The All Progressives Congress, APC, has accused the Department of State Security Services, DSS of using torture to obtain forced confessions from the workers who were arrested during a raid on the party’s Data Centre in Ikeja, Lagos.
The party said the action was in contravention of the UN Convention against Torture to which Nigeria is a signatory and a violation of the citizens’ fundamental human rights.
In a statement released in Lagos on Friday by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, the party said the DSS personnel who arrested the workers shackled their hands and legs and blindfolded them while they were being taken to Abuja.
“The workers remained in chains even at the dark detention cell where they were made to sleep on the bare floor for the 10 days they were detained illegally, while none of their family members knew their whereabouts all through their ordeal. Guns were pointed at their heads by DSS personnel who threatened to shoot them while verbal insults were hauled at them as if they were common criminals. It is simply incredible that Nigerians can be treated like this under a democratic dispensation,” the APC said.
The party said having coerced, tortured and bullied the workers to say and write what suits the purpose of the DSS, the agency then issued a statement saying what it found during its investigations of the APC Data Centre, will shock the world.
“DSS, Nigerians and indeed the entire world are already shocked by your actions, including the resort to the use of torture, in violation of an international Convention which Nigeria has signed and ratified, to obtain false information from the arrested APC workers. What more shock can come from an institution of state that treated Nigerian citizens like animals in a gross violation of fundamental human rights?
“What more shock can come from an institution of state that has now so shamelessly become the enforcement arm of the ruling PDP, to such an extent that it would even engage in untold illegal acts just to demonize the opposition. What more shock can come from an institution of state that could resort to this crude tactics even under a democratic dispensation?” the APC queried.
The party vowed to seek legal redress for the innocent Nigerians who were treated worse than prisoners of war in their own country, by an agency of state that is funded with tax payers’ money, and which is expected to be fair and non-partisan in its operations.
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