Falana Asks Police to Stop Arresting Citizens for Loitering, Wandering
April 5, 2017


A human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, on Tuesday asked the Nigeria Police to desist from arresting and prosecuting citizens for loitering and wandering, saying it was a violation of fundamental human rights to arrest or prosecute any citizen for such offences.

Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said vagrancy law, which was introduced to Nigeria under the British colonial regime, had been repealed in 1989 under the military junta of Gen. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida after a sustained campaign by human rights activists.

He conveyed his grievance in a letter he addressed to the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris, yesterday, lamenting that officers of the Nigeria Police “are still arresting and prosecuting citizens for loitering and wandering after the vagrancy law was abolished.”


According to him, the anti- people law was retained for the purpose of harassing and intimidating poor people by the indigenous ruling class who took over power from the alien administrators in 1960.

In what he described as a display of class bias, Falana said whenever rich people “were found on the street taking a walk it was said that they were exercising their fundamental right to freedom of movement.
“But whenever the poor exercise such fundamental right to freedom of movement they were usually arrested by the police who accused them of wandering or loitering,” the human rights lawyer said.

Thisdaylive

If i hear say naija police go listen to him
make them catch u for road by 8pm , u will c urselve in cell