ACF wants special courts for kidnappers, others

The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has called on the federal government to immediately set up special courts to try those caught in transgressions such as kidnapping, murder, marketing of dangerous weapons and other offenses, saying it will create confidence among Nigerians to hear that government is proactive.

The ACF Chairman, Audu Ogbeh, who stated this in a speech delivered at a meeting with former President Olusegun Obasanjo and made available to journalists in Kaduna said: “Let the guilty be penalised and the innocent set free as dictated by the principles of the rule of law.”

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He said the current circumstance where there is total silence from the judiciary gives room for “speculation, mischief, outright lies that those arrested are being let off through the back door on ethnic and religious grounds.”

Ogbeh’s stated that at no time in Nigeria’s “chequered” history since the civil war have the country been in greater need of cherished ideals such as integration, confidence-building and cohesion stressed that at no time has the realisation of these ideals become more challenging and almost unattainable.

“Vicious criminality has sown fear in all. Economic challenges exacerbate pain in our daily lives and mistrust continues to aggravate division everywhere,” he said.