The National Consultative Front has condemned “in the strongest terms” the alleged use of live ammunition on the publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore, and other unarmed protesters on Monday at the Unity Fountain, Abuja.
Sowore was leading others in a peaceful protest to express their dissatisfaction over the growing spate of insecurity and anarchy in the country.
He was reported to have been shot at by a female police officer, and is currently receiving treatment at an unnamed hospital.
NCFront, jointly led by former speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt Hon Ghali Naaba, and a professor of political economy, Pat Utomi, said in a statement signed by Dr Tanko Yunusa, Head, Public Affairs Bureau of the Front, that the police should have outgrown “this sort of savagery and barbaric action” in handling peaceful protests, to a more professional way of guiding defenceless citizens’ protests.
“The shooting of defenceless and unarmed citizens and civilians is most unacceptable to the NCFront and the Front shall continue to resist it until the police purge itself of such cruel methods of engaging protesting civilians,” it said.
The group has demanded an immediate apology from the police authorities and the sack of the officer who opened fire on Sowore and others.
It also demanded the best of urgent medical treatment and compensation for Sowore and other activists who sustained varying degrees of injury from police attack and disruption of the peaceful protest.
