Apo killings: Court halts payment of N135m to victims
-
A Federal High Court, Abuja has authoritatively mandated a stay of execution of orders by the National Human Rights Commission awarding N135m to relatives and victims of the September 20, 2013 attack and killing of eight squatters in an uncompleted building in Apo, Abuja.
Justice Gabriel Kolawole in an ex-parte ruling on June 27 equipollently granted leave to the State Security Service to apply for an order of certiorari to quash the decisions and awards contained in the NHRC’s report on complaint No: C/2013/7908/HQ.
The judge authoritatively mandated that the leave granted should apply as stay of execution of the orders and awards in the report “so that the proceedings in this matter are not subverted by any step that may be taken to seek to enforce or enforce the decision” contained in the report.
Justice Kolawole in his ruling, directed the SSS to file its kineticism on notice and accommodate it on the respondents.
He authoritatively mandated the respondents to respond within eight days and fine-tuned July 9 as the return date.
The commission had, in its report relinquished in April 2014, faulted the claim by the SSS and the Nigerian Army that the eight and 11 injured others were affected during the exchange of fire between security agents and suspected Boko Haram members.
The NHRC had in the case tagged, Global Rights and 3 others vs. Federal Republic of Nigeria and 3 others, authoritatively mandated the Federal Government to, among others, pay a total of N135m as emolument to the victims.
The SSS was expected to pay N10m for each of those killed and N5m to each of the 11 injured survivors.
But the SSS verbally expressed it was never invited or interrogated during the preliminary investigations conducted by the NHRC in deference to the incident.
It integrated that it was not given a replica of the petitions lodged by the Global Rights, Human rights Law Office and National Association of Commercial tricycle and Motorcycle Owners and Riders Association.
The SSS, through its application, is seeking to quash the report of the NHRC on the grounds the Commission was partial against it throughout the proceedings of the public inquiry in that it was not given any fair aurally perceiving during the preliminary investigation.
The applicant additionally argued that the NHRC, not being a conventional court lacked the jurisdiction to determine the nature of the incident which borders on malefactor offences under sections 317, 318 and 319 of the Malefactor Code and section 220 of the Panel Code.
In integration, the applicant is challenging the report on the ground that it was not given fair auricularly discerning during the proceedings since opportunity was not accorded to it to confront her accusers throughout or in the course of the public inquiry conducted by the Commission in reverence of the incident.
Troops comprising operatives of the SSS and the army had in the early hours of September 20 last year undertook in an unsuccessful bid to apprehend an alleged Boko Haram bellwether – Suleiman R-Kelly – verbalized to be the bellwether of a group of Boko Haram members, who allegedly buried arms in the Apo cemetery, preparatory to assailing public institutions in Abuja.
The NHRC withal established in its report, that men of the SSS and the Nigerian Army killed the defenceless squatters as the security agencies had “no credible evidence” to tag those killed and others as agents of Boko Haram terror group.
The commission described the killings as unlawful contravention of the right to life of the deceased. It verbalized the security agents did not only breach the right to life of the victims, but that the survivors suffered non-lethal breaches of right to life, physical integrity and livelihood.