The Youth Rights Campaign (YRC) has applauded Amnesty International for its report documenting the violent suppression of the August #EndBadGovernance protests, which were held across various parts of Nigeria.

YRC, in a statement signed by its National Secretary, Francis Nwapa, described the AI report, titled “Bloody August: Nigerian Government’s Violent Crackdown on #EndBadGovernance Protests,” as a critical exposé that noted extra-judicial killings allegedly committed by security operatives during the demonstrations.

Amnesty International report, based on extensive field research in states including Kano, Jigawa, Kastina, Niger, and Maiduguri, corroborated claims that lives were lost during the protests due to excessive force by security personnel.

YRC thereby call for the suspension of the Inspector of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, to allow for an impartial, independent and public probe into the conduct of the police and other secu­rity forces during the #End­BadGovernance protest in August.

“We hereby reject the in-house probe ordered by the IGP as an attempt to cover up the issue. As a party indicted by the Amnesty International report, the police cannot be trusted to carry out an impar­tial probe,” the group demanded.

“To this extent, we call for the setting up of an indepen­dent probe panel democrati­cally-constituted by the elected representatives of civil society, professional groups like the media, NBA, etc, trade unions and youth associations to inves­tigate the various allegations against the police and other security agencies which in­cludes usage of excessive force, firing of live bullets, killing of peaceful protesters, torture of detainees as well as other hei­nous crimes as contained in the report of Amnesty Internation­al as well as several accounts of protesters and civil society groups.”

The group also accused the government of using state-sponsored thugs to disrupt peaceful protests, particularly citing incidents in Ojota, Lagos.

It alleged that security forces turned a blind eye to these attacks, choosing instead to target peaceful demonstrators.

“We are well aware that during the August protests, state-sponsored thugs attacked innocent protesters, such as those in Ojota, Lagos, and other parts of the country, while the police turned a blind eye.

“They made no attempt to arrest these thugs; instead, they went after peaceful pro­testers. This shows the dis­parity in treatment between law-abiding citizens and state-sponsored thugs.”