Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, has called on the Nigerian Bar Association to take decisive actions to curb systemic illegal arrests and prolonged detention of citizens by security agencies nationwide.
In a statement issued on Sunday titled ‘Time for NBA to Stop Illegal Arrest and Detention of Nigerian Citizens’, Falana urged the newly led NBA administration under Mrs. Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya to enforce statutory provisions aimed at protecting suspects’ rights.
The senior lawyer specifically highlighted Section 34 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015, and Section 70 of the Nigeria Police Force Establishment Act, 2020. Both statutes mandate Chief Magistrates to conduct monthly visits to all police stations within their respective magisterial districts to inspect arrest logs, grant bail in deserving cases, and order the arraignment or release of suspects held without legal justification.
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Falana challenged the legal body to ensure its members actively monitor these statutory oversight mechanisms.
“We are compelled to call on the Nigerian Bar Association under the leadership of Mrs Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya to ensure that members of the Human Rights Committees of all the 145 branches of the Association make it a point of duty to accompany the Magistrates during the monthly visits and inspection of police stations,” Falana stated.
Beyond police cells, the rights activist criticized the judiciary’s delay in inspecting secondary detention facilities managed by other security agencies. He noted that while Federal High Court judges possess the statutory mandate to inspect non-police detention centres within their territorial jurisdictions, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court has yet to formally designate judges for the task.
Consequently, Falana urged the NBA leadership to mount sustained pressure on the Federal High Court bench to assign judges immediately to ensure suspects are not detained beyond constitutionally permissible timeframes.
He also called on the national executive of the bar to activate its oversight mandate under Section 21 of the Nigerian Correctional Service Act, 2019. The provision designates the NBA President and national officers as official visitors to all custodial facilities nationwide.
“The new leadership of the NBA should mobilise the national officers to carry out their statutory duties under the Nigerian Correctional Service Act 2019 without any further delay,” he added.
Reinforcing his call for structural reform within law enforcement, Falana cited a subsisting judgment delivered by Justice O. Y. Anuwe of the National Industrial Court in The Incorporated Trustees of the Nigerian Bar v Police Service Commission & Ors. The court affirmed that Section 66(3) of the Nigeria Police Act, 2020 imposes a mandatory duty on police authorities to deploy qualified police legal officers to every police division to enforce human rights standards during operations.
“In line with the terms of this judgment, the new NBA leadership should ensure that police officers who are legal practitioners are assigned to every police station to monitor the observance of the human rights of suspects,” Falana noted, urging the NBA to aggressively utilize existing laws to safeguard indigent citizens from institutional abuse.
