The Campaign for Democracy and Human Rights Defenders, CD/HURIDE have called on Anambra State Commissioner of Police, CP, Nnanna Oji Ama to release more funds to ensure full payment of medical bills of all the wounded victims of the recent police gun shots at Onitsha Bridgehead.
Some police men attached to the Bridgehead Police Division had shot and wounded those they felt were carrying some bags of unregistered and counterfeit drugs and refused to submit them to the policemen for search as demanded.
Shortly after the shooting incident, CP Ama quickly intervened, visited the scene and the hospitals where the victims were hospitalized, paid the initial bills for their treatments, offered to foot their medical bills and ordered for a thorough and impartial investigations into the circumstances surrounding the shooting.
Few days into the investigations, the four officers who had carried out the shootings were detained at the State Criminal Investigations Department, SCID for further interrogations.
But in a press statement issued in Onitsha, Chairman of CD, Southeast Zone and Executive Director of Human Rights Defenders (HURIDE) Dede Uzor A. Uzor commended the CP, the Army and Onitsha Police Area Commander for their timely interventions that helped to quel the looming breakdown of law and order which could have emanated from protests during the day of the incident.
He also commended the CP for offering to pay the medical bills of the victims so far and urged him to do more to save their lives as according to him, relations of the victims may not be bouyant enough to handle their medical bills.
He however urged the CP to revisit the victims in the hospital to find out their health status and ensure that all of them, particularly the one that has had his injured or being at the verge amputation, are properly taken care of in terms of the full settlement of their medical bills and their full recovery.
He also called for possible provision of necessary compensation to the victims and at the same time make a provision for constant training and retraining of police personnel in the state on the use of firearms in line with the democratic principles.
Dede Uzor also advised that the police should set up a joint anti-fake and counterfeit drugs team with the leadership of Ogbogwu Onitsha Drugs Market to have a routine meeting to avert future occurrence.
CP should mediate into the ongoing Ogbogwu leadership crisis between the caretaker committee and its opposition which he described as very serious. The CP should also set up a high powered committee to resolve the crisis which is obviously affecting the average trader and their customers at the Ogbogwu market”, said CD/HURIDE.