Human Rights Activist, Femi Falana (SAN) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to direct all authorities to publish the names of everyone detained in their custody and where they are being held.
The human rights lawyer also asked the president to ban the police and other security agencies from picking up Nigerians and holding them in any form of incommunicado detention.
In a statement released yesterday, Falana said, “Following the publication of the contents of the said petition by the media, a number of the family members and friends of the majority of the detainees have reached out to us. Since the detainees were arrested by armed and masked naval personnel in mufti without any warrant of arrest and incarcerated incommunicado, it was thought by many family members that the detainees had been abducted and killed by hardened kidnappers.
“The most pathetic case is that of Ms Grace Inyang who was arrested in Port Harcourt, Rivers State by masked naval personnel on October 27, 2018. She was driven to Abuja and dumped in an underground cell at the detention facility of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). “She was however transferred to the NNS Beecroft detention centre at Apapa, Lagos last week for further incarceration. Even though the lady has spent 295 days in detention the detaining authorities have not informed her of any criminal offence allegedly committed by her. Neither has she been allowed to communicate with her relatives.
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“The 56 men in the same detention facility at Apapa have been abandoned by the detaining authorities! Similarly, no one has attended to the other 10 citizens who have been detained inside a vessel in Marina, Lagos for the past 13 months.
“By not notifying the family members and relatives of the detainees of their arrest and places of detention the authorities of the Nigerian Navy have willfully violated Section 6(2)(b) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015 which has imposed a duty on all detaining authorities to notify the next of kin or relative of every suspect of the arrest at no cost to the suspect.
“Finally, we call on President Muhammadu Buhari to direct all detaining authorities in Nigeria to publish the names of all detainees and their places of detention and prohibit the police and other security forces from subjecting Nigerians to any form of incommunicado detention,” said Falana.
