Nigeria: Just in - Abuja #EndSARS Panel Awards N146 Million Compensation for Police Brutality

By Ameh Ejekwonyilo

The NHRC announced the various amounts of money awarded by the #EndSARS to both deceased victims' families and survivors of rights abuses on Thursday.

The Abuja #EndSARS panel probing allegations of human rights violations perpetrated by the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other units of the Nigerian police, on Thursday, awarded N146 million to victims of gross rights violations.

The Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Tony Ojukwu, at the ceremony where the awards were announced on Thursday, said the monies were a symbolic gesture in assuaging the feelings of victims of the infringements."

At the emotionally charged ceremony, the deceased victims' families and survivors of rights abuses recieved dummy cheques as a mark of the awards.

The actual cheques are to be issued to them later.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported that the NHRC, which set up the federal government's panel of enquiry on police brutality in Abuja, said in March this year that 44 of the petitions submitted were about enforcement of judgments awarding damages against the police for rights violations.

The commission added that 20 of the petitions considered in just one day had a total of N575.8 million in judgment debts against the police.

The compensations in the judgments, according to the commission, were awarded in cases bordering on extra-judicial killing, unlawful arrest and detention, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and torture, alleged enforced disappearance, confiscation of property, among others.

This article originally appeared on Premium Times

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