Civil rights advocacy group, Human rights Writers Association of Nigeria ( HURIWA) has condemned what it called the unlawful detention by the Nigeria Police of a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), who works as a software developer with a Public Relations and Communications firm in Lagos State.
    
The group said the police team’s action of picking the intern after complaining about his hairstyle, labelling him a ‘Yahoo boy’ (Internet fraudster), is one of the most heinous crimes against humanity, which ought to be eliminated.  
    
HURIWA, in a statement yesterday, by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko,  said, there are several armed robbers embedded within the Nigeria Police Force, causing grave damage to the institutional image of the Nigeria Police Force,  wondering why the nation’s police hierarchy are not perturbed by the multiple cases of armed robbery involving their service men. 
    
According to the group,  it was animalistic and primitive that the NYSC’s member,  Mr. Daniel was slapped, assaulted and taken to Araromi Police Station at Adamo in Ikorodu,  where he was asked to pay for his freedom,  just  as the alleged police personnel have been identified as Commissioner of Police (CP) Strike Team, Anti-Cultism and Anti-Kidnapping Unit (Ikorodu annex).
     
HURIWA lamented that the pattern of systematic dehumanisation of Nigerian youths by the police on nebulous and unlawful grounds has become very entrenched within the ranks and file of the Nigeria Police Force.
 
It also regretted that some uniform men have become armed robbers, under the guise of arresting those they wrongly termed as fraudsters without any shreds of evidence or empirical proofs, even as a friend of Daniel, identified as Patrick, recounted the ordeal of his friend at the weekend, revealing that the victim is “very traumatised”.
  
HURIWA recalled that the eyewitness stated also that: “After several calls by friends and colleagues to the authorities, Daniel was released. The chief officer at Araromi Police Station apologised and gave him N500 for transport. Daniel mentioned that there were about 14 of them detained unlawfully as at 8:00p.m. on Friday.
   
“Their families don’t know they are there. One was picked from a Keke and, from what I heard, would be taken to Ikeja on Saturday.    
   
“We don’t know what will become of those guys, they are helpless. 
 
“These gross human rights abuses by the police which have dovetailed into pure criminality and armed robbery are to put it mildly a grace violation of the fundamental human rights provisions of chapter 4 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

SIMILARLY, HURIWA has described as unsustainable and unconstitutional the decision of the Abuja Federal High Court validating a regulation of the Nigeria Police Force that prohibits single female police operatives from getting pregnant whilst unmarried.
   
“Why would single police operatives, who are women being sacked for becoming pregnant, but their opposite gender of same single status are not dismissed even with cases of many of them putting many girls in the family way?”, the group queried.
   
HURIWA, therefore, urged the Nigerian Bar Association to proceed to the Court of Appeal to quash the verdict of the lower court,  which effectively legalised discrimination on the basis of gender and status of the female police operatives,  which is offensive to Section 42(1) of the Nigerian Constitution.